# Taxation

## Legal environments, tax environments and tax codes in Mews

Each enterprise (i.e. property) in Mews is created with a legal and tax environment corresponding to the region in which it is located. This cannot be changed once the enterprise has been created in the system.

Each tax environment contains its own set of hard-coded tax codes that are applicable for accounting items generated in the enterprise with that legal environment. Where applicable, the tax codes allow Mews to record and calculate, accurately and consistently, the tax information associated with each accounting item. If no tax codes are used, then Mews will not calculate the tax breakdown.

> **Handling taxable items:** It is important to note the following when handling taxable items. Mews expects its integration partners to send the correct tax codes in combination with net or gross amounts for items that are taxed. Depending on the local government's ruling, tax environments can be subject to change, e.g. Covid tax reductions. It is expected that integration partners act independently and pull updated information from Mews. In turn, Mews will keep the legal environment and tax codes up to date.

## Implementation of tax codes

Integration partners should use the following operations to correctly retrieve the set of tax codes applicable to an enterprise (i.e. property):

1. Call [Get configuration](/connector-api/operations/configuration.md#get-configuration) to retrieve the `TaxEnvironmentCode` that applies to the relevant enterprise. Note this information for the subsequent API request.
2. Call [Get all tax environments](/connector-api/operations/taxenvironments.md#get-all-tax-environments) and use the `TaxEnvironmentCode` retrieved earlier to find the corresponding list of `TaxationCodes`. The list of `TaxationCodes` is needed to obtain the relevant taxation information for each code in the subsequent API request.
3. Call [Get all taxations](/connector-api/operations/taxations.md#get-all-taxations) to retrieve the individual tax `Codes`, their names and values.

## Tax exempt items

Tax-exempt items should be sent with `TaxCode` value `null`. Mews in turn does not calculate any taxation amount for the item. Legal environments in which no actual 0% tax rate exists do not have a corresponding 0% tax code in Mews.

## Multi-tax environment

Multi-tax environments have instances in which a combination of taxes is applied. In those cases, Mews does not use a single composite tax code but expects all tax codes that apply to the accounting item to be sent to Mews.

```javascript
"TaxCodes": [ 
    "US-MA-S", 
    "US-MA-EXCISE-0.75%" 
]
```

## Validation

To understand for which time period a set of tax codes are valid in a given tax environment, please review the `ValidityStartUtc` and `ValidityEndUtc` in [Get all tax environments](/connector-api/operations/taxenvironments.md#get-all-tax-environments).


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