Setting up a "conditionally taxed" set of products

[lat9]

The store in question is currently configured to charge tax when a taxable product is shipped to one of 10 US states. It turns out that some of the products (sprinkled in various categories, so it needs to be product-specific) should be tax-free in some of those states.

What's the best way to configure the store's tax setup without custom programming? Do I define a separate Tax Class for each combination of taxable states and then associate the state-specific tax rates to those classes?

For example, the Taxable Goods tax class currently has all 10 states' tax rates associated. If product #1 isn't taxable in TX, I can simply create another tax class Taxable Goods (except TX) that now has 9 states' tax rates associated and then associate that tax-class to the appropriate products.

My concern is that I don't know how many non-taxable combinations I'm going to be dealing with. Is there a better way?

[Ajeh]

For the charging of Tax, if the Products are marked for Taxable Goods:

1 setup your Zones for each of the 10 states
2 set the Tax Rate for each of the 10 states

Now, based on shipping address (default setting), each of the 10 states will get charged the right rate and the other states will NOT be charged tax as they are not in a Zone with a Tax Rate on it.

NOTE: Just because 2 states happen to have the same tax rate today, do not put them in the same Zone Definition as a some point that will change. Making the Tax Rates one per state as needed is best. States not being charged tax, just do not make them a Zone Definition with a Tax Rate.

[lat9]

Ajeh, that's how I've got the store set up right now. I'll (eventually) need to be able to mark some of the products as taxable in a subset of the taxable states.

[Ajeh]

Are you saying that you cannot mark the products as all using Taxable Goods and make the 10 tax zones and be done with it, as in some of the 10 states are taxable on some of the Products while other are not? As in meaning that a given 100 taxable products these 10 states are not each taxable on all 100 products where 1 state is taxable on 20 of the 100 and another state is taxable on 45 of the 100 and another state is taxable on 95 of the products, etc. etc. etc.?

[lat9]

Ajeh, all of what you said is correct.

If, for example, I'm dealing with OR, CA and FL there are products that are taxable in all 3 states, some only in OR, some only in OR and CA ... you get the drift.