OBZT - define tax codes per transaction

[Bohdan]

Hello, SAPers!

Here is a small tip on defining tax codes per transaction. For some of you, especially those with wide and long experience in FI module, this post might be trivial, but it might be interesting for consultants that just started on their career path.

Customizing of country’s tax scheme very often involves a lot of tax codes, which can be linked together into so called chains of tax codes (deferred versus target tax codes). Many of these target tax codes are used solely for reporting purposes via different tax grouping versions (OBCH / OBCG) and are not used by users in their daily operations. Nonetheless, these technical tax codes appear in drop-down lists in transactions FB60 / FB70 / MIRO etc. and cause inconveniences for end-users to select the right tax code.

Fortunately, SAP provides standard solution that enables you to manage the visibility of tax codes in financial and logistics transactions. In order to configure the settings go to transaction OBZT. Alternatively, you can use the following menu path:

IMG → Financial Accounting (new) → Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable → Business Transactions → Outgoing (or Incoming) Invoices/Credit Memos → Outgoing (or Incoming) Invoices/Credit Memos - Enjoy → Define Tax Code per Transaction

Specify the country key in the pop-up windows and press Enter. Once in the transaction press New Entries button.

In this transaction you can configure the tax codes that will be available for end-users in FI-AP (FB60 / FB65) / FI-AR (FB70 / FB75) transactions as well as logistics invoice verification (MIRO). You can also set some tax code as default one in these transactions. Screen-shot of typical tax codes settings can be found below. Note: the visibility of input tax codes can be customized differently for FI-AP accounting and logistics invoice verification (in case, when FI-AP should be used only in certain cases that require specific tax codes). In this example the visibility of input tax codes was customized in the same way for FI-AP and MM-LIV areas.

Thus, when you access transaction FB60 you will see, that the tax code is already specified:

When end-user would like to select another tax code, the choice will be limited to transactions defined in OBZT:

Thus, there are two main benefits of the settings customized in transaction OBZT:

   1) Setting of default tax codes per accounting module (FI-AP / FI-AR / MM-LIV);

   2) Limiting the choice of tax codes to a handful of codes relevant to an area which makes it easy a) to select the appropriate tax code for end-users, and b) prevents end-users from specifying incorrect tax code (especially target tax codes instead of deferred ones).

There are some limitations of the settings in OBZT. For example, you cannot restrict the list of available tax codes for creation of purchase orders (transaction ME21N) or for generic transactions like FB01. But in most cases, especially when integrated invoicing processes are in place, FB01 will be used rarely and primarily for different adjustment postings. This transaction is also not used to manage the visibility of tax codes in SD module. Standard condition techniques in SD (VK11) ensure automatic determination of tax codes for sales documents. Condition technique determines tax codes as a rule based on the combination of tax categories in material’s and customer’s master records.

Update from 12.01.2015

In order to deal with "old" tax codes i.e. tax codes should no longer be used e.g. due to changes in VAT rates or any other changes in VAT legislation that make certain tax codes obsolete, SAP introduced functionality that enables deactivation of tax codes. This functionality is delivered in OSS-notes 2074351 and 2095960. It adds a checkbox "Inaktive" in tax code properties in FTXP, so whenever this checkbox is activated for tax code, it will no longer be available for input via search help. However, it still would be possible to use it in postings and as a selection critaria in tax related reports. However, if you have settings for a certain tax code in OBZT to be displayed e.g. in FI-AP and you marked this tax code as inactive in FTXP, this tax code still would be visibile for postings via search helps, which means that OBZT settings override those in FTXT.

For more information on deactivation of tax codes please refer blog post "Deactive tax codes" by ahil.

Best regards,

The Wirtschaftsmann