I am just now trying to set up a shopping cart and reading about setting up the tax % in the cart.

In Kansas you must charge the sales tax according to the jurisdiction where the purchaser lives. There are over 100 counties and the large cities may have 10 or more jurisdictions. Many other states have this same law!! It is called 'destination based sourcing' So when someone buys a widget from us here in Kansas and he lives in a little town that charges 5.3 state sales tax and 1% city tax we must charge 6.3% total. Like I said many jurisdictions are different in their local taxes.

Paypal does allow you to put in every jurisdiction and the correct sales tax for each one. What a job it is to add all these different sales tax figures! -- nearly every zip code in Kansas has a different tax rate. This tax rate includes the state sales tax plus any local sales tax for the town/county/etc.

Has SCC changed and gives you a way to add many different tax jurisdictions? Like I said I am just looking into this. I see you can add states but how about 100 or more zip codes. Will it recognize zip codes when someone makes a purchase? Didn't want to put all that info in if it doesn't work.
thanks!

A nightmare if you consider that the shopping cart is available the world round to all those different countries with their own taxation systems!
I just added a single tax for my own country and have left all the international ones blank as that is the way things work here for now.
Are you absolutely sure you are hitting a total nation audience with your product? I agree that it sounds like a quagmire. Wonder if anyone else has looked into this in the US and can come up with a helpful answer?

Yea, the only way to do this is to charge a flat tax. I have to do this for my web design company. My thoughts were that I have to pay taxes on the income that I receive from clients, therefore, that percentage will get passed on to them. It does not matter to me what they pay in their state.

Well, according to law we cannot just charge a flat tax-- you must charge tax according to where the item is shipped in our state.
Janys, I am only trying to find out how to incorporate all the different jurisdictions in our state into the SCC.

We don't collect sales tax on orders shipped out of the USA. We only have a physical office/warehouse in Kansas so this sales tax law only applies to orders we ship within Kansas.

Yes it is a nightmare. Anyone know if the zip codes would calculate within the shopping cart?
thanks!

That is untrue. The law states: sales tax is only charged if said store has a physical presence within a given state and as such is obligated by that states tax laws.

Otherwise you may be thinking of the "use tax", in which case the buyer of the item must itemize their internet purchase at the end of the year.

Either case has nothing to do with us as online retailers.

Prairie.... as it happens I spent a good part of yesterday looking into this to try to understand what I had to charge people, and certainly the US system was pretty incredible. I think the UK is pretty strict too but in Italy we have until 2012 I think before we have to actually find out where out customers come from outside Italy. So for Italian customers a flat 20% and for all those outside we need charge nothing.

As for results using the zip code... you might be well to ask CC direct on that one as I really can't say. I believe the answer will be no but could be wrong.

I have the same thing with my shop being a county driven tax in many areas, and in fact many cities here in Alabama are now expect us to collect their tax for them too now. You can do like I did and setup a system that when they choose their particular location it will automatically compute the rest for them behind the scenes.

It may end up looking a little confusing in the end unfortunately when I finally get around to adding the info for the other cities to my taxing because you have to add each thing separately since not every single county or city expects me to collect, only a few.

Right now I have only my own county, my own city, the state of AL and then Other State on the tax list for them to choose from. Hopefully they will choose correctly. I'll most likely redo it so it's a little clearer when I get to that point.

Anyways, you can name the selections anything you want so name them for what they are. That keeps it simple for you and your customers.

You can also combine areas if you see that some counties have the same tax, then put them together in one selection if there is room (can't remember how many chars can be used for the titles). Other than that just create a selection for your state, a selection for your city (this will include need to include all the state, county and city taxes into it), and a selection for each of the counties you are needing to cover and name each one so that the customer will know to choose their particular location if it's listed and to choose just the State or Other State (or whatever you name it) if their location isn't listed.

Each time you setup a new location it will give you the options of which taxes to put into it so it's not too hard to manipulate, just time consuming for the most part. The dropdown box this will create shouldn't be too hard for them to deal with as long as you keep the Names of the selections clear enough for them to realize what to do.

It will indeed be a tedious thing, but once you get the hang of how to set this up it will go by pretty swiftly I think. Also be sure to include a line or 2 in your view cart page info so your customers know to choose their locations and that they will need to do so correctly to alleviate any delays or invoice changes. This will usually help them to know not to choose the one that will give them $0 charge even when they are in your city if they know it will end up making them do another invoice and maybe get charged for it and of course it will delay their order.

Looks like Jo got some rest on her vacation. She got all excited with the keyboard.

Thanks for all the input! After reading the info I had from our Kansas Dept of Rev I decided to call them and find out if what I was understanding correctly. I also had gone to a seminar about 3 yrs ago to understand our liability with Sales Tax and internet sales.

Since each state is different there is really no need to go into all the Kansas laws -- except to say that our law in regard to internet sales says
"the internet is a method of attracting and transacting retail business. If the retailer and buyer are in Kansas, Kansas sales tax is due on a retail sale (including shipping and handling charges), whether that sale is made in person, by phone, by fax or over the internet. The rate of sales tax charged on the sale will be the rate where the customer takes delivery, according to the destination sourcing rules. "

Now remember this is Kansas and this is how we must do it.

The person I talked to told me that a physical presence or 'nexus' as they call it ----does indeed mean a home office, a room in your house to warehouse product , etc.

JoAnn thanks for your ideas and I will be working on it more tomorrow. Reason we need the zip code is that some towns / cities have several or even many different tax rates.

I did find out today that I can include the sales tax in the item price but that it must be clearly stated that the price "includes all applicable sales taxes". So have to think on all this some more.

Thanks again to you'all

Prairie, I am also based in Kansas but the majority of my orders are shipped out of state. I charge the base Kansas tax rate (currently 5.3% but going up to 6.3% on July 1) and just pay the difference myself. All of my orders are entered into a database. When it comes time to pay the state, I run a query of all Kansas orders, what was ordered, the amounts, and any tax collected. I use the results to determine how much I owe the state, what I've already collected, and how much will come out of my pocket. I have very few in-state orders and am only required to pay annually (that may be changing, however, since electronic filing will be required effective July 1). This approach may not work well for you if most of your orders are shipped within the state.

As Jo Ann stated above, you would need to enter all of the possible tax rates in the Shop Settings > Tax Preferences section of SCC. You then must rely on the customer to select the appropriate tax rate (not likely to happen often) at the time of checkout.

Good luck...