Zones and rules for sales tax

[chuckdvc]

I am trying to set up a sales tax for our State only. I created a Zone named Kentucky with the following settings. Include Selected Countries as United States. Include Selected Provinces as Kentucky.


In tax settings I chose- Show prices without tax and Show taxes in Summary only, no column display.


Tax code is only one- Taxable

Tax rule is
Kentucky Sales tax
taxable is checked
the rate is entered
Only apply to selected zones with Kentucky being the only 1 checked.
Customer shipping address is used(there should be an option to say shipping or billing address)
Group filter set to exclude the Dealer group


Here is the problem.
If an order has an address with Ky in it it does exactly as its supposed to do. if the address is entered outside of KY it also does exactly as its supposed to do.
Good so far. But when a customer has not entered an address it is showing the tax as a line item. So the customer assumes they are being charged tax. They drop out before ever entering address to find out they wont be charged tax. I have no idea where this is coming from. Is it something I have set up wrong?

[mazhar]

System by default calculates tax on the basis of Store address if it doesn't found any address available. It seems to me that your store address is also a valid Kentucky address that's why its showing calculated tax amount. If you want system not to calculate/show tax if there is no address available then you need to make a small modification in your Basket Summary control. I am attaching modified control file here. Just extract attachment and then place file in your ConLib folder. But don't forget to take backup of existing file, it will be helpful if you revert changes in future.

[chuckdvc]

Thank you , we will give it a try.

Dont quite understand why it would be programed to use the store address since the reason I have to charge tax in KY is because I am in KY. But it is what it is and I do appreciate the help.

[chuckdvc]

It worked for me when i tested it but I am still seeing dropped baskets with tax in them. Could there be something else that could be flagging it.

[chuckdvc]

Not sure of this is it but we set the products as taxable and then clicked taxable in the rule. This may have added tax to the product set as taxable in addition to the address being in KY. Once I unclicked taxable the tax went away.

But after further testing then the tax doesn't show up at all even for KY addresses. This is a major issue as customers will be reluctant to checkout or add their address if they think they are going to pay tax. We also have to collect tax for KY sales.

Surely many others have come across this issue and there is something I am doing wrong. Any other help appreciated.

[jmestep]

I had to do some research on this a couple of weeks ago and took off the tax display in the order on the right side of the one page checkout because all of the client's products are non-taxable. I found that in the database there was a tax entry created for each order, with a zero amount to start out. You could probably change that tax display to not show at first, but make it visible when the customer has entered the address and tax is >0.

[chuckdvc]

I assume thats something my webmaster has to do.

I did change to "bill tax based on Billing address" instead of shipping address and for now it seems to work correct. But it has seemed to work correct before. We will see.

[chuckdvc]

Well seems we are back to square 1. I had thought the tax showed up in the cart that I could see but not the customer. If the customer is logged in with a Non ky address they dont see it. But a new customer adding to their cart sees the tax. Surely this has been a problem for many others and there is a fix.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

The tax settings in 7.0.2 were geared toward international customers who needed to display VAT amounts. Thought was not given to how US customers might implement this feature. In the next release, we have enhanced this feature to make it more useful in your scenario.

[chuckdvc]

I just logged into another Able store and the tax function worked the way it should. So how is this done. All i want it to do is not show the tax until it is applicable; Customers address is in my state. The other cart did not show the tax prematurely. Not sure if what I am asking is a special scenario.

[mazhar]

May be the default warehouse address would be different for that store. Did you applied my posted solution? Are there any other potential locations that still needs to be adjusted for display?

[chuckdvc]

Yes, i confirmed with my webmaster yesterday that he did apply it.
I found the address in the configure warehouse but I doubt that can be changed without messing up the shipping quotes through USPS and UPS. I am hoping this is something I am being stupid about and I am just missing as I cant believe the programming would be set up this way.

[chuckdvc]

I still cant explain what is happening. I have spoken with customers who add product to their cart and they dont show sales tax. When I look from the back end using "who is online" or "abandoned baskets" I see the tax. I dont see the tax if they have an address in their user profile and its non KY.

So Mazhar did your fix just mask the tax in shopping carts until they enter an address? This would mean the data field is still there and why I can see it on the back side. If so then your fix may be working just like its supposed to.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

So Mazhar did your fix just mask the tax in shopping carts until they enter an address? This would mean the data field is still there and why I can see it on the back side. If so then your fix may be working just like its supposed to.

This is what the file appears to do when I checked it. These tax issues are resolved in the coming release. There are new options on the tax settings page to do exactly what Mazhar's file does, except that it prevents the tax from being calculated in the first place rather than just masking display.

[AlexG]

May be the new update(7.0.3) can help with this.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

May be the new update(7.0.3) can help with this.

Yes, this is best corrected with 7.0.3. I wanted to confirm something that relates to Mazhar's patch. When you review the abandoned carts on the admin side, you will see the taxes. There is no good way to stop the calculator from adding them to the basket prior to the customer address being added. The patch provided by Mazhar masks the display of the taxes until the customer address is added.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

I am attaching modified control file here.

This is recorded as a known issue in 7.0.2 and we will produce a service patch shortly with a correction. I have removed Mazhar's patch as the official update should be obtained from the 7.0.2 known issues page.

Edit: Until the 7.0.2 service release is published the individual patch for this problem can be obtained here: http://bugs.ablecommerce.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8141

[chuckdvc]

I found today that a customer who was not signed in is seeing the sales tax. I have also had 2 customers who had tax added tot heir order and they were exempt.
So since we did the work around in 7.0.2 it was working ok. Now that we have upgraded to 7.03 it seems to be popping up again. Is there something we need to change now to get it to work properly?

[Logan Rhodehamel]

In 7.0.3 check your tax settings from the merchant admin menu. I believe there is a way to specify how anonymous / unregistered users are treated.

[chuckdvc]

Shopping Display: When users are shopping for products, how do you want the taxes to display in the catalog and shopping cart? If you show taxes for all users, anonymous shoppers, without known addresses, have taxes calculated based on your store's default warehouse address.
Do not show taxes while shopping.

Invoice Display: When users are checking out or viewing order invoices, how do you want the taxes to display? If you show taxes for all users, anonymous shoppers, without known addresses, have taxes calculated based on your store's default warehouse. Once the user enters an address as part of checkout, any tax will be adjusted accordingly.
Show summary tax details only.



Are those the correct settings.

[mazhar]

You can adjust tax display settings from Administration > Configure > Taxes > Settings page.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

Are those the correct settings.

They should be correct - with those settings you have customers who see tax in the checkout without being signed in?