Does your area collect sales tax? This article outlines how to set up your season to collect sales tax on the items you sell through your Arts People account.
Tickets
- First, verify what your location's sales tax rate is.
- Once you know your sales tax percentage, contact your client services representative to let them know you'd like to have sales tax added onto each ticket sold. Let them know what your area's sales tax percentage is.
- Once the sales tax pricing's been setup, you'll be asked to test to be sure it's working correctly. Once you verify the pricing is correct, you'll start selling tickets and the sales tax will automatically be received as income on each ticket sold.
- When it's tax time, you'll want to separate out how much money you received in sales tax - so you'll use a report to find the total quantity you sold of each type of ticket, then multiply by the amount of tax you charged for each.
Here's an example of these steps that you can use for ideas on how you'd like to process your sales tax:
- I live in Vermont - first, I verify that the sales tax rate for the current year is 6%.
- I submit a help desk request to my representative and ask for a pricing setup that adds 6% onto each ticket sold.
- My client services rep lets me know the pricing is setup and ready for me to test - to verify it's setup correctly. I need to figure out now how much $ in sales tax I'll take in on each type of ticket I sell. I sell 3 types of tickets. Adult, Senior, and Student.
To get what the amount of sales tax will be for each type of ticket I sell I do the following:
I get the decimal equivalent of the sales tax percentage, for 6% that's .06.
Multiply .06 x $15 for my Adult ticket, .06 x $10 for my Senior ticket, and .06 x $7 for my Student ticket. I arrive at $15.90 for Adult tickets, $10.60 for Senior tickets, and $7.42 for Student tickets. This is what I'll charge my patrons, so that I receive the correct amount to cover my costs for the tickets themselves, and I'll also collect sales tax. - After my representative replies back to my help desk request that the tax is added, they ask me to test to be sure the pricing is correct.
To test, I look up my own patron record in the Box Office screen and select tickets. I see the following ticket pricing, which looks correct.
- Now that it's tax time, I check reports for the total I'll pay in sales tax. In reports, I consult Sales reports by date > Sales by Price Point (or another report that shows me the total for the tickets I sold). The report says my sales total is $3339. This amount represents the price of the tickets with the sales tax included. To get the amount of just the sales tax I do a little math. I divide the total $3339 by 1 + the sales tax rate as a decimal, in my case that would be 1.06. 3339 ÷ 1.06 = 3150. This is the amount of the tickets only, now I'll subtract that amount from my total to get the amount of just sales tax. 3339 - 3150 = $189. $189 is the total sales tax.
Do you sell retail items and/or passes? If so, please read on for instructions on how to collect sales tax on these.
Retail items
On the Setup>Retail page items such as T-shirts can be setup and then sold from the box office pages, or via your online pages. Ticket Add-ons such as meal items are setup on the Retail page as well.
- To collect sales tax on a retail item, I multiply the decimal version of the sales tax percentage by the cost of my retail item. I'm selling a mug for $8. So, I multiply .06 x 8 = 0.48. The price of the mug, with tax included, is $8.48.
- When it's tax time, I consult a Retail report to see the total sold. The report says my retail sales total is $1017.60. To get the amount of just the sales tax, I divide the total by 1 + the sales tax rate as a decimal, in my case that would be 1.06. 1017.60 ÷ 1.06 = 960. This is the amount of the retail items only. Now I'll subtract that amount from my total to get the amount of just sales tax. 1017.60 - 960 = $57.60.
For totals, I'll add this retail sales tax total to other sales tax totals. That would be: Tickets $147 + Retail $57.60 = $204.60
Please read on for more directions if your business sells Passes.
Passes
- To collect tax on passes I multiply the decimal equivalent of the sales tax percent by the amount I'm going to charge for the pass.
For example, I want to sell a Flex subscription pass for $60. The sales tax in my area is 6%, I'll multiply .06 x 60 = 3.60.
$3.60 is what I'll add to the pass price so I can collect sales tax. The final price of the pass is $63.60. - Since my client services representative sets up my passes for me, when I submit a pricing request during my new season setup, I'll let give my representative the pass price with sales tax included.
- I may want to advertise this to my patrons as well on the public pass sales page. If you'd like to do this, specify the message you'd like to have appear for your pass to your client services representative so they can put that in place for you.
- When it's tax time, I can consult a passes report to get the total pass sales amount. The report says my total pass sales is $2226. To get the amount of just the sales tax, I divide the total by 1 + the sales tax rate as a decimal, in my case that would be 1.06. 2226 ÷ 1.06 = 2100. This is the amount of the retail items only. Now, I'll subtract that amount from my total to get the amount of just sales tax. 2226 - 2100 = $126.
Total sales tax
To arrive at my final sales tax total, I'll add each type of item I sold (tickets, passes, retail) together to arrive at my final sales tax total.
In this example, that would be: Tickets $147 + Retail $57.60 + Passes $126 = $330.60
Questions about any step in this process? Submit a help desk request anytime. We're happy to help!