Setting Taxes for All States in USA

Ok i know there has got to be a different way than having to setup Locations for each state and then having to add the tax. I’ve noticed when we do that that anyone that has customized shipping we have to go into and change each location in the shipping methods to





Show rates for location:

• Default destination (all countries) (+) • APO/FPO (+) • Arkansas (+) • Canada • Colorado (+) • Georgia (+)

• Illinois (+) • Kentucky (+) • Minnesota (+) • Nebraska (+) • New York (+) • Tennessee (+)

• Texas (+) • USA (+)





So i have to go into each one and setup the shipping in here. I know there has got to be a different way where i don’t have to edit each locations shipping options.



Any ideas?

Maybe this can help



[url=“CS-Cart Documentation — CS-Cart 4.15.x documentation”]CS-Cart Documentation — CS-Cart 4.15.x documentation

no that's not helping me it's wanting me to do individual locations for each state for it to show i don't think i should have to do that though. IT's a pain when it comes to setting shipping cause i have to set each one of those seperatley

It's the only way if you need separate taxes for each state.

I read on another post that cs-cart may support 3rd party software that would handle multiple state taxes. Not sure when that would happen.

Just curious as to what current situation would require you or anyone else to collect taxes for all states, necessitating 50 locations? I just collect tax for Items shipped to PA, since this is where I am located and don't have a presence in any other state.

Bob

[quote]Just curious as to what current situation would require you or anyone else to collect taxes for all states, necessitating 50 locations? I just collect tax for Items shipped to PA, since this is where I am located and don’t have a presence in any other state.

Bob[/quote]



Exactly what I was just wondering after reading this thread… Not even Amazon.com has a presence in all 50 states! :shock:

I was wondering that too but it’s none of my business and I was just answering the question.



However, I can tell you that California requires you to collect and pay sales tax even if you do not have a presence. So if you are not in Cali and shipping there, don’t get caught. :)

Interesting!



California runs there state as if they are some independent country! Oh well, I will just view it as helping to stimulate their states economy by not charging CA residents sales tax!



Arnold made a much better action hero than governor… ;-)

Actually it seems they run it like Nobama is running the US…driving it straight to hell.

This what I found about the new California Law. Still trying to find on official state site:

“That changes Saturday, when a new law passed by the cash-strapped state goes into effect. Every out-of-state business that sells more than $1 million in merchandise to California customers will be required to collect sales tax and ship it back to state coffers. Before, that was only true of companies with a store in the state, like Target or Wal-Mart.”

Looks like a $1 million minimum threshold, I guess based on a previous year data. Well that leaves me out!

Bob

We are running the Multi Vendor edition. Each vendor has to have there own state tax put int. In order to do that we are having to put in a location for each state that we have a vendor in. It seems like when we enter a new state we have to go back into the older ones that have already setup the shipping and redo it for there's for that new state. This is going to become really complicated the more vendors we get.

When I was in the corporate world, we used to handle car sales. Taxes are the biggest pain in the ass there is.

Not only do you have state, but you have county, city and sometimes other jurisdictions that don't even map to anything useful (like city/state/zip). In addition, you can have other taxes related to the products you sell. I.e. tire taxes, fuel taxes, etc. If you are in Las Vegas Nv and sell a car to someone who lives in Phoenix Az, you have to be aware of all the tax details of their destination (state, city, other local, etc.) otherwise you become liable for that tax.



So limiting to state is only a small part. California has many local taxes by county, city or other geographically defined areas.



When you get into trying to manage at the city (or other than state) level where codes are not used in the cart, you're going to encounter issues with spelling, punctuation and capitalization too (customer enters LA instead of Los Angeles)…



If/when this is ever REALLY required, I would suggest you use a professional service that keeps up with the taxes. No individual merchant will ever be able to keep up with the tax rate changes that occur on a daily basis.

We have to develop a custom table lookup for CA clients using the CSV spreadsheet California makes available for destination based sales tax.



However, since it only lists out the regional areas, cities, you need to procure a zip-range database and enter it into CS Cart that way.



This is because on a simple string-match … you are going to not get the right rate if the customer spells the city differently that what can be validated (san fransisco, SanFrancisco, San Fran, etc… poor spelling not withstanding… ) hence the need for zip-ranges associated with the region rates.



http://www.boe.ca.gov/sutax/pam71.htm



For WA State, the Dept of Revenue has made a web service available for rate look-ups based on zip +4 …which is really nice. No updating needed. We built an add-on for this we'll be releasing soon… I just wish there was an easier solution for CA tax.

What I've done is download the state tax rates from http://www.taxrates.com Then I combined the different states into percentages based on the zip code. Then I made a location for each percentage and pasted in my zip codes. Then I assigned the appropriate tax rates for each percentage.



This is pretty easy to do for just 1 state, but if you have 15 states, this is a lot more work.



I hope that helps,



Brandon