What do the new Tax Rounding Rule options in 7.0.3 do?

[ozlighting]

I can't figure out what these options are supposed to affect. I have one very basic tax rule called "GST" which adds 10% to all products that are taxable. All prices are set to be displayed with tax included as per Australian law. I have a product with a tax exclusive price of $8.18 which displays correctly as $9.00 in the Product.aspx page. However, If I add 10 of these items to the cart, the checkout price is $89.98 instead of $90.00 as expected. Similarly with a product that has a tax exclusive price of $11.82, it displays correctly as $13.00 but if I add 10 of these to a cart the checkout price becomes $130.02

I have tried all three of the available options for "Rounding Rule" in the new dropdown in the "Edit Tax Rule" admin screen and they all produce the same result. Does anybody know what these are supposed to affect? And, more importantly, how do I get 10 items at $9.00 each to equal $90.00.

Cheers,

Lance

[mazhar]

That setting affects the rounding when showing product price. The reason you are not seeing a rounded value in basket is because that settings is not meant for basket its for only product. In basket if you have 10 items each having 10% tax, in this case sum of 10 rounds can output a significant increase.

[ozlighting]

hi Mazhar,

any ideas on how we get 10 items at $9.00 each to equal a total of $90.00 instead of $89.98

also, has anyone else experienced this problem and created a solution? if so, please let me know what you did. at the moment we're considering turning tax off completely and just uploading all of our products with the tax inclusive price.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

This is an interesting situation. So in your business rules, you calculate tax for each individual item rather than the total?

When AbleCommerce is calculating for multiple items, we do it like this:

(Tax Exclusive Price * Quantity) * Tax Rate = Total Tax
(Tax Exclusive Price * Quantity) + Total Tax = Total Price

You would want it like this:

(Tax Exclusive Price * Tax Rate) = Tax Amount
(Tax Exclusive Price + Tax Amount) * Quantity = Total Price

Is the second scenario the more common way of calculating tax in Australia?

[ozlighting]

Hi Logan, you are correct, because all B to C transactions in Australia must be quoted tax inclusive. Therefore, many businesses will work backwards from the tax inclusive price to get the gst exclusive amount just by dividing by 1.1. For example, a shop might decide to sell something for $95 - this will be a tax inclusive amount. When the customer pays and the receipt is printed, the total amount will say $95 and then somewhere on the receipt the shop must print something like "Includes GST of $8.64".

In AbleCommerce it's a little different because we input the prices with tax excluded and then work forwards from there, however, ideally I would like to be able to enter my prices in AbleCommerce with the tax included and let AbleCommerce work out the tax component when the receipt is printed. A neat way that I have seen to do this exists in Saasu (www.saasu.com) which is our online accounting system. They provide a checkbox next to the amount so that I can indicate whether the entered amount is tax inclusive or tax exclusive. Then based on whether the checkbox is ticked or not, the system will determine how to deal with the entered amount (e.g. add tax to it, or subtract tax from it).

do you have any ideas on how I can get my 10 $9 products to equal $90? based on your post it's looking like my two options are not to use AC's tax funtionality at all or to customise the way the totals are calculated. Any other Australian stores out there had to deal with this already? how did you guys get round it?

Cheers,

Lance

[Logan Rhodehamel]

I know it doesn't help you immediately, but the feedback is important. I want the tax calculations to support our non US customers as well. At one time we toyed with having a prices are tax inclusive checkbox. I am going to look into this issue and see if I can offer any help but it may take me a couple of days to get to it.

[jmadlin]

We are hitting this issue too in the UK. Is there any solution to this? We are happy to write code if the we can be shown where in the api to access this as we can't currently find the tax rounding rule exposed.