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Last amended: 2026-08-13 Audience: product, accounting, developer

ADR 0034: Sales Tax Accounting and Remittance Boundary

Context

BooksPlus accepts summarized sales accounting from operational systems. Those systems originate the sale and normally hold the transaction, customer, product, location, exemption, marketplace, and delivery facts used to determine sales or seller use tax.

Tax calculation, statutory liability, filing responsibility, and payment are different questions. A tax provider may calculate or file for a seller without becoming the statutory liability owner. A marketplace facilitator may instead be required to collect and remit tax for marketplace sales when the applicable law and marketplace evidence establish that responsibility.

BooksPlus must account for seller-owned sales tax and preserve enough control evidence to support reconciliation and remittance. It must do so without becoming a nationwide transaction-tax engine or an operational invoicing, filing, or payment-execution system.

Decision

For an imported sale, BooksPlus accepts the tax determination supplied by the originating operational system, marketplace, reviewed user source, or its connected tax provider. BooksPlus validates accepted data for completeness, identity, reconciliation, and accounting consistency. It does not silently recalculate or replace the upstream determination.

Every accepted tax result must identify or resolve from reviewed, effective-dated configuration:

  • calculation source: operational_system, external_tax_provider, marketplace_facilitator, or user_entered;
  • liability owner: seller, marketplace_facilitator, or other_statutory_collector; and
  • compliance agent: seller, operational_system, external_tax_provider, or marketplace_facilitator.

Transaction origination identifies the source of the accepted determination; it does not by itself establish legal responsibility. Liability-owner and compliance-agent treatment must be supported by the applicable jurisdiction, registration, effective dates, marketplace certification or agreement, and other evidence required by the governing contract. An external provider acting for the seller does not by that fact change seller-owned liability.

Seller-owned and facilitator-remitted tax have different accounting

Seller-owned sales tax is credited to the reviewed account assigned tax.sales_tax_payable as part of the accepted Sales and Receivables posting. The sale amount, tax amount, receivable or settlement amount, and source control totals must reconcile exactly before posting.

Tax collected and remitted by a marketplace facilitator or another statutory collector does not create a seller Sales Tax Payable balance when reviewed evidence establishes that responsibility. BooksPlus may preserve that tax as non-ledger return-support and audit information when it is needed to explain gross sales, marketplace exclusions, or source settlement totals.

The canonical Sales Tax Accounting and Remittance Contract defines the exact facilitator-remitted fact and Sales preparation rule. A fact remains held when its ownership components, capability profile, evidence, or control totals do not satisfy that contract; it must never be forced through the seller-owned payable template. One tax amount must never be both a seller liability and facilitator-remitted support information.

Imported tax capability controls permitted use

Each source profile declares the highest sales-tax capability supported by its reviewed data and evidence.

accounting_summary requires, at minimum:

  • company, source system, and stable source batch or event identity;
  • source transaction-date range, posting date or period, and company currency;
  • gross sales, net sales, and tax totals as applicable;
  • calculation source and liability owner;
  • change type and original-event relationship when applicable; and
  • source and BooksPlus control totals.

This capability supports seller-liability posting and source-to-ledger reconciliation. It is insufficient for BooksPlus jurisdictional return support.

filing_summary additionally requires, as applicable:

  • tax agency, registration, filing jurisdiction, and official jurisdiction code;
  • tax type and filing period;
  • gross, taxable, nontaxable or exempt, and marketplace-facilitated sales;
  • tax rate or summarized rate components and tax amount;
  • reporting location and cash- or accrual-reporting basis;
  • adjustments, credits, refunds, and their original relationships; and
  • exact reconciliation to included posted Sales facts and seller-owned Sales Tax Payable activity.

This capability supports reviewed jurisdictional workpapers and remittance control. A source must not be presented as eligible for filing support beyond the data and evidence it supplies. Transaction-level tax detail may be retained as evidence, but it is not required for the initial filing-summary boundary and does not create an operational tax subledger.

BooksPlus controls return support and remittance completion

For seller-owned tax with filing_summary capability, BooksPlus supports a reviewed control record that identifies:

  • company legal entity, registration, agency, jurisdiction, and filing period;
  • exact included source batches and posted Sales accounting facts;
  • seller-owned liability, marketplace or statutory-collector exclusions, and adjustments;
  • reconciliation to the applicable Sales Tax Payable activity and balance;
  • preparation, review, and protected approval evidence;
  • externally filed return evidence and confirmation;
  • approved remittance amount and due date;
  • the posted Accounting entry that settles the liability;
  • external payment confirmation and later bank-statement match; and
  • amendment or correction relationships.

Return-support records and workpapers are control evidence, not journal entries, an operational tax subledger, or formal financial-report truth. Amounts used for return support derive from posted ledger truth and the exact linked accepted tax facts. Unposted batches, provisional calculations, quotes, and draft operational invoices are not return amount truth.

BooksPlus requires explicit authorized-user approval before recording a return as approved for external filing or a remittance as approved for external payment. BooksPlus may record externally completed filing and payment status, but the initial release does not transmit a return or initiate a payment.

The remittance accounting entry debits the applicable seller-owned Sales Tax Payable account and credits the reviewed bank or cash account through central Accounting. It must reference the approved return-support record and active Source Document evidence. A later Banking and Finance statement match is non-posting and links the bank result to the already posted remittance entry.

Corrections, periods, and close remain controlled

Imported tax facts preserve stable source identity, idempotency, original determination, source dates, posting dates, filing periods, control totals, and explicit replacement, reversal, refund, or adjustment relationships. Conflicting reuse must not overwrite accepted meaning.

Posted accounting errors use the canonical Corrections workflow. A late source change or filed-return amendment preserves its relationship to the original tax fact, return-support record, posted entry, and filing evidence. It does not silently rewrite the original sale, return, or remittance.

Period Close must expose unresolved seller-owned sales-tax reconciliation, unsupported filing eligibility, missing required return evidence, and unresolved approved-remittance evidence through registered versioned checks. The Sales Tax contract and Close Run Contract must define exact check codes, severity, waiver behavior, and period applicability before implementation. Close never creates a tax accrual, return, or remittance entry.

Initial-release exclusions

This decision does not add:

  • BooksPlus-native sales orders, invoices, credit memos, checkout, or payment processing;
  • taxability, nexus, registration, sourcing, boundary, rate, holiday, or exemption determination;
  • automatic recomputation of imported tax;
  • direct tax-return filing, filing-service transmission, or tax-payment initiation;
  • a nationwide tax engine or external tax-provider transaction API;
  • an operational sales-tax subledger or transaction-level return audit engine;
  • consumer use tax on purchases, direct-pay permits, VAT/GST, excise tax, payroll tax, income tax, franchise tax, or property tax; or
  • general compliance management outside this bounded seller-owned sales-tax control.

The separately deployable Dolibarr operational package may originate invoices, but that does not make BooksPlus the operational invoicing or tax-calculation system. Any future native tax calculation, automated filing, payment initiation, or provider adapter requires separately accepted truth and contracts.

Implementation gate

The canonical Sales Tax Accounting and Remittance Contract now satisfies this decision's truth gate. It defines:

  • control-record identity, state, currentness, and protected actions;
  • capability-profile, tax-result, jurisdiction, registration, period, and evidence fields;
  • seller-owned and facilitator-remitted preparation rules;
  • exact source-to-fact, fact-to-ledger, return-to-liability, and remittance-to-bank reconciliation;
  • persistence, replay, concurrency, interruption recovery, company isolation, backup, and restore behavior;
  • correction and amendment relationships;
  • Close checks and Reporting boundaries; and
  • ordinary and protected audit events without sensitive payment credentials.

The accepted contract amendments align Sales and Receivables, Banking and Finance, Close Run, Reporting, Source Documents, protected action, role and permission, audit, and backup ownership. Application implementation remains separately gated: neither this ADR nor the contract by itself makes the current legacy tax-amount model conformant or authorizes unsupported UI, persistence, posting, filing transmission, payment initiation, or provider behavior.

Consequences

  • BooksPlus can support sales-tax remittance control without calculating tax or executing the return and payment.
  • Seller-owned tax remains traceable from source determination through ledger, return support, remittance entry, evidence, and bank match.
  • Marketplace tax cannot silently become a seller payable merely because it appears in a settlement report.
  • Accounting-only sources remain usable without being overstated as filing- ready.
  • Jurisdictional support depends on the completeness and quality of upstream data and reviewed configuration.
  • New contracts and implementation slices are required before BooksPlus 1.0 is complete against this expanded boundary.

Acceptance record

Accepted with these confirmations:

  • BooksPlus accepts and controls upstream tax determinations; it does not silently recompute them.
  • Calculation source, liability owner, and compliance agent are distinct.
  • Seller-owned tax posts to Sales Tax Payable; supported facilitator-remitted tax does not.
  • accounting_summary supports ledger accounting but not jurisdictional return support.
  • filing_summary supports reviewed workpapers, reconciliation, external filing evidence, and remittance completion control.
  • Filing transmission and payment initiation remain external and require explicit authorized-user action outside BooksPlus.
  • Native invoicing and tax determination remain outside BooksPlus 1.0.
  • The canonical contract and dependent truth amendments are accepted.
  • Implementation remains split by Sales preparation, return persistence, remittance/Finance integration, Close integration, and desktop/UAT boundaries.
  • 0020-initial-release-scope-and-financial-workflow-taxonomy.md
  • 0021-income-accounting-facts-and-templates.md
  • 0022-reviewable-accounting-file-intake.md
  • 0024-operational-summary-workflow-boundaries-and-purchasing-facts.md
  • 0029-cross-workflow-accounting-event-identity.md
  • 0033-company-accounting-time-and-period-cutoffs.md
  • ../../accounting/source-documents.md
  • ../../accounting/posting-and-reversal.md
  • ../../accounting/close.md
  • ../../contracts/account-role.contract.md
  • ../../contracts/summary-accounting-batch.contract.md
  • ../../contracts/banking-and-finance-summary-fact.contract.md
  • ../../contracts/close-run.contract.md
  • ../../contracts/reporting.contract.md
  • ../../contracts/sales-tax-accounting-and-remittance.contract.md

Authoritative references