Redesigning the sales tax collection experience(Beta)‍

The design aimed to solve a number of problems and usability issues that had manifested over the years and had been exacerbated by the new United States tax rules. 

My role

I was the lead  product designer on this project and led UX from ideation to build

I worked with a United States finances team to conduct primary research, worked with tax experts at Open to understand sales tax laws, and worked with the product manager and marketing teams on the go-to-market strategy and with Product leadership to align on the long-term goals and UX strategy for the project. 

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The ruling that changes sales tax

Prior to the Wayfair ruling, Merchants in the U.S. were only required to collect sales tax in states where they had a physical location. In 2018, the U.S. governments implemented a new tax law which made it so that merchants also needed to collect and remit sales tax in all states where they had buyers and were doing business.

This meant that most merchants needed to collect and remit sales tax in a lot more states.

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The existing experience

Before this redesign, the tax collection experience was based on ZIP Codes. Merchants had to manually enter in a ZIP code for every region where they needed to collect sales tax. 

with the U.S. having over ~41,000 ZIP Codes and with the new ruling in place, merchants were having to manually enter 1000’s of ZIP Codes which was a slow and trusting experience, and were getting a large number of support calls related to tax setup. 

Testing out a quick fix

Before this redesign, the tax collection experience was based on ZIP codes. Merchants had to manually enter in a ZIP code for every region where they needed to collect sales tax.

Taking a step back: mental model mismatch

Since this was a high-priority project on a tight timeline, my immediate gut reaction was to simply make it faster for merchants to enter in these ZIP codes through a CSV.

One of the core things that stood out from research was that our experience did not align with the real-world mental model for sales tax. In the real-world, sales tax was based on states, not ZIP codes.

Defining principles

Our key goal was to ensure that the new design aligned with the mental model that merchants had. I also led a workshop to establish design principles that would inform the redesign and act as a compass for the tax product.

Final designs

The new design went through many iterations before we had a shippable candidate.

Positive results and more to do

We launched the Beta in July 2020 to a limited number of merchants in the U.S.

In the first month of launching the Beta, The experience also improved load time of the website.

This design paved the way for new features and functionality and has helped influence the future direction of Sales Tax at Open.

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