Account management

Ivan_G · ‎March 25, 2025

The thorough explanation you've shared regarding your sales tax calculation problem is indeed helpful, Justine. Let's break down how you can handle this situation.

Beforehand, did you encounter an error notification when generating an invoice? Any sales tax-related notifications appear at the top portion of an invoice.

To confirm, I recommend creating a dummy invoice to identify the root cause of the issue. Please know that if QuickBooks isn't able to validate the customer's shipping address, your sales tax will be automatically calculated based on your company's address (Ship From).

If you received the We can't validate this shipping address, so we've based the sales tax calculations on your business address notification, double-check the customer's Ship To address. Ensure you've saved the accurate location to let QuickBooks calculate the sales tax correctly.

On the other hand, if you encountered the Can't Calculate sales tax error, you'll have to click the Set up new sales tax agency link to resolve this matter:

After that, follow the on-screen process to start collecting taxes based on the customer's location. Furthermore, it's essential to note that once you modify the shipping information or set up a tax agency for a specific address, you'll also have to edit your existing transactions to apply the changes.

However, if the issue persists, let's verify if this problem is caused by exercise data build-up, as this could affect the platform's performance. To do so, kindly open your account using a private browser.

Here's how:

Mozilla Firefox: Ctrl + Shift + P
Microsoft Edge: Ctrl + Shift + N
Google Chrome: Ctrl + Shift + N
Safari: Command + Shift + N

If the sales tax is accurately calculated when using the private session, revert to your regular browser and clear its cache and cookies. Initiating this could help QuickBooks reestablish its full functionality. When the problem continues, consider using another supported browser.

Alternatively, you can copy the Ship To information and paste it on the Ship From address to narrow down the result.

Meanwhile, turning off the Shipping feature does not directly affect your books and will only apply to future transactions. Still, it would be best to seek advice from an accounting professional to gather more insights about sales tax management.

Finally, I've included some articles you might find handy once you need to modify your sales forms, generate sales tax adjustments, or collect payments from your customers:

Please let us know if you've received a different error code from what I mentioned above or if you have other questions about your sales taxes. Our team is always here for you.