Local Sales Tax Mod - Support Thread

[robarb]

Hello, LadyHLG.

I absolutely love your local sales tax module and have it working with all 1700+ cities in California. But I have two questions...
1) If a customer enters their city name without proper capitalization, it doesn't get charged tax. I saw a fix on the old forum posting but it doesn't seem to work now. Any ideas?
2) Do you know of any way to correlate the zip code and city (or look up the city based on zip code) to make sure they are properly related?

Thanks again for an incredibly useful mod.

Rob

[LadyHLG]

Rob,
1. As far as my testing has shown the following should work to take care of the city capitalization issue.
At or about line 168:
Change: This

if($myfield == $value){

to this

if(strtolower($myfield) == strtolower($value)){

From what I have seen that works.
If it is not working for you then I will need a more specific example.

2. Unfortunately, the only way this can be done is with some kind of outside address verification, perhaps with the USPS.
I am almost positive the USPS offers this kind of online service but a mod would have be to be written to accomplish it (if there isn't one already, I haven't checked).

LadyHLG

[robarb]

Rob,
1. As far as my testing has shown the following should work to take care of the city capitalization issue.
At or about line 168:
Change: This

if($myfield == $value){

to this

if(strtolower($myfield) == strtolower($value)){

From what I have seen that works.
If it is not working for you then I will need a more specific example.

2. Unfortunately, the only way this can be done is with some kind of outside address verification, perhaps with the USPS.
I am almost positive the USPS offers this kind of online service but a mod would have be to be written to accomplish it (if there isn't one already, I haven't checked).

LadyHLG

Thanks very much for the quick response. I look forward to trying this and will report back.

Rob

[Old Cow]

How should I set up sales tax for Georgia?

• Georgia has about 160 counties.
• Each county has it's own sales tax rate (6-7%).
• The rate is determined by state tax (4%) and varies local taxes (3-4%).
• The rates can change throughout the year.
• A special issue applies to one city (Atlanta), which is located in one county (county sales tax), but charges another 1% city sales tax. This depends on the zip code (city-boundary) and not the city name itself. How can I make sure that Atlanta customer within/-out the city-boundary get charged correctly?

Do I have to create for each county a tax rate? How can I handle the special situation of Atlanta? Would be the Local Sales Tax Module the right choice?

[LadyHLG]

Old Cow,
Here is my suggestion as to how to set up your local tax for Georgia.

1. I would set up each county in Georgia as a zone (sorry this is a long process but it really is the best way). This doesn't actually require the Local Tax mod to do.
There are detailed instructions in the readme for the Local Tax Mod on how to do this. You could also check out the forums to see if anyone else has already done this for your state, it might save you some time.

2. Use the Local Tax Mod to set up the special Atlanta tax by zip code.

I hope that helps.
Let me know if you have any questions.

LadyHLG

[Old Cow]

Thank you. "Use the Local Tax Mod to set up the special Atlanta tax by zip code" seems to be very difficult (no tables available, only a Address Verification Look-up). Hopefully I find a source who went through this.

[LadyHLG]

Do you know how many zip codes in Atlanta are there to set up?

LadyHLG

[Snicklefritz]

Rob,
1. As far as my testing has shown the following should work to take care of the city capitalization issue.
At or about line 168:
Change: This

if($myfield == $value){

to this

if(strtolower($myfield) == strtolower($value)){

From what I have seen that works.
If it is not working for you then I will need a more specific example.


LadyHLG

Which php file should be modified? All 9 of them or is it only in certain ones?

[Snicklefritz]

edit: Thanks LadyH for helping me get this far. I know my questions are pretty basic but thanks for taking the time to answer them. I'm now able to create test customers and see that the tax is being calculated correctly for the few cities that I have entered manually.

[Snicklefritz]

Hello, LadyHLG.

I absolutely love your local sales tax module and have it working with all 1700+ cities in California. But I have two questions...
1) If a customer enters their city name without proper capitalization, it doesn't get charged tax. I saw a fix on the old forum posting but it doesn't seem to work now. Any ideas?
2) Do you know of any way to correlate the zip code and city (or look up the city based on zip code) to make sure they are properly related?

Thanks again for an incredibly useful mod.

Rob

Rob,

May I ask what you did to get this working for all 1700+ cities? I've downloaded a csv file posted in an earlier message and am now digging around trying to find out how to upload this using mySQL or whatever it's called...I'd like to do tax rate by city but I can't imagine doing this by hand.