Local Sales Tax Mod - Support Thread

Hi Don,
Somewhere in your upgrade process you missed the step to remove and then reinstall the mod.
Its a simple process. Just go to the Admin,
Modules -> Order Total -> Local Sales Tax, make note of your settings there and then uninstall the mod (just click the remove button at the top). Dont worry, you wont loose your tax data. Once its been uninstalled, reinstall it. You should now see the debugging options in the admin.
Hope that helps.
Have a good weekend.
LadyHLG

Hi LadyHLG,

Thanks for your feedback. I thought I did do that but apparently not. To verify, after uninstalling through Admin, Modules -> Order Total -> Local Sales Tax which instructions do I follow to re-install?

When I read for the instructions for 2.3 it said that version was for upgrade only, and to install 2.2 first. So I went to 2.2 and looked at the instructions for upgrade which told me to install 2.0a first. 2.0a's install instructions said if I had 1.1 (which I believe I did) just do an upgrade to get to 2.0a. I did that, and then did an upgrade to 2.2, then I installed the 2.3 upgrade. Are those the wrong steps? Should I just go straight to a particular version?

thanks,
Don

donplay:

Hi LadyHLG,

Hope you're having a good holiday weekend. First off thank you for the great contribution. I've been trying to upgrade from a previous to the most current version but have run into a problem. I was on 1.0 or 1.1 (not positive, it was so long ago) and followed the upgrade instructions to go up to 2.0a first, then 2.2, then added 2.3 (per instructions that 2.3 was upgrade only). I seem to be close but I see 2 things wrong, maybe you can help pinpoint the problem which seem debug related. I've gone back and done manual file by file comparisons with the 2.2 and 2.3 upgrade files and everything seems like it's right.

1. I don't seem to have the Debug Option visible in the admin in Modules -> Order Total -> Local Sales Tax.
2. On the payment page during checkout it lists a line for every single local tax rate in the following format. Seems like the debug option is on which I can't turn off in admin because of issue #1.

*Local Tax Rec ID: 2196
Tax Name: 11201 NYC Sales Tax 4.375% - 6.13

[etc...lists 2205 of these, one for each local sales tax]

Tax based on customer shipping zone 43
2205 matching tax zones found*

Appreciate the mod contribution and all your help...hope you have a good holiday weekend.

thanks,
Don

Ah...nevermind. After doing all those steps I just did the uninstall/re-install through admin and the debug statements have gone away on the payment page. Seems like I'm good!

I did all the steps for upgrade on my test server. I'm going to do it on the real server today but wanted to ask - do I have to take all those incremental upgrade steps from 1.1 to 2.0a, then to 2.2, then to 2.3, or is there a more straightforward way to upgrade from 1.1 to 2.3?

thanks,
Don

LadyHLG:

psychicpet,
In order to upload the data you will need to get the data organized first. The data provided as is from the state of CA will not work as I am sure there are duplicate city names (this happens when a city spans more than one county and therefore may have different tax rates for different parts of the city in each county). The only way you can have duplicate city names is if you are using counties as zones and each city name is linked to a different zone (i.e county). This is not a simple process, but is much more accurate than assigining a single tax rate to a city name.

If you do not want to use the cities by county method then you will have remove all the duplicate city names otherwise you will run into problems with the tax mod.

Once you get the data organized that far I can help you get it into the proper format to upload via mysql.

LadyHLG
Has any one gotten this to work for CA? We are working on a cart for a customer in CA, who would like to accurately collect CA sales tax. If so, would that some body be willing to share their findings with us?

Don,
Unfortunately I do believe you have to go through each step, as each one adds different components.
LadyHLG

jprough:

Has any one gotten this to work for CA? We are working on a cart for a customer in CA, who would like to accurately collect CA sales tax. If so, would that some body be willing to share their findings with us?

I too would be interested in this. I'm just in the process of uploading version 2.0a of this mod and will eventually have to do something similar to you. why can't all the tax zones be the same? :censored:

fortunately we have this help thread to save us (hopefully) :lookaroun

I have the most recent version of zencart (installed last week) and just downloaded version 2.0a of this mod. The installation instructions said to "(1) Copy all files inside the catalog folder to your cart"

So I see an "admin" and an "include" subfolder. Each of those have many different subfolders. Last time I tried to install someone else's mod I messed everything up and had to reinstall zencart. This explains what I think is a very basic question:

After opening all the subfolders, I see there are a total of 8 php files that come with the "local sales tax" mod. I'm assuming that rather than copying any of the subfolders, I should just locate the individual files and then copy them separately into my Store/Admin/wherever
according to the individual series of folders and subfolders shown in the tax mod that I downloaded?

Snicklefritz,
If moving the files over one at a time is how you wish to do it then go ahead that will work just fine.
Might a suggest you back up your database and site files before you start. That way if anything happens all you have to do is return to the backup files and start over.

Good luck withe the install.

LadyHLG

LadyHLG:

Snicklefritz,
If moving the files over one at a time is how you wish to do it then go ahead that will work just fine.
Might a suggest you back up your database and site files before you start. That way if anything happens all you have to do is return to the backup files and start over.

Good luck withe the install.

LadyHLG

ok I copied everything over. How do I run the sql file? (I'm really new at this)

In the cart admin go to Tools -> Install SQL Patches

From there you can either upload the sql file or copy and paste the contents of the file.

Good Luck,
LadyHLG

LadyHLG:

In the cart admin go to Tools -> Install SQL Patches

From there you can either upload the sql file or copy and paste the contents of the file.

Good Luck,
LadyHLG

I tried what you suggested when I tried to upload but nothing new appears in Modules..Order totals. What I see is shown below.
I thought maybe I did something wrong so I tried cutting and pasting but I get an error saying the following:
Failed: 1
Error ERROR: Cannot create table tax_rates_local because it already exists
Warning Note: 1 statements ignored. See "upgrade_exceptions" table for additional details.

=====================

COD Fee
Discount Coupon
Group Discount
Gift Certificates
Low Order Fee
Shipping
Sub-Total
Tax
Total
Module Directory: /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs/Store/includes/modules/order_total/

Update: I went back through some of the earlier threads and noticed that a similar problem was described in posts 16 and 40. I made sure to include the semicolon when cutting and pasting, but unlike in post #40, that didn't solve the problem. I also looked in my zencart database and on the bar on the left I see tax_rates_local listed there. When I click on it, I see 8 different fields listed in the center of the screen, including "local_tax_id", "zone_id", "local_fieldmatch"...

So it appears the table is in the database, but this is getting into things I'm not that familiar with but hopefully there's a simple explanation for what's going on.

Snicklefritz,
Unfortunately, if you are not seeing the mod listed under Modules -> Order Totals then the most likely reason is you have not copied all of the files over correctly.

I'm afraid that is about as much as I can help at this point based on the info so far.

LadyHLG

LadyHLG:

Snicklefritz,
Unfortunately, if you are not seeing the mod listed under Modules -> Order Totals then the most likely reason is you have not copied all of the files over correctly.

I'm afraid that is about as much as I can help at this point based on the info so far.

LadyHLG

Maybe part of the problem is the Admin folder. There are two admin folders, htdocs/Admin and htdocs/Store/Admin.

I put the local_tax files in the first one, but after moving them to the second one then it installed properly. Makes me wonder why there are two admin folders, but at least the tax thing installed...

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

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. :wacko:

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.

LadyHLG

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

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.

Hi Snicklefritz, Here is what I found when I was looking in to this for a customer of ours.

First I would suggest you refer to Publication 105 at the California Board of Equalization web site. After finding this document in a Google search I actually called the California Board of Equalization for clarification.

Long story made short. You don't have to charge each individual district rates. You only have to charge for the district(s) you hold a business presence in. The catch here is that if you deliver out side of your district using your company vehicle, the you have a presence in that district, and there for have to collect the tax. Any California orders out side of districts you have a presence, IE you ship via Fedex,UPS or USPS you are only required to collect the California sales tax of 8.25%.

What we did was set up a zone for Ca of 8.25. Then used this mod to ad one more zone with each zip code with in this costumers county. Any one with one of these zip codes gets charged an additional 0.5%

Hope this helps

This Local Sales Tax Mod made it a lot easyer than we expected. This is a great mod, Thanks LadyHLG

jprough:

Hi Snicklefritz, Here is what I found when I was looking in to this for a customer of ours.

First I would suggest you refer to Publication 105 at the California Board of Equalization web site. After finding this document in a Google search I actually called the California Board of Equalization for clarification.

Long story made short. You don't have to charge each individual district rates. You only have to charge for the district(s) you hold a business presence in. The catch here is that if you deliver out side of your district using your company vehicle, the you have a presence in that district, and there for have to collect the tax. Any California orders out side of districts you have a presence, IE you ship via Fedex,UPS or USPS you are only required to collect the California sales tax of 8.25%.

What we did was set up a zone for Ca of 8.25. Then used this mod to ad one more zone with each zip code with in this costumers county. Any one with one of these zip codes gets charged an additional 0.5%

Hope this helps

This Local Sales Tax Mod made it a lot easier than we expected. This is a great mod, Thanks LadyHLG

Many thanks for your post. This simplifies things considerably! Looks like I just have to add the info for zipcodes in alameda county. :clap:

To jprough:

I set this up and am able to get the correct taxes when shipping addresses are within my county. However, no tax is charged when the shipping addresses are within california, but outside my county.

The drop down menu for field selector is showing zipcode, city and suburb. I'm using version 2.0a of this mod in case that makes a difference. What should I change to fix the problem I'm having?