Anyone Crack the Texas Sales Tax Conundrum?

I'm currently running the Local Sales Tax mod (Cheers to LadyHLG!) and for four of the five states I have to charge tax in it's outstanding! For the fifth, Texas, I'm stumped. State, County, City, Districts... all quite frustrating. State and city are no brainers, for County and Districts I've hit a wall. Plus, Texas wants all collected taxes itemized and linked to reporting codes. Any folks in Texas who do business in state come up with any creative solutions that don't require crazy hacks or super complicated zone definitions?

You have physical locations in 5 states?

Yes, we do. We have tax nexus in CA, MA, NJ, NY, and the fun one TX. California and New York were a treat to get right (MA and NJ were easy), but in the end fairly straight-forward. Texas is the odd man out.

groan... I'm interested in this question, too. Our comptroller just told me that since we have a "presence" in Texas (we send consultants out there) we need to collect sales tax ONLINE.

As I've looked into Texas, it's a nightmare indeed, because besides state tax, each locality charges it's own little bit extra, and sometimes it's city-based, sometimes county-based, sometimes BOTH.

Do you have a headache yet?

Not to mention we're talking relatively small sums here.

Better to ignore until we get a letter from the Texas State Attorney General, on the warpath for small non-profit organization??

IANAL, but I'd be surprised if the idea that some company which sends consultants to a certain state establishes a presence (nexus) in that state will survive the court case Amazon is pursuing with New York now.

My plan is to ignore these thieves until they come for me.

I don't know about Texas, but most of the Internet tax schemes exempt small businesses (< x million in sales). Mainly they seem to be after the Amazons and Walmarts of the world.

Ditto. The only solution I have come up with is to pay the taxes out of pocket since they're so cheap...doesn't Texas put a max of .02 on combined county/districts taxes? I would just keep track of your Texas sales and figure out the county & district taxes separately whenever they come due...unless you have 1,000+ customers in Texas...then that would get messy! I'm hoping to have very few. :frusty:

Post #11 in this thread has a link to some publications that may be of interest:

w.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=48532&highlight=Harris+County&page=2

Tshooters, that link didn't work, maybe this one will...
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=48532&page=2

Thanks, dbrewster! :clap: