Sales tax rate determined by zip code?

[interaxxis]

Is there a way to calculate the sales tax by the ship to zip code?

Thanks

[DrByte]

I'm not aware of a module built for this.
You might try retrofitting the ot_county module ... just search for ot_county here on the forum for several discussions on the topic.

[interaxxis]

I'm not aware of a module built for this.
You might try retrofitting the ot_county module ... just search for ot_county here on the forum for several discussions on the topic.

I did not find any references to ot_county here. I did find a local tax module in the archived downloads, ot_local_tax_v1.0.zip, that will probably help me accomplish what I'm trying to do. However, it is from 2004 and might need to be updated to work with the current version of Zen. Anything in particular I should look for?

Thanks for your help.

[DrByte]

oops .... ot_county* (forgot the *)

I did a search on county too ... got some more results.

Sorry ... forgot that silly * ....

[bouncey]

Is there a way to calculate the sales tax by the ship to zip code?

I've actually been working on a module like this, based on ot_local_tax but improved a lot.

The state of Oklahoma requires collection of sales tax based on destination address. This is horrible and whoever in the state gov't approved this nonsense ought to be spanked hard, but we're stuck with it for now. The good news is, the state tax agency provides a data file containing (among other things) zip+4 info correlated with city, county, and state sales tax rates.

So I parsed this data file with a perl script to remove unnecessary stuff and loaded it into a mysql table. Then my modified module searches first for zip+4 in that table. If the +4 part is missing or there are no matches, then it looks for the highest tax rate in the zip without +4. Then it falls back on city name. (That's useful because Texas has the same goofy requirements and doesn't provide zip code tables. But Texas does provide city tables.)

Anyway, it's still at the debugging and testing stage so I'm not quite ready to share it yet. ZC's inability to do this by default (take the hint guys!) has held my e-commerce site back by several months because I don't want to get in trouble with the gov't. At least ZC is free and relatively easy to modify.

[shop4itnow]

Can anyone tell me where to find the original ot_local_tax contribution? I have searched every way I know, and can't find it.

Thanks!

[fabienne]

Hello I am new and am under the same problem set as all th others who have to abide by the Destination Sales Tax (very bad idea but). This means I have to charge my customer the sales tax in their county when I sell something to them and ship them goods. Then I must submit those taxes to the state at the end of the period. So...I am under the impression that I can do this with Zen Cart. Am I right? Or is it much more complex than that (as the poster Bouncey alluded to above).

I was trying to define county sales taxes in my admin config, then realized that it has to show up somehow when the customer checks out and I am not sure that it will.

Thanks for any help on this issue. It is going to become very popular very soon as lots of small businesses will be crushed under the burden of Destination Sales Tax. Bad business but it is the law for now.

[gjh42]

It has been the law for decades in NY (from personal experience) and CA (from other testimony).
There is a way to do this (essentially removing the "state name" from the states list and inserting "state name - aa county", "state name - bb county", etc. so customers have to pick a county when giving their address, discussed in the New York Sales Tax thread.

[bouncey]

so customers have to pick a county when giving their address

And that's a big problem on several levels. First, in my experience, about one time out of four people aren't really sure what counties they actually live and work in. Second, it's not just the county that has its own sales tax. So does each town and the state as a whole. They all add together.

Texas also has special purpose districts, such as for metro transit authorities, whose special tax area is mostly independent of any city and county jurisdictions. But unlike Oklahoma, at least Texas has a mandatory cap on how high they can add.

So if we want to let the customers pick out their city, county, state, and special purpose district from menus, that's fine. But it'll be an administrative nightmare. Judging by the steady stream of update postcards from the Oklahoma Tax Commission, many of the rates change every 3 months. And that assumes the buyer will cooperate.

The easiest way to approximate all of this is by ZIP or ZIP+4, if your state provides the necessary data files. I have an almost-working module to handle this. I've been too busy lately (between personal life, recovering from a recent hard drive crash, and actually trying to run a business) to finish it though.

Maybe I'll look at again soon. What's missing at this point mostly involves logging sales to another table with dates, jurisdiction codes, and amounts to simplify monthly reporting. That'll be fun.

Also I have to move all of my changes aside before every upgrade and then reapply them afterward. (What's the deal with having to do a full reinstall with every little point release?!?) Not having this feature officially included in Zen Cart has held back my online store by over a year now. And yes, I've looked into other carts. They tend to be just as bad about this.

Two other approaches have occurred to me. One is to just put a note on the cart to the effect that buyers in your state will be charged sales tax at their local rate, and then look it up by hand before processing the payment. This is simpler but it might not be compatible with all payment methods.

Another is to do as one of my in-laws suggested. His sales office is in Texas, the product is made in Florida, and they do business in several states. He just collects taxes at the state's lowest rate and then reports them at the highest rate. (Or at his relatively high local rate, I don't remember which.) Yeah, so every village isn't getting every penny for every sale way out in the sticks. But overall he pays more sales tax money than he collects. He told me that the state tax authorities have never complained. It's a darn tempting idea...

[bouncey]

By the way, the New York Sales Tax thread (linked above) has some good insights. It's good to see that my uncle-in-law wasn't the first to have the collect-low-pay-high idea. But the prospect of being audited over this... *shudder*