Custom Authorities

Using ONESOURCE Indirect Tax Determination, you can manage your own custom authorities to handle transaction tax scenarios that are industry- or company-specific. Consider the following scenarios:

  • The California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB) is mandated to regulate and manage waste tires within the state of California. In 2005, it assessed a per-tire fee of $1.75 to fund various mitigation programs. If your business sells tires in California, this program affects your business processes from invoicing/collection to reporting to audit.
  • All US states assess excise taxes related to the selling of gasoline. Many also simultaneously assess fees dedicated to a specific purpose. For example, in 2005 Mississippi applied both an 18 cent-per-gallon excise tax and a 0.4 cent-per-gallon environmental fee to gasoline sales. If your business sells gasoline anywhere in the United States, these taxes must be accounted for in your sales, report, and audit business processes.

You can configure Determination to handle these taxes using the Custom Authorities feature.

Custom authorities are owned and managed by a Custom Data Provider. (For more information, see Company Tax Preferences). Your company can use custom authority data if it serves as its own Custom Data Provider or inherits Custom Data Provider data from another Determination company.

If you configure a Custom Authority and want to associate Material Sets and Products to it, those Material Sets and Products must be owned by the same Determination Custom Data Provider Company.

A Custom Authorities Manager role is required to manage custom authorities. For more information, see Roles and Permissions.

Button: view the Custom Authorities demo

Create and use a Custom Authority

  1. Navigate to the Search Authorities page and create the authority:
    • Search for and select the desired template authority.
    • Copy and name the authority as desired. Template authorities are provided by ONESOURCE Indirect Tax Research to match many common tax scenarios. For example, you might create a California Excise authority (CA - Excise) based on the Template US Ship To template authority.
  2. On the Edit Authorities page, add information about the authority such as Official Name and Authority Type. For example, the CA - Excise authority could have an Official Name of California State Board of Equalization and an Authority Type of State Sales/Use.
  3. Specify the locations where the authority applies:
    • Navigate to the Zone Authorities page.
    • Add information about the authority such as Official Name and Authority Type. For example, CA - Excise would be attached to the authority California.
  4. Navigate back to the Authority pages:
    • Create desired rates, fees, and rules.
    • Create authority-specific messages.
    • Modify the values of authority options inherited from the template authority, if desired.
    • Perform other extended authority configuration.
  5. If the tax calculation of another authority is dependent on your custom authority, you will need to:
    • Set up a Contributing Authority Relationship on the Contributing Authorities Configuration page for the authority which has the dependency. For more information about specifying a relationship between authorities where the taxable basis of one authority depends on a previous tax calculation of one or more other authorities, see Contributing Authorities.
    • In addition, any calculation methods specified by associated rules for that authority will need to be modified to one of the contributing authorities methods. For example, if CA - State Sales/Use Tax depends on the tax calculation of CA - Excise when processing a rule for the product Tires, the calculation method for that rule must be changed to Tax on Gross and Contributing Authorities.