Built-in vs custom tax rates
Tax rates in Sliptree come in two flavours: built-in rates that are pre-seeded for you, and custom rates that you add yourself. They behave the same way on documents — the distinction mostly matters when you're managing the rates themselves.
Built-in rates
When you first create a business, Sliptree pre-populates your Taxes list with the standard rates that were applicable in your country at the time. This is a one-time setup — Sliptree does not keep these rates up to date for individual accounts. If an official rate changes later, it's up to you to add the new rate (see below).
The only rate Sliptree treats as truly built-in is the tax-exempt rate, which can't be deleted because Sliptree uses it as a fallback whenever taxes are switched off entirely. The standard VAT rates and zero/export rate pre-populated for your country are seeded for convenience — you can rename, deactivate, or delete them like any custom rate.
Custom rates
If you need a rate that isn't pre-seeded — a niche tax, a placeholder for a foreign customer's local VAT, a new official rate — click Add tax rate in Business settings → Taxes. Set the name, percentage, and an optional internal ID.
Custom rates can be fully edited and deleted, but only while they're not in use yet. Once a custom rate has been applied to an invoice, estimate, or product, it locks to preserve the historical record — see Why a tax rate, product, or customer can't be deleted.
When an official rate changes
Don't edit the existing rate. Once a rate has been used on a document, editing the percentage would silently rewrite history.
Instead:
- Add the new rate as a separate entry.
- Optionally deactivate the old rate so it stops appearing in selectors. Historical documents keep displaying it.
- If you want your products to bill at the new rate going forward, update their tax rate — either one by one in the product editor, or in bulk from the products list. See Updating the tax rate on your products.
For the full management workflow — adding, editing, deactivating — see Managing tax rates.