Licenses

Licenses enable authorities to group customers that share common attributes. For example, you may designate a customer who is an exporter in Ireland as a member of the Class 13a Trader group, which is subject to specific tax treatment.

In most cases, there is a specific document or relationship between the license holder and a tax authority that must be tracked and managed. Using the Licenses feature, you can manage the relationship of license types associated with a Determination Company, to individual licenses on a per-licensee basis.

You can also use Exemption Certificates to specify tax treatment. The primary difference between Licenses and Exemption Certificates is that Licenses influence authority rule selection, and calculation method. Exemptions let you configure rates, and many other rule attributes. Exemption certificates only enable full or partial exemption from tax for the transaction.

The Relationship Between License Types, Licenses, and Authorities

  • License Type: Defines a class of individual licenses, including effective date range, license number mask, temporary status, and other attributes. An individual license type is not specifically tied to an individual authority; but can be used by multiple authorities if those authorities agree to a common format. For more information, see License Types.
  • Individual License: A formal agreement between a specific Customer and Authority, usually represented by a physical document that often includes a license number. Each Customer may have one or more Licenses, which is always an instantiation of a License Type.

When a license is evaluated in a transaction, the Company that owns the Customer Group to which the license belongs, is searched for a matching license type. If no matching license type exists, the match fails and the license is not applied.

Licenses are configured on the Exempt Licenses page and can also be passed into the system in the Input XML in the <CUSTOMER_LICENSE> structure.

License Types are triggered by one or more Authorities using Rule Qualifiers that determine whether or not a particular rule should apply to a transaction.

Enabling Licenses in Determination

To enable licenses, you must:

  • Configure desired Customers.
  • Configure desired License Types.
  • Configure desired Licenses for your Customers.
  • Create the desired Authority Rules using Rule Qualifiers.

Users with the roles of License Manager, Sabrix System DBA, Super User, or Tax Data Provider can manage licenses and license types. Except for those who only have the License Manager role, those users can manage rules and rule qualifiers.

Calculation Notes

Licenses passed in with a transaction in the input XML affect transaction processing at the rule selection step. Once a candidate rule has been identified for the transaction that references specific License Types, the process determines whether the Customer has been associated with the specified License Type. If so, the rule is accepted. Otherwise, the process disregards the rule and proceeds with the next candidate, subject to other rule qualifiers.

Tax Determination Date is used to perform all date-related acceptance tests for Licenses and License Types.