Taxes (GST / VAT / Sales Tax)

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What Bella’s tax handling does

If your business is registered for tax, Bella can capture the tax component on every sale, show it on the client’s receipt as a proper tax invoice, and total it up for you in a Tax Collected report — so filing your BAS, VAT return or sales-tax return is a matter of reading the figures off one screen rather than reconciling by hand. It works in any country. You set a single business-wide rate and a tax label (GST, VAT, Sales Tax, or just Tax) — and Bella suggests sensible defaults for both based on the country your location is in, so most businesses only confirm what’s already filled in. Prices are tax-inclusive in this release (tax-on-top pricing is coming soon — see below). Tax settings live on each location, so a business running an Australian GST site and a UK VAT site from one account gets the right label, rate and pricing basis on each — they don’t have to match.

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Registering your business for tax

1. Go to Settings → Tax
2. Switch on My business is registered for tax
3. Confirm or adjust the tax label and rate (see below — pricing stays tax-inclusive, see “Tax-inclusive pricing” below)
4. Review the change summary, then click Apply

Because Bella reads your location’s country, the tax label and rate arrive pre-filled — for example an Australian location suggests GST at 10%; a UK location suggests VAT at 20%. Every suggestion is editable — they’re a starting point, never a rule. Pricing is tax-inclusive in every country for now (see below).

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Tax label

The label is what your clients see on their receipt and what the report is headed with — GST, VAT, Sales Tax, or Tax. Pick the term used in your market.

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Rate

A single business-wide percentage — for example 10 for 10% GST or 20 for 20% VAT. A rate of 0% is allowed for zero-rated regimes. You can’t register with a blank or negative rate.

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Tax-inclusive pricing

Bella uses tax-inclusive pricing (the norm in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the EU) — the tax is already within the prices you’ve set. A $110 service at 10$10 of GST; the client still pays $110. Bella works out the tax component and shows it on the receipt without changing what the client pays.

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Adding your registration number to receipts

Add your ABN, VAT number, GST number or local business/tax number in the registration number field on the same tax settings screen. Every tax invoice from then on shows it in the header, labelled for your country — an Australian business’s prints as ABN 12 345 678 901, a UK business’s as VAT Reg No. GB123456789. The number is frozen onto each sale at checkout, so historic receipts keep the number that was current when they were issued.

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Marking a service or product as exempt

When your business is registered, every service and product is taxable by default. To mark one exempt:

1. Open the service or product and find the Taxable toggle (it only appears once your business is registered)
2. Switch it off to make that item tax-free

From then on that item’s line carries no tax on any future sale, and it’s counted as an exempt sale in the report. Everything else stays taxable unless you say otherwise.

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What the receipt and tax invoice show

Once your business is registered, the client’s receipt becomes a tax invoice. See Receipts & invoices for the full picture of how receipts are sent, printed and saved — with tax switched on, the same receipt also shows:

• A “Tax Invoice” heading, with your registration number beneath it
• A tax line showing the exact tax amount within the total — for example “Includes GST — $16.36"* in the totals block (the emailed receipt words it as *"Total price includes GST$16.36”; both carry the amount)
• On a mixed sale only, an asterisk (*) beside each taxable line (with an ”* includes GST” footnote) so tax-free items are easy to tell apart — following the convention tax authorities expect when an invoice combines taxable and tax-free items. A fully-taxable invoice needs no per-line marks: the tax line covers it
• The client’s name and billing address (when they have an address on file), plus each line’s team member and any add-ons, itemised

The tax figures are captured on the sale at checkout — so a receipt always reflects the rate and label that were in place when the sale happened. Changing your rate later only affects new sales; receipts already issued are never rewritten.

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The Tax Collected report

Insights → Reports → Tax Collected gives you, for any period you choose, everything you need to file:

• Taxable sales — the total sales that carried tax
• Exempt sales — sales of tax-free items
• Tax collected — the tax component of your taxable sales
• Tax refunded — tax reversed on refunds in the period
• Net tax — tax collected less tax refunded, i.e. the amount to remit

Use it to complete your BAS (Australia), your VAT return (UK / EU), or your sales-tax return (US) — the figures line up with the boxes those returns ask for. Refunds are netted automatically, so the report always reflects what you actually owe. See Reports for how date ranges, totals and CSV export work across every report.

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How tax is treated across Bella

Bella follows the correct tax treatment for each kind of transaction, so you don’t have to think about the edge cases:

• Tips are never taxed. A tip is a voluntary gratuity, not part of the supply, so it’s kept out of the taxable total and never appears on the tax line — the correct treatment worldwide.
• Gift cards are taxed at redemption, not at sale. Selling a gift card takes no tax (it’s a dollar instrument of unknown tax character); the tax lands when the card is redeemed against a taxable service or product. That means a gift card is never double-taxed.
• Packages are taxed at the point of sale. When a client later redeems a package session, it covers the service line in full, so no further tax is charged — the tax was already accounted for when the package was bought.
• Deposits are taxed once, at final checkout. A deposit is just a payment towards the final bill, so the whole sale’s tax is worked out when the appointment is checked out — never twice.
• Membership fees are taxed and included in the report, so recurring plan revenue is accounted for alongside your other taxable sales.
• A card processing surcharge follows the supply. When a sale carries taxable lines, the surcharge is taxed too and appears in the report; on a fully exempt sale it isn’t taxed.
• Discounts reduce the taxable amount. Tax is worked out on the discounted price, and a discount that applies across the whole sale is shared fairly between the taxable and exempt parts.

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Good to know

• Nothing is applied until you register. An unregistered business behaves exactly as before — no tax anywhere.
• Everything is captured per sale. Rate, label, pricing basis and the tax amount are frozen onto each sale at checkout, so changing a setting never rewrites past sales or past receipts.
• Tax is always in your location’s currency and shown with your currency’s formatting — never a hardcoded symbol.
• It’s available on every plan — tax handling is compliance groundwork, not a paid add-on.

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FAQs

Q: Do I have to turn tax on? A: No. If your business isn’t registered for tax, leave it off and nothing changes. Switch it on only when you’re registered and ready to capture tax. Q: Can each of my locations have a different tax setup? A: Yes. Tax settings live on each location, so an Australian GST location and a UK VAT location in the same account each use their own label, rate and pricing basis independently. Q: Can I change my rate later? A: Yes. A new rate applies to sales made from that point on. Receipts and the Tax Collected report for earlier sales keep the rate that was in place when they happened. Q: Is a tip taxed? A: No. Tips are voluntary and are always kept out of the taxable total and off the tax line. Q: When is a gift card taxed? A: At redemption, not at sale — so it’s never taxed twice. Q: Why don’t older sales show in the Tax Collected report? A: Only sales made while your business was registered carry tax, so sales from before you switched tax on aren’t included.

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Permissions

Editing tax settings requires the Manage settings permission. Viewing the Tax Collected report requires the Reports → View all permission. Team members without these won’t see the Tax section or the report.