TaxCloud
Connect your customers' TaxCloud accounts so your product can compute sales tax obligations for US transactions at the time of sale. Askel handles the credential, so your code never stores a TaxCloud API key.
What you can do
Calculate tax for a cart or transaction in real time
Send line items with quantity, price, and TIC (Taxability Information Code) to TaxCloud and receive a per-item tax amount before checkout. Covers all 50 US states.
Commit or void transactions after capture
Once a payment is captured, commit the transaction to TaxCloud so it appears in the customer's sales tax reports. If an order is cancelled, void the transaction to keep filings accurate.
Look up applicable TICs for your product categories
Query TaxCloud's TIC list to find the right taxability code for physical goods, digital products, or services before assigning them to your catalog items.
Retrieve filed and pending returns
Read the customer's return status and filing history so your product can show which periods are closed and which still need review, without requiring the customer to log into TaxCloud directly.
Verify an address before calculating tax
Call TaxCloud's address-verification endpoint to normalise a customer shipping address to a USPS standard form before running a tax calculation, reducing jurisdiction lookup errors.
Handle exempt customers and certificates
Submit exemption certificates for B2B customers and tag transactions as exempt when applicable. TaxCloud stores the certificate and applies it automatically to future transactions.
Calculating and recording sales tax during customer checkout
You sell a B2B e-commerce platform. A new customer, Meridian Supply Co., ships physical goods to buyers across 30 states. They are registered for sales tax in each state and use TaxCloud to track obligations and file returns. Your product needs to show the correct tax at checkout and commit the transaction to TaxCloud when the order is placed.
- 1
Customer connects TaxCloud
Meridian's tax manager opens your product's settings, pastes their TaxCloud API Login ID and API Key, and clicks Connect. Askel validates the credentials against the TaxCloud v3 API before saving them.
- 2
Assign TICs to catalog items
Askel reads the TaxCloud TIC list and your product's catalog admin assigns a TIC to each product category. Industrial hardware maps to TIC 10005; packaging materials map to TIC 10010.
- 3
Calculate tax at checkout
When a buyer confirms their cart, your product sends the line items, origin address, and destination address to Askel. Askel calls TaxCloud's Lookup endpoint and returns the tax amount per line item within a few hundred milliseconds.
- 4
Display and confirm
Your product shows the tax breakdown to the buyer. When the buyer clicks Place Order and payment is captured, your product sends a commit request to Askel, which records the transaction in TaxCloud's ledger.
- 5
Meridian reviews their return
At month end, Meridian's tax manager opens TaxCloud directly, sees all committed transactions, and files the return per state. Your product can also read the return status via Askel and display a filing calendar inside your dashboard.
API token
The customer retrieves their API Login ID and API Key from the TaxCloud dashboard. They paste both values into Askel once. Askel sends them as credentials on every request to api.v3.taxcloud.com; neither value is forwarded to your servers.
How Askel sits between your product and the customer's system
FAQ for TaxCloud
Does TaxCloud cover all US states?+
What is a TIC and do we need to set one for every product?+
Can we void a transaction after it has been committed?+
Does this work for marketplace sellers with multiple merchants?+
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