You use the Commerce Cloud Admin API to set the defaultTaxRate property, an integer that specifies the tax rate to apply when fallback tax processing is used. The default value for defaultTaxRate is 0, which means that no tax is charged. However, you could set it to a rate that is higher than any jurisdiction where your store charges tax. The default tax rate is applied to all prices in an order, including shipping costs.

Note: During the initial configuration of your environment, Oracle sets certain settings that trigger the fallback tax calculation, including the number of consecutive failed tax calls, the time span over which to count failed tax calls, and the time period after which Commerce Cloud should try calling the tax processor’s service again. You cannot change these settings. If you find that the settings are not appropriate for your store, you can file a support ticket and to change the settings. For example, if orders are failing at the tax processing step, it might be appropriate to allow fewer failed calls over a shorter time span.

To set the defaultTaxRate property, issue a PUT request to one of the following endpoints:

The following example shows a PUT request that sets the default tax rate for a store that uses Avalara AvaTax to process taxes. When the fallback logic indicates that the AvaTax web service is down, Commerce Cloud stops making calls to it and automatically applies a tax rate of 10% to all orders.

PUT /ccadmin/v1/taxProcessors/ava-p HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Bearer <access_token>

{
   "type":"avalara",
   "url": "<dedicated_host_instance_url>",
   "defaultTaxRate": 10,
}