TaxCloud Addon

[swguy]

@twitchtoo did you create a second TaxCloud account for testing or have you figured out how to put their system into test mode? I am getting collisions between orders on the live site and orders on my local test cart.

[swguy]

The TaxCloud team is looking into handling refunds, which their current integration does not do. Hopefully they will have an update for Zen Cart soon.

[Perry D. Vogel]

TaxCloud Merchant Terms of Service have changed as of January 2021. They no longer offer to provide the service entirely free of charge.

[fravac]

I need to update to v1.5.7d. Has anyone had success using the current TaxCloud plugin version in any of the 1.57 versions?

[travbacon]

don't bother. go with another tax service. taxcloud is not really free and the way they have it set up, even if you are not supposed to pay taxes in certain states because you do not reach the threshold, they will still subscribe to those states for you and you will then be forced to pay sales tax. this is only if you want them to auto pay for you, they then subscribe you to the entire dealio. it comes out to be very expensive for their service esp if they set you up for states you do not reach the threshold for and then have to collect and pay sales tax.

plus their customer support is the worst. you will fight tooth and nail to get them to fix their mistakes and they take forever to reply. we had to do a total of 3 charge backs, once for a glitch in their system that charged us $50 for no reason, 2 because they kept charging us after we cancelled and got a cancellation confirmation from them. they kept making promises they would refund us on the next billing cycle (why do we have to wait for their next billing cycle? never heard of that).

RUN FROM THIS SERVICE

[fravac]

I've been with them for a while. I can't disagree with anything you are saying. Had had my issues with them in the past. Stopped calling a couple years ago.

I'm not aware of any other tax service option/plugin that works with zen cart for the U.S.

I can live with the issues if I have to.

I have a couple of zen cart stores, but the one with TaxCloud is 1.55f.

Was hoping to go into the 1.57 family if I know I can get TaxCloud to work.

I use a very limited amount of plugins.

[travbacon]

Most likely because of this one issue and how "plugins" are done here and with the core files needing to be edited, we most likely are moving to wordpress since everything is modular in design. no wp core edits, you add a plugin and the user base and plugins are huge! we are doing our research right now.

[travbacon]

I can live with the issues if I have to.

The issue is since they are part of the "streamline" they will subscribe you to all the states that are part of that group, so even if you don't reach the threshold of some of those states, you will have to collect sales tax and pay it to those states. not sure why they set it up that way but it's dumb and you end up with more headache down the road, paying more plus the issue of order cancellations, etc. their plugin does not work right for that so you'll end up doing manual paperwork and they no longer support their own plugin.

it's not worth it. zencart needs a better way of doing plugins with more plugin authors that don't require core edits. this isn't 2001. i think wordpress is the way to go. just about all the competitors in my field have move to a wordpress type modular ecommerce site.

[fravac]

I'm familiar with wordpress and have woocommerce running in a sandox.

Specific to ecommerce, I like zen cart a lot. Been using it since 2005.

I just need TaxCloud to work for 1.57 so I can upgrade.

[travbacon]

i like zc too, been using osc since 2001 and migrated to zc back in 2004 but it's too much of a pain to keep update with the core edits. i'm here to sell and make money, not spend most of my time worrying about zc crashing or being outdated because the newer version of php or mysql won't work with it and risking a breach.

zc, imo, isn't up with the times, again my opinion