Local Sales Tax Mod (with admin!) for testing

[LadyHLG]

THIS DISCUSSION HAS BEEN RESUMED WITH A NEWER VERSION HERE:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=111782



I have been working on a new sales tax mod with built in admin interface for Zen 1.3.7

This is the first mod I have ever done so I am posting here to get some feed back for anyone brave enough to try it out. It has only been tested with an unmodified version of Zen 1.3.7, so I can make no assumptions on how it will behave with a modified version of the cart.

This mod does not overwrite any files and creates one new table for the database.

It allows for taxing based on zip code, city, or suburb(for those using the suburb field for counties) and could be expanded to tax based on other fields as well.
It is specifically designed to compound taxes to whatever zone taxes you already have set up. Which means you can apply multiple taxes to any zone based on different criteria.

One example of how to use this mod would be -
Set up a statewide sales tax for CA of 7% using the standard zencart zones method.
With the Local tax mod set up a .75% tax to apply to 94203 zip code
You could even add additional .5% sales tax to be applied to just the city of Sacramento.

So if someone in the state of CA purchases something for say $35.99
They would automatically be charged the 7% state wide tax of $2.52
If they lived in the 94203 zip code they would also be charged an additional $.27
AND if they lived in the City of Sacramento they would be charged an additional $.18

Finally, the mod uses the "Basis of Product Tax" option in the Admin -> My Store to determine whether to use the billing or shipping address to base the local tax on.

I hope others out there may find this useful.

LadyHLG

[ckuhl]

Anyone test this mod? I could see that this would replace the hack I made for county taxes which I am sure will not work with version 1.3.7.

[LadyHLG]

I have yet to hear anything from anyone, good or bad so if you do have a chance to test please let me know how it goes.
Thanks!
LadyHLG

[webomat]

I have yet to hear anything from anyone, good or bad so if you do have a chance to test please let me know how it goes.
Thanks!
LadyHLG

Wow, this sounds great!

I've downloaded it and will try to run it locally and test it over the weekend.

Thanks LadyHLG!

Cheers,

Becky

[LadyHLG]

Thanks Becky!
Let me know how it goes!!
LadyHLG

[gmoyle]

Ok, I cannot believe that I didn't find this until just now. I hacked one of the New York tax modes, and 1.3.7 broke it. I have not had time to fix it. This mod seems to be the nearly ideal solution.

I installed it (but have not configured it yet) and have but one suggestion. I saw an implementation of zip code tax in a paid solution that I really liked.

The use of a mask on the zip code so that you don't have to enter each and every zip code is an interesting option.

i.e. 895* would be used for all zip codes that start with 895.

I will let you know how the configuration goes later this week.

Thanks for the great work on this. The complete use of the override system witno core overwrites is FANTASTIC!

[zidain]

OK I'm soo lost. I set up a new Zone being the county itself (California - LA County) and when I set up a test account and created a profile which uses that as the address it breaks by UPS-XML mod. So at this point unless you have new ideas guys I'm just going to charge whatever the least sales tax is for CA, 7% or whatever and just pay the difference out of pocket...I wish Zen was more flexible but it appears I've hit the wall here.

Zidain

[bouncey]

I've been testing my Zen Cart setup as a whole for the past week or so, in preparation for the new customers that I'll be getting from local sales events. So far this mod works great with "normal" payment modules. This might actually let me have an online store!

But things are not so good with Google Checkout. It still lists 0 tax, even when it correctly gets the shipping options. I'm not sure how their system pulls tax info from Zen Cart yet.

Thought you might like to know...

[LadyHLG]

Thanks for the info, I have to admit I dont know much about the google checkout mod, I have looked at it a few times, but it seemed so buggy and the install was so far from straight forward that I didn't have the patience to try and install it(or read thru the massive thread on all the fixes). Also the last time I checked (and it has been a while and this may no longer be the case) google check out didn't pull any sales taxes from zen, they were all calculated on the google side. (Which is yet another reason I have not installed it.)
Is this no longer the case? Does the google checkout mod even work with zone taxes? If anyone out there can answer that question I would like to know.

LadyHLG

[bouncey]

I'll look through the code and see if anything pops out at me. I know it's possible to send tax tables, it's right there in the XML API docs...