How do you do it? Easy! Google Base now supports two new fields, “tax” and “shipping” (SingleFeed now supports these fields under the moniker “Google Tax” and “Google Shipping”). These fields are a little more complex than other fields, so bear with me on this. Since your tax and shipping rules are determined by various factors such as a state-specific tax rate, or the destination of a package, these fields support sub-attributes to outline the specifics of your tax and shipping rules.  

The sub-attributes are: 

For the “tax” field: 

1. “country” - The Country an item is taxed in. (Optional) 

2. “region” - The geographic region a tax rate is applied to. (Optional) 

3. “rate” - The tax rate. (Required) 

4. “tax_ship” - Whether or not you charge tax on any shipping fees. (Optional) 

Within your Google Base “tax” field, you specify all four of these attributes, seperated by a colon (”:”), which acts as the delimiter. If you want to omit one of the optional attributes, no problem, you just need to include the “:” so Google can still read the string of information. So a tax rate of 9% for California, where tax is not applied to the shipping fee, would be specificed as: “US:CA:9:n”. What if you charge a different tax rate for a different tax region? No problem. You can include multiple tax attribute groups within this field also. Just seperate each tax group by a “,” like this: ”US:CA:9:n, US:OR:7:n”. 

For the “shipping” field, there are also four sub-attributes: 

1. “country” - The country an item will ship to. (Optional) 

2. “region” - The geographic region a shipping rate applies to. (Optional) 

3. “service” - The service class or speed. (Optional) 

4. “price” - The shipping price. (Required) 

The shipping field abides by the same rules as the tax field: sub attributes must be separated by a colon (”:”) and the colon must be included for all sub attributes; attribute groups are separated by a comma. (”,”). If you’re a SingleFeed merchant, know that we are already mapping your “shipping cost” field to the “Google Shipping” field. Fill in the “Google Shipping” field only if you have additional, product-specific shipping information. 

If this sounds all too complicated, don’t worry. You can also submit your tax and shipping rules from within your Google Base account. Just log in to your Google Base account, click on “Settings”, then “Tax and Shipping Settings”.