Taxes and discounts are popular items in payment orders. These are the price modifiers that applied to a total purchase amount regardless of items in order. And if you want to know how to configure it on your site, powered by AppThemes, this article is for you.
First, the basics. The AppThemes has own payment module included in all their themes – AppThemes Payments. The framework for processing orders and payment gateways. So, instructions below will work for all software that uses AppThemes Payments module, including all AppThemes themes.
1. Use the built-in “Tax” setting to add a tax item in all orders.
This option can be enabled in General Payments settings by adding a non-zero “Rate” value.

And the order summary will look the following:

Works pretty fine, but it has some drawbacks:
- You can’t change wording “Regional Tax” to something else. Only via translation files or modifications.
- You can’t make tax value indirect (make it doesn’t affect the total amount). But taxes like VAT or GST, used in many countries, so this option won’t work for all.
- You can’t add other taxes. If you need more than one tax item to be added, there is no such option.
2. Use AppThemes Coupons plugin to provide discounts.
AppThemes Coupons is the great plugin for adding discounts to purchases on your site.
The site admin can create multiple coupons and offer them to customers. The customers will make purchases on the site, register coupons and get discounts.
It can be used for adding coupons with:
- Flat rate discounts
- Percentage-based discounts (percent of total order)
- Time-based limit
- Per-user or product limit

The only one small problem it has (if not count its price) – there is no global discount option. You can’t include a discount to all purchases on the site by default (without user registering coupon). So, it can’t cover promotions like on the Black Friday or anniversary discounts.
3. Use Taxable plugin for adding multiple taxes and discounts.
The Taxable is another paid plugin which can be used with/instead of solutions above.
- You can register unlimited tax types with names, rates and other options.
- Configure priority to apply one tax above another.
- Add indirect Taxes, like VAT or similar
- Add global discounts for all purchases on a promotion period.


Conclusion
Options above covers almost all needs in taxes and discounts functionality, but if you need more, feel free to post comments, and we’ll discuss it.