To make a Stripe invoice total equal the listed price, set the tax behavior to inclusive. Stripe documents two places for it: a default in your Tax settings under Include tax in prices, and a setting on each price. An inclusive price of 5.00 USD costs the customer 5.00 USD. If CereTax calculates your tax, you also turn on the Tax Inclusive Items setting in CereTax and add IsTaxInclusive=true to the product's metadata in Stripe. Then finalize an invoice and compare its total with the listed price.
This page is for billing and finance leads who invoice through Stripe Billing. Step 1 covers Stripe's tax behavior settings. Steps 2 and 3 cover the two settings our connector needs: the Tax Inclusive Items setting in CereTax and the IsTaxInclusive key on the product in Stripe. Step 4 covers the invoice check. To connect Stripe to CereTax, follow the steps on our Stripe integration page: choose the CereTax for Stripe Billing app, pick a sandbox or live account, enter your license key, and validate the connection.
This page covers Stripe Billing invoices. It does not cover Checkout or Payment Links, VAT or GST, or whether a state allows tax-included prices or requires tax stated separately.
For Stripe Tax, Stripe requires a tax behavior on each price, or a default tax behavior in the Tax settings. Choose the default or the per-price setting.
Set the default. In the Tax settings, Include tax in prices offers three options: Automatic, Inclusive, and Exclusive. Automatic is exclusive for USD and CAD and inclusive for all other currencies, so a price in US dollars needs Inclusive selected. The default applies to every price that has no tax behavior defined.
Set it per price. Stripe sets tax behavior per price, and a tax behavior on one price overrides the default. For a one-off line item on an invoice, pick the behavior in the Invoice Editor from the Include tax in price drop-down menu. For a price on a product, open the Products page, click Add a price (or Add another price if the product already has one), and select the behavior from the Tax behavior drop-down menu.
Plan for the lock. Stripe does not let you change a price's tax behavior after it is set to inclusive or exclusive. To change it, create a new price with the behavior you want and archive the old price. Set the behavior on a new price before you sell with it.
Both CereTax steps are required: the Tax Inclusive Items setting and the IsTaxInclusive key on the product.
IsTaxInclusive in the Key field and true in the Value field.The value is the string true. Add IsTaxInclusive=true to the metadata for each product line.
One rule affects invoices that hold more than one product. If any line item on an invoice is marked tax-inclusive, our connector marks every line item on that invoice tax-inclusive.
If CereTax calculates your tax, our connector sends an invoice to CereTax as a Quote when the invoice is created, and as Posted when you finalize it. Run this check in a sandbox account first. We support sandbox and live accounts. Finalize an invoice, then open it and look at the line totals:
For the customer's view, Stripe's hosted invoice page and invoice emails show tax-inclusive prices when inclusive tax applies. The invoice PDF includes inclusive tax in line item prices by default, and a Stripe invoice setting can switch the PDF to exclude tax.
To connect Stripe Billing to CereTax, see CereTax for Stripe Billing.
