Help with tax setup...I think I am going crazy!

[silken]

I am having the hardest time setting up the tax configuration.I am in California and only want to charge tax to Californians. I selected to charge tax based on zipcode. In the country list I put a check mark under the United States (only) and then in the tax page I selected only California and its codes. If I go with this setting, Shopsite does not charge tax to anyone. If I enter Calfornia tax in the default setting, it charges tax to anyone in any country, no matter the code. Is this some sort of known glitch (unknown to me, of course!) or is there something even more basic I am missing? Please help! I am about to go live and this is confounding me.

Many thanks in advance,
Debbie

[Jim]

It sounds like you have it mostly configured correctly. Did you specify a tax rate in the right most box on the California line ?

Note that California has some strange tax rules so you may need to break some of the California zipcodes out and put them in another field with a different tax rate. You can either put them in one of the existing fields and rename it to California also or you could add another set of fields. The No Match field will be use for the tax if the zipcode is not a match for any of the other areas so you probably won't want that enabled.

[silken]

Hi Jim,
Well, it looks like you are right but, jeez, that seems weird! I took the zip 95??? and added 950?? and now it taxes 950?? correctly. But, surely, it would be ridiculous to have to enter every single zip code. I wonder if there is an upload. And, even more, why is it not working correctly (as in, the question marks standing in for the missing digits?) Is this a known issue with shopsite?
Thanks for your help,
Debbie

[Jim]

The ? represent a number so "95???" should include "95000" to "95999" but it will not match "95111-" (note the - at the end of the number) and won't match "95111-1232" which is a zip +4 zipcode. I'm pretty sure we strip leading and trailing white space characters like a space or tab so that shouldn't cause a problem. You might want to include a comment to have the shopper enter just their 5 digit zip or expand the zip fields to include combinations that they might enter such as "95???, 95???-????, 95???????" which would be the 5 digit, zip plus 4 with dash and zip plus 4 with just 9 straight number.

There is no interface to upload a formatted version for zip codes but you could use a word processor or spread sheet program to create the data and then copy and paste it into the fields.

Although it may take a while to input the zipcode values using the ? format after it is all setup there is no additional cost associated with it.

Some merchants prefer to use the AvaTax method which uses an on-line tax calculation company to compute the tax for a specific location. There is a cost to this method though, I belief both a monthly fee and a per transaction charge. They do have other advantages such as reporting that may offset some of the cost associated with their service. You can find more information on this method at http://www.shopsite.com/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi?key=avatax&reseller_id=1234&lang=en-US