PRoduct based sales tax was Multiple Sales Tax Treatments

[buca1]

I thought I would re-state my problem. In New York State (effecitve today) and in Massachusetts (probably other places as well) clothing purchases are exempt from State Sales Tax up to a certain threshold (in NY it's $110) over that threshold, the sales tax is applied to the whole purchase. The County Sales Tax is applied for all clothing purchases regardless of the amount (at least in my county). Other items are subject to both the County and State Sales Taxes. Everything I've seen gives a breakdown by zip code or county but I can't seem to find one that addresses this situation.


Thanks,

Jerry McGarvey
jerry@heresyourhat.com
Here's Your Hat
Custom Embroidery & Graphics

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Florida does that too in the fall, a sales tax holiday for a week before school starts again for clothing up to a certain amount. They've also done it for hurricane supplies, etc. in the past as well. I don't think there would be an easy (i.e. not custom programming) way to do this in Merchant since it would only apply to certain products, only up to certain amounts, only for certain zip codes and possibly only during a certain time frame. Merchant doesn't calculate sales tax until the end so someone would probably need to write a custom sales tax module for you that calculates the base sales tax, then looks at the person's address info to see if they're eligible for a discount on sales tax based on their zip being compared to a table, if they are, it has to walk through every item in the basket, possibly adding attribute prices onto the price to see if it exceeds the threshold, comparing each item to a table of items known to be eligible for discount and then subtracting amounts from the overall sales tax total. It would also have to be careful of rounding issues.

[David Pontius]

I've looked for a program that would treat an item as taxable or not taxable based on the ship location.

We have to pay sales tax in Texas, which has very different tax rules. What we've done is waive the sales tax in Texas, and then we pay it ourselves. It's not the ideal solution, but short of custom programming, that's all we could do.

Dave

[buca1]

I was thinking that you almost have to have one or more product attibutes to allow for the differences in sales tax rules, since I don't expect a database change in a 4X Miva module.

We have ceritficates in several jurisdictions and some of the rules are bizarre. for example, in New Jersey, a Snickers bar is taxable but a Twix bar isn't. Why? Because the Twix bar contains some flour and qualifies as baked goods.

I have a bit of experience in this field since my last "real" job was writing business requirements for a major corporation. The only way to accurately identify the taxing jurisdiction is to have the customer self identify it. Any time I fill out a State form for the Department of Motor Vehicles, State Income Tax, Fishing license, etc. I'm required to identify the jurisdiction. Zip Codes are not totally accurate for hits purpose.

What I am looking for I think, is a module or modules that would force the customer (depending on the state) to identify the county in addition to the City and State which they already provide, and a means to define some rules by product that would enable Miva Merchant to calculate the tax accurately.

Jerry McGarvey
jerry@heresyourhat.com
Here's Your Hat!
Custom Embroidery & Graphics

[netblazon]

What I am looking for I think, is a module or modules that would force the customer (depending on the state) to identify the county in addition to the City and State which they already provide, and a means to define some rules by product that would enable Miva Merchant to calculate the tax accurately.

We've done something similar to this (the second requirement, that is) as a custom project for a client. It's an extension of our Zip Based Sales Tax module (http://www.netblazon.com/p-001ZipTax.html) and it has the added feature, in this case, of letting the store administrator specify for each product whether it is a tobacco product or not. A second "tobacco tax" is applied to those products that need to have this special tax applied.

States make these things so complicated that it's a bit difficult to cover every possible scenario. We have considered releasing this extended module as something like "Zip Based Sales Tax with Surtax". The label is already configurable to it could be set to anything other than "tobacco tax", if desired.

[David Pontius]

We've done something similar to this (the second requirement, that is) as a custom project for a client. It's an extension of our Zip Based Sales Tax module (http://www.netblazon.com/p-001ZipTax.html) and it has the added feature, in this case, of letting the store administrator specify for each product whether it is a tobacco product or not. A second "tobacco tax" is applied to those products that need to have this special tax applied.

States make these things so complicated that it's a bit difficult to cover every possible scenario. We have considered releasing this extended module as something like "Zip Based Sales Tax with Surtax". The label is already configurable to it could be set to anything other than "tobacco tax", if desired.

Susan,
That would be very helpful. Ideally, you should be able to specify a tax category, then specify the tax rate for that tax category in each state or zip code. We have software that does that for our non web business, but unfortunately that doesn't help our website. The module you wrote would be helpful for many I think. Including myself.

Dave

[netblazon]

Dave,

A little more specifics on how the module we wrote works... there is a surtax with a single rate, that gets applied to any "flagged" products if the ship-to address contains a zipcode that is specified in the module. If the zipcode is not specified, then neither the base tax nor the surtax are applied. It's an "all or nothing" scenario.

I can see where a better solution might be for each zipcode entry to have a second surtax column, which could be 0 if no tax is to be applied, or some value when the surtax should be applied. That way the surtax could be a different value for different zipcodes as well.

The other thing that is hardcoded in the module we wrote is that the two taxes appear as separate order charges. So you would see Sales Tax: $x.xx on one line, and Other Tax: $x.xx on a separate line. As a retail product it's better to give the store owner control.

I can release what we have now with little modification, but something that has individual "surtax" rates would probably need someone willing to help pay for the development. Email me directly if you're interested.

Thanks,
Susan

[David Pontius]

Hi Susan,
I think we're OK for now. We have to charge tax in 7 states, so it can be a challange. I'll let you know if we want to put in a better solution. I use several of your modules, so I know you write great code.

Dave