Sales tax is showing as $0.00 in checkout screens 2 & 3

[Evan.Ausman]

We recently upgraded to zen cart 1.5.0 from 1.3.8h (modified). We have one zone setup for California. When we place an order to be sent to a California address, it shows the 'CA Sales Tax' line in the checkout screen 2 & 3, but shows $0.00 instead of the correct tax. This used to work in zen cart 1.3.8h.
We have changed the setting to 'display prices with taxes' and that works to include the tax for each line item, but we want to have the taxes show in the separate line item, as it used to do in the previous version of zen cart. Something in the code is not referencing the sales tax for the checkout properly.

Does someone have a fix, or know which file to look in and where in the file to look for the calculation for the 'tax' line in the checkout screens (the taxes are also not being sent to Authorize.net).

I have seen a number of posts regarding sales tax issues, so hopefully someone has an answer, or can point me to the file and the code, so I can begin to troubleshooting the issue.

[RodG]

Do you have the 'Tax' enabled in your modules->order_total settings?

Cheers
Rod

[Evan.Ausman]

Yes, the 'tax' is enabled. As I said it is applying the tax if I select 'display prices with taxes'.

[DrByte]

We recently upgraded to zen cart 1.5.0 from 1.3.8h (modified). We have one zone setup for California. When we place an order to be sent to a California address, it shows the 'CA Sales Tax' line in the checkout screen 2 & 3, but shows $0.00 instead of the correct tax...

We have changed the setting to 'display prices with taxes' and that works to include the tax for each line item, but we want to have the taxes show in the separate line item ...

In my fresh install of Zen Cart v1.5.0, which has "Display taxes included in prices" set to false (which is the normal setting for any US store), when I set up a tax Zone to "california", and specifically add US:California to that zone's definition, and then set a tax rate (of 10% for JUST A TEST) with that zone and the tax class assigned to a product, then when I add that product to my shopping cart and go thru checkout with a California address, I see:
Subtotal: $25.00
Tax: $2.50
Shipping (Flat rate): $2.00
Total: $29.50

... which obviously calculates the tax and adds it in using the normal order-total amounts, finally adding it all up to the grand total correctly.

That's without any customizations, nor any plugins, nor any code alterations, and no other changes to admin settings, all based on a brand new install.

What's different between your site and my basically virgin site that would be causing yours to behave differently? What exact steps can I take with my site to consistently recreate your symptoms every time? Therein lies the key to fixing your problem.

[Evan.Ausman]

We set the 'Display prices with taxes' and the taxes were added to the items when the items in the store were browsed or added to the shopping cart.

We are trying to isolate the code file that deals with adding and displaying the taxes in the checkout process starting on 'Checkout page 2 of 3'.

Do you know what the file name is that manages this and where the code is that is supposed to add up the taxes? This seems to be problem; the tax field does not seem to be referenced properly.

We can do further debugging, but need to know where to look.

[DrByte]

I'm trying to understand why the code works fine for 100,000 other websites but not yours.

How has your site's code been altered?

[Evan.Ausman]

You are right!!
This is a modified web site that we are trying to maintain and recently upgraded from Zen Cart 1.3.8h (modified) to Zen Cart 1.5.0.

- If we have 'Display prices with tax' enabled, it does show it correctly throughout the entire web site. This is how we know the tax rate is set properly and being applied, but not listed separately.

- We have the California tax calculation set properly

- We have 'Display prices with tax' disabled so we can get the taxes to display as a separate line item in the checkout. We want to be able to see the total taxes as a separate line item in the checkout screens, as we did in Zen Cart 1.3.8h.

- We try to order as a customer in California, and the tax shows as ' CA Sales Tax: $0.00' on 'Checkout 2 of 3' and 'Checkout 3 of 3' pages.


We just need to know what the file name is that manages the tax calculation, for the tax break-out in the 'Checkout screen 2 of 3' and 'Checkout screen 3 of 3'.

[RodG]

We just need to know what the file name is that manages the tax calculation, for the tax break-out in the 'Checkout screen 2 of 3' and 'Checkout screen 3 of 3'.

If you look at the URL displayed in your webbrowser, it appears that screen#2 = checkout_payment, and screen#3 = checkout_confirmation.

These files are both located in the /includes/modules/pages folder, BUT, these pages only handle the output display, the actual tax calculations are performed by the /includes/functions/functions_taxes.php file and are used throughout all pages of the site

There may or may not be other files involved. Perhaps if you could provide the URL to your store we may be able to offer additional advice/suggestions.

Cheers
Rod