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Authorities

Authorities overview

Authorities are government and sometimes private entities that assess and collect transaction taxes.

Authority example

The U.S. state of California collects a state sales/use tax, the Canadian province of British Columbia collects a Provincial Sales Tax, and the country of Spain collects the IVA (Value Added Tax). Determination content provides data for thousands of worldwide tax authorities. You can use these authorities to meet your calculation needs and add custom data to extend the data to meet your business requirements.
You can also create custom authorities to add authorities not provided in the product content, such as certain excise tax authorities.

The relationship of authorities to zones

Zones are geographical areas, each as small as a US Zip+4 postal code or as large as an entire country.
Each authority is associated with a single zone.
For example, the Santa Cruz Public Library and Transit Tax is associated with Santa Cruz County, California. When the transaction's processed, the product evaluates each of the authorities attached to the zones matching the address.
This ship to address: Santa Cruz, California, US, 95065-8462. This address can be represented in the product as:
<COUNTRY>UNITED STATES</COUNTRY>
<STATE>CALIFORNIA</STATE>
<CITY>SANTA CRUZ</CITY>
<POSTCODE>95065</POSTCODE>
<GEOCODE>8462</GEOCODE>
The product first generates a zone match based on the transaction data. It determines the COUNTY is also named SANTA CRUZ. Next it builds a list of authorities associated with each zone. The candidate authorities may or may not tax the transaction, based on other transaction data.
In this example, the candidate list is:
  • CA: SANTA CRUZ PUBLIC LIBRARY AND TRANSIT TAX (SZPL, SCMT), COUNTY SALES/USE TAX
  • CA: SANTA CRUZ, COUNTY SALES/USE TAX
  • CA: STATE SALES/USE TAX
  • US: UNITED STATES EXPORT
No other authorities are associated with this address; therefore, no other authorities can potentially tax at this address. However, this ship to address is only 1 of the addresses in the transaction, and the product generates a candidate authority list for each address found.

This article applies to:

  • Product: ONESOURCE Determination, ONESOURCE Indirect Tax
  • Subject: Authorities

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