Customers and tax exemptions

Learn more about the standards related to creating customers and collecting tax information.

The checklist items and standards in this section cover how to collect information from registered and guest customers. They also take you through the process of handling tax identifiers and tax certificates.

Integration checklist

Click any checklist item to be provided more detail on how to meet the integration standard.

Does your platform allow customers to create a registered account?
Do you use your source system's unique customer identifier (UUID) as the Customer id when interfacing with the Customers API?
For US-based customers that request a tax-exempt purchase, do you provide the option to apply a tax certificate to the purchase?
Do you collect and save the necessary tax certificate information?
Do you provide the option for non-US based customers to apply a tax identifier to the purchase?
Do you implement the necessary element to collect and validate a customer's tax identifier information?
Once a tax identifier is validated, do you save it to the customer's account?

Integration standards

These integration standards relate to customers and tax exemptions:

Create an authenticated customer

Your integration must be able to create a record for registered customers who represent either an individual or a business. You can use this record to assign the customer a default payment method, shipping address, and locale. You can also attach tax identifiers and tax certificates to the customer. A customer can also request to be forgotten.

Ensure customer identifiers match

When you create a Customer, you can specify a unique identifier for that record. If you don't provide us an identifier, we generate one for you and return it in the response.

We highly recommend that the customer identifier in your commerce system matches the identifier of its corresponding Customer in our system. This ensures that the customer is processed correctly during the checkout process.

Provide customers the option to apply a tax certificate

Business customers in the United States with valid tax certificates may qualify for a tax exemption on their order. Prior to placing an order, your user interface should provide US-based customers the option to apply a tax certificate to their purchase.

Collect and save tax certificate information

If customers indicate that they want to apply a tax certificate to a purchase, you should provide a file upload prompt and then collect the document. You should also ensure that customers enter the company name, relevant tax authority, start date and end date that are displayed on thecertificate.

If the customer supplies all the required information, use the Files API to upload the document to Digital River's servers. Then add the tax certificate to the customer's account, ensuring that you send the required company, authority, start date, end date, and file identifier data in the request.

Provide customers the option to apply a tax identifier

Some business customers have tax identifiers that allow them to purchase zero-rated goods. Prior to placing an order, your user interface should provide customers the option to apply a tax identifier to a purchase.

Collect and validate tax identifier information

If customers indicate that they want to apply a tax identifier to a purchase, implement the tax identifier element to both collect and validate the information.