Rankd Tax Exemption Certificates for WooCommerce

Automated document retention — optionally purge aged certificate files X years after they become inactive, while permanently preserving the certificate record and audit trail Dashboard widget — pending count, expiring soon alerts, status breakdown, export buttons CSV exports — expiry report, active accounts, full audit log Timestamped audit log per user (exportable per-user or full log)

Requirements

• WordPress 6.0 or higher
• PHP 7.4 or higher
• WooCommerce 7.0 or higher (must be installed and active)

WooCommerce is the only required dependency.

Usage

Marking a customer as tax exempt (Free)

1. 01Go to Users → All Users
2. 02Click Edit on any user
3. 03Scroll to the Tax Exemption section
4. 04Check the Tax Exempt checkbox
5. 05Optionally add an internal note
6. 06Click Update User

Tax is removed from that customer’s cart and checkout on their next page load.

Certificate submission workflow (Pro)

Customer flow:

1. 07Customer logs in and goes to My Account → Tax Exemption
2. 08Completes the form and uploads their certificate (PDF or JPG)
3. 09Receives confirmation email
4. 10Status shows as Pending until reviewed

Admin flow:

1. 11Admin receives notification email
2. 12Goes to WooCommerce → Tax Exempt Certs
3. 13Reviews the pending submission, views the certificate document
4. 14Approves (verifying the expiry date) or rejects (providing a reason)
5. 15Customer receives approval or rejection email

Expiry:

• WP-Cron runs nightly and auto-expires certificates past their expiry date
• Warning emails fire X days before expiry (configurable, default 30 days)
• Expired customers see a prefilled resubmission form in My Account
• If a renewal is pending review when the old certificate expires, exemption continues for the configured grace period

Role compliance (Pro):

• Members of Tax-Exempt Roles are NOT exempted until there is evidence: an approved certificate covering the order’s jurisdiction, or your recorded override
• The Role Exempt tab of the review queue lists role members needing attention, with per-row and bulk actions: Add Certificate, Email for Certificate, or Override (“accept the risk”, scoped to all or specific jurisdictions — the decision is written to the audit log)
• A certificate request email points the customer to the My Account submission form
• If the certificate backing a member later expires or is revoked, they automatically reappear for review

Settings

WooCommerce → Settings → Tax Exempt Certs:

• Tax-Exempt Roles: Users holding any of these roles are automatically tax exempt (free version). In Pro, role members are exempted only once there is evidence on file — an approved certificate covering the order’s jurisdiction, or an override you record — so a role assignment alone never silently removes tax. Individual users can be excluded via the Never Exempt override on their profile. Default: none.

Pro adds:

• Expiry Warning (days): How many days before expiry to send the renewal reminder and allow early renewal submissions (1–90).
• Admin Notification Email: Where to send new submission alerts.
• Customer Contact Email: Address shown to customers when their exemption is revoked.
• Renewal Grace Period (days): How long to keep exempting after expiry while a renewal is pending review (0 disables).

Wholesale & Third-Party Compatibility

This plugin includes a developer filter for external systems to opt individual users out of its management entirely.

Example — wholesale plugin integration:

add_filter( 'rankd_tx_skip_user', function( $skip, $user_id ) { // Tell this plugin to ignore users managed by your wholesale system. if ( has_wholesale_exemption( $user_id ) ) return true; return $skip; }, 10, 2 );

The plugin also supports additional exemption sources via:

add_filter( 'rankd_tx_exemption_sources', function( $sources, $user_id ) { if ( has_wholesale_exemption( $user_id ) ) $sources[] = 'wholesale'; return $sources; }, 10, 2 );

Exemption is applied if ANY source returns active. This plugin never removes an exemption granted by another system.

Data Storage

USER META (wp_usermeta):

• _rankd_tx_is_exempt — String. Per-user override: always , never , or absent (follow role rules). Legacy 1 values from the pre-1.5.0 checkbox are read as always .
• _rankd_tx_exempt_note — String. Admin note. Never shown to customer.

CUSTOM TABLES (Pro):

• {prefix}rankd_tx_certificates — One row per certificate submission.
• {prefix}rankd_tx_audit_log — One row per status change event.

UPLOADS (Pro):

• wp-content/uploads/rankd-tax-exempt-certs/
• Protected by .htaccess (Apache/LiteSpeed) plus an index.php fallback. Files are served only through a permission-checked PHP download handler. Nginx requires a one-time server rule — see Server Compatibility below.

Invoice Plugin Integration

Tax exemption details are automatically added to PDF invoices for:

• WooCommerce PDF Invoices & Packing Slips (WP Overnight) — fires after order details table on invoices, proformas, and credit notes
• WooCommerce PDF Invoices (WP Overnight older plugin) — fires after order table
• WooCommerce order confirmation and My Account receipt pages — visible to the ordering customer and store managers only

The notice includes: Organization name, Certificate number, Jurisdiction, Certificate expiry date. It always reflects the certificate that covered the order at purchase time, even if the customer’s status changes later.

Developer filters:

• rankd_tx_show_invoice_notice — return false to suppress entirely
• rankd_tx_invoice_document_types — array of document types to show on (default: invoice, proforma, credit-note)
• rankd_tx_invoice_notice_html — replace the full notice HTML (args: $html, $order)

Plugin Compatibility & Tax Exemption Conflicts

Important: This plugin cannot guarantee compatibility with plugins that write directly to the WooCommerce customer session object rather than using the woocommerce_customer_is_vat_exempt filter. These plugins bypass the filter system entirely and no priority adjustment will resolve the conflict.

How this plugin handles conflicts

WooCommerce determines tax exemption via a single boolean flag on the customer session. This plugin hooks into this system at filter priority 20, which means:

• Any plugin setting exemption to true at priority 10 or lower will be respected — this plugin will not override it
• Any plugin setting exemption to false at priority 10 or lower may prevent this plugin from applying its own exemption, even if the customer is marked exempt here

This is by design. This plugin deliberately avoids overriding other systems that have already made an exemption decision.

Developer integration — excluding users

If you are building or maintaining a plugin that manages tax exemption for certain users, you can tell this plugin to step aside entirely for those users using the rankd_tx_skip_user filter:

add_filter( 'rankd_tx_skip_user', function( $skip, $user_id ) { if ( my_plugin_manages_this_user( $user_id ) ) { return true; } return $skip; }, 10, 2 );

When rankd_tx_skip_user returns true for a user:

• The Tax Exemption Override does not appear on their WordPress user profile
• This plugin does not fire any checkout exemption logic for them
• Their tax status is entirely controlled by your plugin

Recommended approach for site owners

1. 16Use rankd_tx_skip_user to exclud