Sales Tax enhancement

[luciano991]

My client's store is located in New York State. The New York State Sales Tax is 8%. But there are ten tax zones where the sales tax rate ranges from 7% to 9% by county(ies).

Now we set up sales tax so the customer could choose from one of the tax zones or if they didn't live in one of those zones they can pick All Others and if they're from out of state they can pick 0% tax as the merchant is only required to collect in state. Trouble is, there is nothing to compel NY State residents from choosing one of the tax rates so they choose 0%. So to compel them to choose, you should be able to enter your merchant's home state information somewhere in the global scheme of things, and when the customer enters his/her zip code a query determines if they live in NY. If they do they are compelled to choose a sales tax option.

OK, you say, so set it up so sales tax is determined by zip code. Great idea. Except, if you live in Farmersville Station, NY, your zip code is 14060. Problem is, half of Farmersville Station residents live in Allegheny County where the sales tax is 8.5% and the other half pay the regular 8% state sales tax. And believe me that's just the tip of the iceberg.

So in the next Shopsite version can we solve this conundrum?

Thanks for all you do,

Mark Madison

[fishbucket]

I second that request! More sales tax options would definitely help us New Yorkers...

Selling clothing is even more complicated, because most of the state charges county sales tax on clothes under $110, but NYC doesn't. So, adding to the complexity of overlapping zip codes & counties is the fact that the taxes can differ depending on product. (someone in Albany has to pay tax on an $80 piece of clothing, but someone in NYC doesn't.)

Does anyone have any advice for dealing with this? Short of manually looking up the county of each customer?

[luciano991]

It would require a pretty sophisticated database or web app using google maps, but the customer would fill in his entire shipping address and it would be checked against a county instead of a zip code. The tax is determined by county. I think there are about 15 counties and 10 different tax zones for these counties and then everyone else is 8%. You could have a pretty simple join table with counties and tax rates and the query: if this zip code, and this street and this city is this county then the tax is x if not it's 8%. From your post I would also assume a special field about clothing would be necessary as well. What an interesting challenge.

Thanks for the post.

Mark

[DDreslough]

Connecticut needs something like this, only we need to be able to set different tax rates by product, not zip code.

It would be GREAT to be able to assign a tax rate by state and by product type.

-Dee Dreslough
dee@sportsmogul.com
www.sportsmogul.com

[MichelleC]

State of Florida requires us to collect sales tax on only some of our skus (personal care items- shampoo, toothpaste), but the rest of the sku's fall under consumables, and food. Vitamins, snack bars for example and not taxed. We do not have to collect tax on any sale outside of FL.

So- we can't just use sales tax settings, as it applies TO ALL sku's, but we need it pulled by ZIP entered AND by sku sort- that is, the look up would have two functions.
Can't see it happening in Cart- unless there was some way to ping it against a SQL database- of course we have been down this road before I believe in other posts, regarding ShopSite's use of SQL Lite, and our hosting account being Verio, Windows server.

So- wanted to add that we would agree, would value and would like to see the enhancement to be able to assign a tax rate by state/ZIP AND by select product SKUs.

THANK YOU!

[loren_d_c]

Michelle,

If you have some items that are not taxable at all, just Edit Product Info on those products and uncheck the Taxable checkbox, then those products will be excluded from tax calculations.

-Loren

[MichelleC]

Umm...actually Loren it is the inverse- Almost all are un-taxable, only some SKUs are, but they ONLY are taxable if shipped to a Florida address (not billing address)
Trying to figure out if Order Manager can handle it, just so we don't get in tax trouble- but that is post order, so not a real solution.
Need cart software to recognize those particular skus, and the only trigger is ZIP currently- Need: Zip + this SKU = x% tax rate- in cart.
is that incorrect???? thanks!

[loren_d_c]

In ShopSite the 'Taxable' option is on by default. So you need to turn it off for all of your non-taxable products. If you have a jillion products and only a few are taxable, then you could probably PowerEdit all products and turn the Taxable checkbox off for all of them, then edit just the taxable ones and re-check the Taxable checkbox for those.

The subtotal of taxable products is already figured before the zip code determination is made. So if you have zip code tax set to tax people in Florida, then it will add tax BUT ONLY FOR PRODUCTS MARKED TAXABLE. If the shopper does not have a Florida zip, then they will not be taxed.

The only way this would NOT work for you is if your taxable products have different tax rates depending on the type of product. Different levels of tax on a per-product basis is not currently supported (unless using the new VAT tax feature in v10, but that's a whole other ball of wax). Either a product is taxable or it isn't.

Note that after you change the Taxable status of an product make sure you empty your cart and then re-add the product, or else you will not see the effect of the change.

-Loren

[MichelleC]

Got it. THANK YOU very much Loren for your help, and especially this detailed valuable post- will see if we can load all the FL ZIPS, the tax rate, and (especially!) if I can change ALL skus, then in back office only select for the ones that get tax- i thought in prior posts we had been told that what we wanted to do was not possible because it isolated to sku level plus zip. Will post back (new entry) in the area for sharing infor with other users)- once we successfully implement. thanks!

[ShopSite David]

Real-time tax rates are now available in service pack 1 (sp1) for ShopSite 10 via integration with a 3rd party -- AvaTax from Avalara.

[DDreslough]

The AvaTax estimator says that for our annual volume, we'd have to pay a $1400 setup fee $350 a MONTH for this service!

All I need is a way to set the tax rate for each item I add to the store. Is it really that complicated? We don't have many items.

I'm going to look into using the VAT tax system...maybe I can kluge something to do what I need it to do.

-Dee

[loren_d_c]

VAT probably won't work well for you because VAT is charged based on Country. Certain zip code ranges can be excluded from VAT, but I don't know how hard it would be to enter all non-Connecticut zip code patterns.

Besides the integration with AvaTax, ShopSite Pro 10 sp1 includes a new Tax API that can be used by a custom programmer to make custom tax calculations based on the product info passed to it from the cart (the Extra Product Fields are among the data passed to the custom program, so you could use one of these fields to indicate your custom tax rate for each product) and then the custom program returns the total tax amount to the cart.

Documentation for this new ShopSite Pro api can be found here:
http://www.shopsite.com/help/10.1/en-US/sc/pro/sales.tax.api.html
and:
http://www.shopsite.com/help/10.1/en-US/sc/pro/sales.tax.api.spec.html

-Loren

[AvaTax for ShopSite]

Good morning!

The answers are all "yes, we do that" to questions from:

michellec
ddreslough
fishbucket
luciano

john.osman@avalara.com
http://tungle.me/JohnOsman
404-446-1107

Let me know anything else I can do to help!

John

[AvaTax for ShopSite]

http://support.shopsite.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7182

This location will be kept up-to-date for the latest days/times for ShopSite/AvaTax-specific Webinar/Q&A sessions.

Thank you!