Tax rates are workspace-wide. Set them up once and they're available to apply to any built quote in your Sales Hub. They're also snapshotted onto each quote you apply them to, so historical proposals are protected from later edits.
Where to set them up
Open your manage menu, then Settings → Sales → Tax rates. Full path: /manage/your-company/settings/sales/taxes. Only Owners and Admins can edit tax rates.
Canadian preset
Click the Add Canadian presets button and we'll seed the standard set in one click. The set covers the federal tax + every province with an HST or PST:
- GST (5%) — federal Goods and Services Tax
- BC PST (7%)
- SK PST (6%)
- MB RST (7%)
- QC QST (9.975%)
- ON HST (13%)
- NB HST (15%)
- NS HST (15%)
- PE HST (15%)
- NL HST (15%)
Every preset rate is tagged as Canadian dollars (CAD). When you apply taxes to a quote, the picker only shows rates whose currency matches the quote's currency, so a USD quote can't accidentally have CAD GST applied.
Australian preset
Click Add Australian presets for the GST rate at 10%. Tagged as AUD.
We have ~1,000 Australian companies
If your business operates across both Canada and Australia (we have customers running cross-Pacific operations), add both preset sets. The picker will show the right ones based on the currency of each quote.
Why no US preset?
We deliberately don't ship a US sales tax preset. American sales tax is genuinely tricky — every state has its own rate, plus county and city additions on top, plus rules about labour vs materials in construction (lump-sum contracts vs separated, real-property-improvement exemptions, oilfield direct-production-use exemptions, and more).
A preset that just said “TX 6.25%” would be technically the state base rate but practically misleading — a contractor invoicing it as-is could under-charge a customer and end up absorbing the audit liability. We'd rather have you add the right rate manually with your accountant than ship a wrong default with our name on it.
What to do as a US contractor
Add custom rates for whichever states / counties / cities you actually invoice in. Your accountant or bookkeeper can tell you exactly which combination applies for the type of work you do. Once added, they work the same as any preset — apply per quote with one click.
Adding a custom tax rate
Click + Add tax rate
Top of the Tax rates page.
Name it
Use the name you want to appear on the quote PDF — “California State Tax”, “WA B&O 1.5%”, “VAT 20%”, whatever you'd write on a paper invoice. Don't include the percentage in the name — the chip in the editor adds it automatically.
Enter the rate
As a percentage (5, 9.975, 20). We support up to 5 decimal places — Quebec QST at 9.975% works, very-precise local rates work.
Pick a currency
Set this if the rate only applies to one currency (e.g. only on CAD quotes). Leave blank for “any currency” — useful for VAT-style rates that travel with the customer regardless.
Save
The rate is now available to apply on any quote in your workspace.
Editing or archiving a rate
Click the rate row to edit. You can rename it or change the percentage. Click Archive to retire a rate — archived rates don't appear in the picker on new quotes, but they're untouched on quotes that already have them applied.
Already-sent quotes never silently change
When you apply a rate to a quote, we freeze the rate's name and percentage onto the quote at that moment. Renaming the rate, changing its percentage, or archiving it later does NOT mutate quotes that already use it. Each historical proposal preserves the exact rate it was sent with.
Was this article helpful?
Need more help? Contact support
Related articles
Building a quote line by line
How to add line items, apply tax rates, and turn an empty quote into a polished PDF you can send to a customer.
Two ways to quote — built quotes vs uploaded PDFs
Pick the quote style that fits the job. Build line by line for clean repeatable work, or upload a PDF you've already prepared in your own template.