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Calculating Shipping, Handling, 

and Tax

You can set up your PayPal account to automatically calculate and charge shipping and sales 

tax (also called  value added tax ).

Getting Started

To view or modify your sales tax and shipping charges:

1. Log in to your PayPal account at 

https://www.paypal.com

.

2. Click the Profile subtab of the My Account tab.

3. Click the Sales Tax or the Shipping Calculation link in the Selling Preferences column.

Sales or Value Added Tax Collection

You can charge your customers tax by choosing a Country (such as, United Kingdom) or State 

(such as, California) from the Country and U.S. State drop down menus, and entering your 

Tax Rate for that state in the Tax Rate field. All your customers who reside in the country or 

state you select are automatically charged the tax rate you choose. You can specify a different 

tax rate for each U.S. state and any of the listed countries. 

There are radio buttons that allow you to apply tax to an item only, or to an item and any 

shipping and handling costs, as you desire.

Click Save to save your changes. 

N

O T E

:

If you are entering the rate for a U.S. state, ensure that the Country drop down menu is 

set to United States.

Overriding Tax Setting Per Transaction

The tax variable is an optional transaction based tax override variable with which you can set 

a flat tax amount on a single transaction regardless of the buyer's location. 

For more information about this and other variables, see 

Appendix A,  HTML Samples and 

Buy Now, Donations, and Shopping Cart Variables

.  

Website Payments Standard Checkout Integration Guide

August, 2005

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