If you service areas that require you to collect sales tax, GST, or HST, you can set up your PetPocketbook account so tax is automatically added to your clients’ invoices! You can keep track of the tax you collect right from the Taxes tab of our Reports dashboard too, making tax season a little less stressful.
Note: PetPocketbook does not provide tax or legal advice. Tax laws vary by state, county, and city, so we recommend checking with your accountant or local tax authority if you’re unsure what applies to your business.
Setting up your tax rates
In the Client billing tab of your Settings, tap “add sales tax”.
In the pop-up window, enter the name of the tax and the tax rate. We recommend using the name of the state, county, or locale that requires the tax, especially if you work across multiple areas with different tax rates. By default, we’ll auto-fill the state from your company profile as the tax name.
Can I have multiple tax rates?
Yes! If you have clients in different areas, you can set up as many tax rates as you need from your Settings.
Your first tax rate is automatically set as the default for all clients. If you'd like to change your default tax rate, just turn on the “set as default” toggle when adding or editing a rate.
For example, if you service both New York City and New Jersey, you can create separate tax rates for each area. If NYC is your default tax rate, all clients will automatically use that rate unless you customize it for a specific family.
How do I change a client’s tax rate?
Let’s say your client Ruby lives in New Jersey and receives services there, but your default tax rate is NYC. You’ll want to update her family’s tax rate:
Go to the Clients tab
Open Ruby’s family profile
Select the Billing tab
Use the tax rate dropdown to select the New Jersey tax rate
Once selected, any current drafts and all future invoices for that family will automatically use the updated tax rate.
Why might some pets not be charged sales tax?
If your business is based in the United States and you have sales tax enabled, pets marked as service animals in their pet profile will automatically be excluded from sales tax.
This means you may occasionally notice one pet in a family being taxed while another is not. Sales tax exemptions are applied at the pet level, not the family level.
To mark a pet as a service animal, head to the client's family profile, select the applicable pet, tap edit, and turn on the service animal toggle. Once enabled, PetPocketbook will automatically stop applying sales tax for that pet on future invoices.
If a specific client family is tax-exempt for another reason, you can also disable taxes for the entire family. Just head to the client's family profile, go to the Billing tab and toggle off apply sales tax. When this setting is turned off, no sales tax will be added to invoices for that family, regardless of the pets or services included.
Please note that the automatic service animal exemption currently only applies to US-based businesses using sales tax. Businesses using GST or other regional taxes, including businesses in Canada and Australia, will still have taxes applied normally.
Because tax laws and exemptions can vary by region, we recommend confirming requirements with your accountant or local tax authority if you’re unsure.
Can I choose which services are taxable?
Yes! When adding or editing services, you can choose which services are taxable by toggling on the option to apply sales tax.
Once enabled, PetPocketbook will automatically apply:
Your default tax rate, or
The client’s customized tax rate, if one has been selected
That way, you can easily keep taxable and non-taxable services organized without extra manual work.