Do you guys add the sales tax to your estimates or add during invoicing?
Have asked a bunch of clients and have had mixed responses from all. My thoughts are when you go to the store and look at an item on the shelf, the price is before tax so it should be expected. Have had maybe 3-4 agitated clients over this in the past but not many. Just received an email from a confused client and got me thinking maybe we should start adding it on the estimate. Thoughts?
I tell my customers it will be $xxx plus tax.
I assume you do not use a CRM to forward your estimates? My question is more so before forwarding our estimates should we have a line item showing our tax or atleast put into out T/S that it will be + tax?
No I donāt use a CRM, probably due to my Gen X upbringing. I text, call or meet in person.
I donāt think these 2 things are mutually exclusiveā¦ My head is spinning at the crazy automations I just built between our CRM and record keeping systems to motivate the team in our Slack channelā¦ Yep, an old guy just said that 
On topic, as far as I know most states donāt tax most services. Some even allow you a sales tax exemption on consumables directly related to the performance of said serviceā¦ Check your laws carefully (and watch out bc they love to change themā¦)
I always tell them that it will be ____ amount plus 5% sales tax.
The vast majority of my customers are elderly. I list my estimated price, then I list the price with the tax included. Clears up any confusion for them.
What does cause confusion is that cleaning has a sales and use tax, but painting doesnāt in my state. I list the items separately and explain it to the customers. I wonāt even discuss real vs. tangible personal property because that is lawyer gobblygook.
No sales tax on service in nc
80% of my estimates go out in an email with the 15% sales tax shown.
If quoting over the phone, I give the full price including tax, and say something along the lines of āthatāll be $500.25 taxes includedā. I word it that way to avoid confusion and head off any questions about if Iāll take cash and not charge taxes - a lot of the older crowd still ask though.
Kentucky has 6% sales tax on most servicesā¦ā¦we collect for them.
Thanks for the replies guys. YES we do collect and pay our sales tax (its a taxable service here) I was just unsure who includes the tax in their estimate and puts it in when converting from estimate to invoice!
I do add sales tax in estimates thatās the customers total cost for our servicesā¦
dcbrock, are you a one man company? I currently am and so is my brother (plumbing) and with just one person, the NO CRM works, in my opinion. With a team I couldnāt imagine it working.
Basically yes, āsole proprietorā LLC.
