Reports → Sales Tax Report is the one report built for filing, and the only one that handles returns correctly. Use it, and nothing else, for a figure you are going to put on a return.
Produce the figure
- Open Reports and pick Sales Tax Report under Tax.
- Set the range to the period you are filing. This Month covers the month so far; use Custom for a closed month or a quarter.
- If you file per location, pick the location. Leave it on All locations to file for the whole company.
- Read the Summary block. Net tax is your figure.
- Click Print / Save PDF and keep the file with the return.
What each line means
Summary
| Line | What it is |
|---|---|
| Gross sales | Merchandise sold in the period, before tax |
| Non-taxable | The part of gross that no rate applied to |
| Taxable base | The part that a rate applied to |
| Total tax collected | Tax rung in the period |
| Refunds (this period) | Merchandise and tax handed back in the period |
| Net sales | Gross minus the refunded merchandise |
| Net tax | Total tax collected minus the refunded tax |
Tax collected by rate lists one row per rate that appears on the period's sales — its name, its percentage, the amount it was applied to, the tax it collected, and how many sales it appeared on. The tax column adds back up to Total tax collected.
Why refunds are right here and wrong everywhere else
A refund reduces this report in the period the refund happened, not in the period of the original sale. Refund a September sale in October and September's filed figure stays as it was, while October's shows the money back. That is what you want on a return — you file what you collected when you collected it, and claim the credit when you gave it back.
Every other report works the other way. A sale refunded in full vanishes from the period it was rung in, which quietly rewrites a month you have already filed, and a partial refund is not subtracted at all. That is why the sales reports are for running the shop and this one is for filing.
Two things to know about the figures
Stacked rates. When two rates apply to the same sale — a state rate and a city rate, say — that sale's taxable amount is counted under each of them. On a store with stacked rates, Taxable base is therefore larger than your real taxable sales and Non-taxable can read $0.00. Nothing on the report warns you about this, so know whether your store stacks rates before you quote those two lines.
Total tax collected and Net tax are unaffected — they are the sum of the tax actually recorded on each sale, and they are what you file.
Older sales. Sales rung before your account moved to multiple tax rates carry a single tax figure with no per-rate detail. Their tax is attributed to your default rate, and the report prints a note at the bottom saying so and naming that rate. The total is still exact; only the split between rates on those older sales is an attribution rather than a record.
Keep the paperwork
The PDF is generated on the server and is a real PDF file, not a screenshot. Save one per filing period alongside the return. Export CSV gives you the same figures for a spreadsheet.
There is no filing integration and nothing is submitted for you. This produces the number; you file it.