Tax Rules and Zones for Use Taxes - Practical Practices

[ZLA]

Here in Missouri, the total sales tax differs by city because of the use tax. I know I could create separate zones for each use tax region and accompanying tax rules for each.

Has anyone else run into this situation and decided to do something less labor intensive but more practical like setting up just a few tax zones and using an approximate tax rate?

[jmestep]

I haven't actually done it yet, but I thought that if I had to do it for Ohio, I would fudge. Ohio has sales tax by county and sometimes the same zip codes are in two different counties, so even a zip code lookup wouldn't be exact.

[ZLA]

Thanks Judy. I'll let you know what we decide to do.

[mkent]

what sis you do about your Sales Tax issue. have the same issue with California, because the zipcode field in the Zone will only allow 255 characters, I would have top setup approx 50 zone files to cover california. And using a online tax service like Avalar is too expensive.

So I was wondering if you could setup a SQL table and lookup the tax like that.

[ZLA]

My client's accountant said we only need to charge a single tax rate. As I thought about this, it makes sense. Even though there are numerous use tax rates for each individual city, it only seems to apply to where the goods are "sold". So my clien't internet business only charges the sales and use tax rate for their official business location.

Therefore, I set up a Missouri rate that only applies to goods being shipped to the state. All other destinations have no tax.

Hope that helps.

[jmestep]

That's the way Ohio used to be. Then they changed to taxing on the destination based on one of 88 counties in Ohio.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

Washington did something similar. To their credit they published a webservice where you can pass in an address and get the corresponding tax rate. It makes implementing in AbleCommerce a simple matter. I wish other states would produce similar tools if they are bound and determined to collect destination taxes.

[jmestep]

Ohio has a web service, but I haven't tried it yet- I haven't needed it for any new clients.