Differences between SuiteTax and Legacy Tax

There are two NetSuite implementations that are currently available for taxes, SuiteTax and Legacy Tax. A new NetSuite implementation can be set up to use SuiteTax. An existing NetSuite implementation that uses legacy tax can be migrated to use SuiteTax.

SuiteTax is an account-level feature that applies to the whole NetSuite account and not to selected subsidiaries.

SuiteTax is a non-reversible feature and when enabled, it cannot be disabled. Please consider any incompatible features before deciding to implement SuiteTax in your account. To learn more about SuiteTax limitations, see Known Limitations of SuiteTax.

The tables below show the differences between legacy tax and SuiteTax in supporting different features. The tables also specify which additional bundles or SuiteApps are needed to use the features in SuiteTax.

Generic features

Feature Name	SuiteTax	Legacy Tax	Required Bundle or SuiteApp	Details
Tax registrations at subsidiary level	Multiple	Single	No bundle or SuiteApp required	In SuiteTax, you can associate multiple tax registration numbers to your subsidiary.
Tax jurisdiction (nexus) – effective dates	Yes	No	No bundle or SuiteApp required	—
Nexus level tax exemption	Yes	No	No bundle or SuiteApp required	In SuiteTax, you can disable tax calculation and skip tax engine setup.
Tax registrations on customer or vendor records	Multiple	Single	No bundle or SuiteApp required	—
Tax rate change history	Yes	No	No bundle or SuiteApp required	—
Nexus determination	Considers ship to, location, billing, or subsidiary addresses	Based on ship to address only	No bundle or SuiteApp required	—
Nexus and tax details override	Yes	No	No bundle or SuiteApp required	In SuiteTax, transaction nexus and tax details can be overridden by the user.
Withholding tax	Yes	Yes	No bundle or SuiteApp required	In SuiteTax, withholding tax is supported using the special tax type "Does Not Add To Transaction". The calculation is triggered upon invoice or bill creation.
Reverse charge with GL posting	Yes	Yes	No bundle or SuiteApp required	—
Non-deductible VAT (Post to Item Cost)	Yes	Yes	No bundle or SuiteApp required	—
Reverse charge – post non-deductible VAT to GL	Yes	No	No bundle or SuiteApp required	—
Tax on sales and purchases summary and detail reports (search-based reporting )	Yes	Yes	No bundle or SuiteApp required	—
Tax reporting basis	Accruals only	Cash or accruals at nexus level	No bundle or SuiteApp required	—
Tax reporting basis	Tax point date, accounting periods	Transaction date, tax periods	No bundle or SuiteApp required	Item fulfillment taken into account in SuiteTax
Provisioning tax codes, tax groups, tax rates, and tax agencies	112 countries, including any changes	40 countries, provisioned at set up	SuiteTax Engine SuiteTax Data Records	Tax records provisioning: including tiered tax rates for the USA excluding tax rates for Brazil, India
Monthly tax rate updates	112 countries	US only (each state manually updated)	SuiteTax Engine SuiteTax Data Records	Excludes Brazil and India tax rates
Tax ID format validation (not EU countries)	Yes	No	SuiteTax Engine	Predefined format for more than 20 countries
Tax determination and calculation	Yes	Yes	SuiteTax Engine	Supports ZIP+4, origin and destination based tax determination, and intrastate and interstate sale for the USA
Reference plug-in for generic tax calculation and custom records for tax determination	Yes	No	SuiteTax LATAM Engine	Enables calculation setup for taxes, such as value added tax (VAT), withholding tax, and others.

Feature Name

SuiteTax

Legacy Tax

Required Bundle or SuiteApp

Details

Tax registrations at subsidiary level

Multiple

Single