I am trying to figure out if I have something setup wrong. I only charge sales tax in one state. Even the though the customer is registered and logged in, the sales tax follows them all the way through the checkout process and then drops at the last minute (if applicable). This worries the customers because it says “FL Sales Tax”, but still registers in their cart even if they are not from Florida.
I would like for the cart to show no tax UNTIL the checkout has determined that the customer IS a Florida resident based on their delivery address or registration address.
Is this a misconfiguration on my part, or is this just a limitation of the software?
Thank you
In Design->Appearance settings, uncheck “Estimate taxes using default address on cart/checkout pages”
Bob
Thank you for the response… I checked that setting and it was already “unchecked”. Could it be something else that I am missing?
That is the only setting I am aware of. When it is unchecked, it should not calculate taxes for users who are not logged in - those users would have no address information to use for tax calculation.
You might want to try clearing cookies - there may be some information saved as a result of you being previously logged in as a customer.
Bob
You can also remove the default address information, as explained in this thread:
[url]http://forum.cs-cart.com/showthread.php?t=15292[/url]
If you do this, make sure you double-check any realtime shipping methods. I think they may also use this information to pass to the online shipping calculators.
Bob
[quote name=‘jobosales’]That is the only setting I am aware of. When it is unchecked, it should not calculate taxes for users who are not logged in - those users would have no address information to use for tax calculation.
You might want to try clearing cookies - there may be some information saved as a result of you being previously logged in as a customer.
Bob[/QUOTE]
Yeah, that’s what I thought, that makes the most sense. For some reason, it always carries the tax and then removes it at the end 
Any other ideas?
Do you have the other 2 unchecked below “Estimate taxes using default address on cart/checkout pages”?
[quote name=‘jobosales’]You can also remove the default address information, as explained in this thread:
[url]http://forum.cs-cart.com/showthread.php?t=15292[/url]
If you do this, make sure you double-check any realtime shipping methods. I think they may also use this information to pass to the online shipping calculators.
Bob[/QUOTE]
Somehow, I missed this post. But sure enough, this was the problem. As soon as I removed the “Default Address”, it stopped defaulting the sales tax.
Thank you all for your responses.
[QUOTE]If you do this, make sure you double-check any realtime shipping methods. I think they may also use this information to pass to the online shipping calculators.[/QUOTE]
As Bob mentions, this is only a fix if you Do Not use any realtime shipping methods. Your default store address is used for realtime rate returns & without it, you will receive “No Shipping Rates are Available for Your Location, please contact us blah, blah, flippin blah”
You can remove the Default Location on the Administration > Settings > General screen and still get realtime shipping quotes but you cannot remove your Company Address on the Administration > Settings > Company screen. I know because I have the Default Location blank in my Admin > Settings and all of my realtime shipping methods are working just fine for registered and un-registered customers. And sales tax is not appearing for any customer UNTIL they put in an address where sales tax should be applied.
[QUOTE]You can remove the Default Location on the Administration > Settings > General screen and still get realtime shipping quotes but you cannot remove your Company Address on the Administration > Settings > Company screen. I know because I have the Default Location blank in my Admin > Settings and all of my realtime shipping methods are working just fine for registered and un-registered customers. And sales tax is not appearing for any customer UNTIL they put in an address where sales tax should be applied.[/QUOTE]
Awesome find Stephanie, thank you very much!
I have always had our address defined in both of these admin setting areas from day one (just seemed logical to add the details where specified)! Sure enough, after deleting all address details from the admin>settings>Default Location section, tax details are no longer being displayed “in advance” as well as realtime shipping rates are all still working correctly!
Here is the only reference I could find for “Default Location” in the knowledgebase:
[QUOTE]NOTE: Use real recipient and sender addresses for testing (FedEx uses address verification system).
Sender address = company address, that you are able to edit on the Company page of the Settings section in your administration panel.
Recipient address = customer shipping address. In case of testing shipping charges in the administration panel the address defined under the Default location section on the General page of the Settings section is used as a customer address.[/QUOTE]
Makes me wonder if the only purpose of adding address details to this section is for testing realtime rates?