Help! Canadian VAT: PST Exempt not working

[Danceplus]

Summary: Only the first eligible product in the shopping cart is coming up as PST exempt, instead of all the products.

In Detail:
I hope someone will help me. I have reasearched this problem in the old archives (back to 1999) and have found nothing.

I have the Canadian Vat module on Miva 4.13. In addition to other products I sell books, which are PST exempt. These are the only products on my site which are exempt from the PST tax. However they are not exempt from the GST. Therefore I have all books marked as taxable, but in the Canadian VAT screen for each book (under edit product) I have the "PST Exempt" box checked.

Here's the problem. If a customer adds 1 book to their cart it works fine. If they add two books the second one is charged PST. If they order 3 books, the second and third book is charged PST and not the first one. It doesn't matter which book as I have tested this many times. In fact if you add Book A and Book B into the cart in separate single item orders, neither is charged tax. If I put both books into the cart the second one is charged PST but not the first one.

Due to the nature of this problem, I wonder if anybody can help me. Any Canadians, in Ontario, also sell books out there (it is one of the few items in Ontario that is PST exempt)?

Please help...

Sincerely,

Linda Wilson
DancePlus.com

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

Unfortunately you are not going to find much in the way of help on this, perhaps you're best bet is another Canadian merchant.

Even MIVA Small Business no longer supports v4.13 of Merchant. :(

[Danceplus]

Thanks for replying. I am quickly running out of options in terms of solving this. I have done a search looking for other Canadian sites that sell PST exempt products but have yet to find anyone else with this problem. As I see it I have 2 options.

1. Try removing and then reinstalling the Canadian VAT module. (Any suggestions - good idea or bad idea, am I risking more problems?)

2. Hire a Miva expert who could troubleshoot this problem. We are a small business with limited resources but I would have had to pay Miva tech support anyway, so... (Any ideas on how to find the right person for the job?)

Thanks in advance to who ever answers this.

Linda Wilson
DancePlus.com

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

You could post a job to www.developerwanted.com

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

If you don't get a response...ping me at my regular email address...we are looking at this problem for a candian publisher right now...

[Danceplus]

Well I guess desperation breeds ingenuity, as I have solved the problem. I decided to post it here in case it might help someone in the future.

I changed the tax settings in my store (select store, select settings) to Generic tax, hit update, then changed it back to Canadian VAT (and hit update). It says you will loose your sales tax settings, but I went ahead anyway. Then I went into the Canadian VAT settings and re-entered the GST setting and the PST for Ontario (I put the other provinces in as well but set them to 0%). Then I went into the Edit product screen for each PST exempt product and marked it as "PST exempt" in the Canadian VAT screen (we also sell products that are not PST exempt). I had done this before but had to do it again because I had deactivated and reactivated the Canadian VAT. Now it works!

One more thing.... last time I had the PST marked as taxable, this time I didn't. Everything seems to work now.

Linda Wilson
DancePlus.com

[Danceplus]

Ok I posted that too quickly. Now despite having Ontario listed as 8%, no pst is being charged on anything already in the store. If I add a new product manually, PST is applied - existing products it's not. I tried a flat file import (replacing the products), still doesn't work.

I'll post as soon as I have something else figured out.

Linda Wilson
DancePlus.com

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

I think I found the problem. In the 4.13 version of the Canvat module, the lookup for products in the exclusion lists does not restart the record pointer at the beginning of the database. Therefore, if the first product in the basket appears later in that database than the following, their exclusion status is not seen. I'll send you a repaired version off list.

I do not know if this has been corrected in later version of the module (which wouldn't matter to you, since those versions would be compiled.