California Sales Tax Module

[firewren]

We are an Ohio company with a presence in CA. Is it possible to use this module still? What would we need to modify in order to make it work correctly? Thanks in advance.

[rlborland]

After a few rounds of email to Adam Lieberman who wrote the QuickBooks Integration module (QBI), I would like to share my findings for those store owners with a business presence in California.

If you ship your products from your home or from a sales/shipping office in California using a carrier (FedEx, UPS) to do the pickup and delivery, you could save yourself a lot of complicated processing both in Zen Cart as well as in QuickBooks and also be BOE compliant with your CA sales tax returns.

Stating that your company ships FOB Shipping Point means that the customer assumes title to the product at the point that the carrier picks up the order for shipping. This also means that you must charge the customer the CA sales tax based on your shipping location -- not the customers shipping destination. One tax rate (for your shipping office / store location in CA) would then apply to all online sales inside CA. Of course you would not need to charge sales tax to customers outside of CA (if you only have a presence in CA).

You have another benefit with FOB Origin. If there is damage to the products in transit, the customer claims directly from the carrier without your intervention as the title to the goods has passed to the customer upon pickup by the carrier.
It would always be good customer service to help your customer with their claim.

It is also important when you have free shipping, that FOB Shipping Point is replaced or supplemented by the International Commerce term (Incoterm) "Free Shipping FCA".

All these terms can be easily researched. Please feel free to check this out with your accountant, commerical attorney as well as with BOE.

I hope this helps to uncomplicate a really complicated CA sales tax situation.

Richard.