QuickBooks Tip – Tracking Two Different Sales Tax Amounts

A customer wrote to ask:

In addition to needing to charge a fixed percentage (6%) of Sales Tax to each customer, I am also required to charge a 1 1/2% Discretionary Tax on the first $5,000.00 of each job/project/total Estimate.  How do I accomplish this using QuickBooks?

For the most part, QuickBooks does a good job of tracking taxable and non-taxable sales — even taxable and non-taxable items on the same invoice.  However, when it comes to tracking sales tax with a fixed rate on a fixed dollar amount of an entire sale — in addition to sales tax on the entire sale……well it fails miserably and causes a lot of frustration for QuickBooks users who encounter a situation of this nature.

Try this workaround from the March 2010 edition of the QuickBooks for Contractors Newsletter.