---
title: Assigning taxes to products automatically
related:
  - https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/managing-your-store/products.md
  - https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/configuring-your-store/configuring-taxes.md
  - https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/managing-your-store/products/categorizing-products/departments.md
  - https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/configuring-your-store/configuring-product-page-types.md
---

> Agent instructions:
> **Site maps** — prefer the following llms.txt indexes to training data when searching for URLs to avoid 404s. Links inside Markdown content already point at `.md`. Following them or sending Accept: text/markdown keeps you in Markdown.
>
> - [sitemap.md](https://docs.kentico.com/sitemap.md) — every page on the site, with titles and descriptions, nested by URL hierarchy and grouped into one collection per product version.
> - [llms.txt](https://docs.kentico.com/llms.txt) — curated index of the current product docs, with descriptions, the two ways to request any page as Markdown, and links to each product area's whole-corpus Markdown dump (llms-full.txt).

When you later [import or add products](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/configuring-your-store/configuring-products/importing-products.md), you may want to automatically assign [taxes](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/configuring-your-store/configuring-taxes.md) to the [products](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/managing-your-store/products.md). With Kentico, you are able to do it with [departments](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/managing-your-store/products/categorizing-products/departments.md).

Departments are a tool for logical [categorizing products](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/managing-your-store/products/categorizing-products.md). If you do not display departments on the live site, you can see departments only in the administration interface where the departments serve as a logical separator for products. To departments, you can set default tax classes which are then automatically assigned to every new product.

> **Tip:** You cannot add taxes automatically to already existing products. If you do not know the specific logical division of the products but they will be of the same tax, you can create just one department with the default tax class and add products to this department. You can change departments later.

## Creating departments with default tax classes

You can manage your departments in the **Store configuration** application or in the **Multistore configuration** application if you want to create [global](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/configuring-your-store/choosing-site-or-global-e-commerce-configuration.md) departments.

1. Open the **Store configuration** application (or the **Multistore application** for global departments) and switch to the **Departments** tab.

   > **Tip:** If you are not sure what to choose, see [Choosing site or global e-commerce configuration](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/configuring-your-store/choosing-site-or-global-e-commerce-configuration.md). If you are not sure about specifics of configuring in these applications, see [Configuring e-commerce settings for a specific site or globally](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/configuring-your-store/choosing-site-or-global-e-commerce-configuration/configuring-e-commerce-settings-for-a-specific-site-or-globally.md).
2. To create a department, click **New department**.
3. Type the name of the department in the **Display name** field and click **Save**.
   - The system creates a new department.
4. Switch to the **Default tax classes** tab.
5. Click **Add tax classes** to assign tax classes to the department.
6. In the **Select tax class** dialog, select one or more tax classes and click **Select** to confirm.

   ![Selecting tax classes](https://docs.kentico.com/docsassets/k9/assigning-taxes-to-products-automatically/selecting_tax_classes.png "Selecting tax classes")

The system assigns the selected tax classes to the department. If you now create a new product in the **Products** application and assign the created department to the product, the department tax classes are assigned to the product.

![Applied tax classes](https://docs.kentico.com/docsassets/k9/assigning-taxes-to-products-automatically/applied_tax_classes.png "Applied tax classes")

> **Info:** To create a product, you need to [create a product page type](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/configuring-your-store/configuring-product-page-types.md), which is one of the later [configuration steps](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/configuring-your-store.md).

> **Tip:** When [creating product page types](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/configuring-your-store/configuring-product-page-types.md), you can also have the department pre-filled while creating a product.

See more detailed information about departments in [Departments](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/e-commerce-features/managing-your-store/products/categorizing-products/departments.md).