Local Sales Tax Mod - Support Thread

[sugarhill]

I'm attaching the NY State local tax database, compatible with LadyHLG's Local Sales Tax add-on. It is current as of 8/25/09, and includes the MTA surcharge for applicable areas.

Installation: make sure you have the add-on enabled in "Modules - Order Total". Use "Locations/Taxes - Zone Definitions " to enable NY as a zone. Don't forget to double click on the little folder to the left and configure it for United States. If you have a red dot next to the name, you didn't do that step and it actually tells you that it's not configured.

YOU ARE NOT GOING TO CONFIGURE A TAX RATE. If you've done this right, you should have a yellow dot next to the name.

Use Tools - Install Sql Patches to install my database.

Troubleshooting:

If you don't see anything after this in "locations - Local Sales Taxes", there may be confusion about the table name. Go into your database using whatever your provider offers (MyPHP, etc.) and take a look at the tables in the database. You may have a table called "zen_tax_rate_local." BUT, you may ALSO have a table called "zen_zen_tax_rate_local"! If so, you need to check the zen_tax_rate_local and see if it actually contains anything. You can tell because if it's empty, it won't let you click on the "browse" button. If that's the case, here's what you do:

delete the zen_tax_rate_local table by clicking on it, then click on the Drop tab that's furthest to the right. If you don't see a "Drop" tab, you didn't click on the actual table name, so do that now.

Now, click on the zen_zen_tax_rate_local table, and click on the operations tab. Rename the table to zen_tax_rate_local. Bada bing! Now the rates should appear.

therealex, thanks for this table! Very useful to those of us developing in NYC...

As of Sept 1, 2009 the tax rates have changed. While I was updating the rates in the table, I also **slightly** improved the table to bring it more in line with NYS Dept of Taxation & Finance Publication 718 - tax rates by jurisdiction code. I combined all the county labels for NYC by renaming Kings, Queens, etc to 'New York City' and also added in the city exceptions to the county rates as outlined in Pub 718 (such as "Ithaca City Tax").

Since zip codes to not accurately define cities and tax jurisdictions, I make no warranty or claims as to the accuracy of your NYS Sales Tax returns based on this table. The only way to be 100% accurate is to use the NYS Sales Tax Jurisdiction and Rate Lookup (located here: http://www8.nystax.gov/STLR/stlrHome). However, they provide no API, so you can't do the lookup programmatically at the time of online sale.

This updated table is meant to replace your zen_tax_rates_local table via a complete INSERT, which means you should backup(EXPORT) and DROP your table first. Then just IMPORT the new table from the .sql file you downloaded and unzipped.
Here's the updated table (enjoy!):