State Sales Tax Nightmare

ok I’m hoping someone can help me out here as I’ve exhausted my options. I’m running the multi vendor version of cs-cart.



In the US most vendors must collect sales tax if the customer is ordering from within their state. I’ve created a location for each state. I’ve created a tax rate called “State Sales Tax” and appropriately set up the current tax rates for each state that requires such.



What should happen: (Example State)



CORRECT: New Jersey Vendor > NJ Customer > System Collects Sales Tax



CORRECT: New Jersey Vendor > WA Customer > System does NOT collect sales tax



What’s actually happening: (Example State)



NJ Vendor > NJ Customer > System collects sales tax



NJ Vendor > WA Customer > System collects Washington sales tax (Incorrect)



The problem is, the New Jersey Vendor is not required to pay Washington Sales tax. Only New Jersey Tax. The system is basing the tax off of the customer location rather than the vendors location in reference to the customer if that makes sense.





Any idea how on earth I can set the system up to reflect this?

Maybe a silly questions in the Shipping & Tax>Taxes>Edit tax> have you selected Rates depend on:* (select)“Billing Address”

and then created an independant tax for each state.

eg:

NY State Tax and a location NY

WA State Tax and a location WA

intead of just a/one “State Tax”?



just curious, do your vendors have control over their own tax collections?



mine is set up to only collect california tax to california customers and so far it functioning just right but have no idea how to actually configure this MVE for other vendors who may or maynot collect taxes in other states …its for sure a cluster @#)&$.

hope to figure this all out myself soon…



~B.

It's currently set to Billing (though it doesn't seem to fix the issue either way)



I can setup individual but the problem is the end result is still the same. Your way would work in theory but only if the vendors could choose which states to enable and disable. They can't however. So, all are on by default. Which leads to the same issue.



Overall CS Cart is fantastic. However, I've used Big Commerce, Shopify, Zencart (horrible) Volusion etc and so far CS Cart has the strangest way to setup taxes. It really is a headache.



We're unable to launch until this is fixed which has really put a damper on things. We've even developed a Single Sign On that is connected to our forum with 20k + members so this is pretty disappointing.

Taxes should have a setting that would allow vendors the opportunity to apply a tax based on their location.

Perhaps a choice to charge a tax or not to charge a tax and field to enter what the tax should be if the vendor has chosen to apply a tax.

OR perhaps a field should be made available and if there is an amount in that field …then apply it!

why this is not made straight forward for site administrators for vendors in the MVE is way beyond me.



is this available and the KB is just written for coders not users so no one really understand the process of implimentation???

who knows…

I just hope to figure this out for the vendors soon so that I too can actually open up shop for the vendors.



~B.

I'm right there with you and agree this could easily be solved by placing the choice in the vendors hands. Even if the choice was with the global admin, this seems like a simple and fundamental function of any ecommerce software.



To be fair though, support is looking into it as we speak. If they are able to solve the problem some how, I'll report back here and let you know what I find out.

quite fundamental … kind of like making vendor products available on the vendors profile ;) but nawww you have to buy an add-on for that. ;)

Thank gawd there are some AWESOME add-on developers out there!



~B.

[quote name='BluBT' timestamp='1371253297' post='163619']

Maybe a silly questions in the Shipping & Tax>Taxes>Edit tax> have you selected Rates depend on:* (select)“Billing Address”

and then created an independant tax for each state.

eg:

NY State Tax and a location NY

WA State Tax and a location WA

intead of just a/one “State Tax”?



just curious, do your vendors have control over their own tax collections?



mine is set up to only collect california tax to california customers and so far it functioning just right but have no idea how to actually configure this MVE for other vendors who may or maynot collect taxes in other states …its for sure a cluster @#)&$.

hope to figure this all out myself soon…



~B.

[/quote]





I just started working with cs-cart for the first time yesterday (ver. 4.0.1). I am also in California where we have lots of different tax rates depending on where the delivery address is. BTW it has always been the case in California that the tax rate is the delivery address, not the billing address or the vendor's location. I imagine some smaller states have a single tax rate which would allow you to just create one tax region, but in places like California and New York there are dozens.



I have the Ultimate version but I would imagine that the tax set up would be similar in the Multi-vendor version. It was a bit confusing at first but I now have it working well for California.



Basically this is the procedure:

Visit your state tax board for a list of cities and their respective tax rates. In California you can view the rates here http://www.boe.ca.gov/cgi-bin/rates.cgi.



There are several common tax rates such as 8.000%, 8.500%, 9.000% and so on.



I set up a tax location for each unique percentage and named them CA-8.000, CA-8.500 and so forth. Then go to Taxes and click on each row of new named locations and enter the appropriate tax rate.



Next go to Shipping Methods and select each of your active shipping methods and select the checkboxes for all of your various tax regions.



Next in the locations screen click on CA-8.000 and scroll down to the input field “Cities” and enter all the cites that have a tax rate of 8.000%. List them with a line return after each city. Rinse and repeat for all the named tax regions.



The final step is to go to each product and check all the boxes in the tax section that correspond to your named locations. The only down side to naming them that way is that it shows the cryptic naming convention in the cart instead of “Sales Tax”.



To solve this issue, go to your template editor and basic > templates > blocks > checkout > summary.tpl.



On line 53 edit out the

. Where it says {$tax.description} instead just type in “Sales Tax”.



It is a good idea to document any changes you make to templates so you can redo them if you need to upgrade.



Another change I made was to the Billing and Shipping address blocks because I did not like the default non-standard formatting. To correct the format to standard USA norms you can follow this code (don't type in the the line with “//”).


```php

//basic > templates > blocks > checkout > order_info.tpl

//starting at line 11

{if $value}

  • {if $field.field_name == 'b_phone'}Tel:{/if} {$value}

  • {if $field.field_name == 'b_city' || $field.field_name == 'b_lastname' || $field.field_name == 'b_address' || $field.field_name == 'b_zipcode'}


    {/if}
    {/if}
    //then do the same thing for shipping section by changing the "b_" to "s_" in each field_name
    ```

    What this does is makes line returns where necessary. Also go to Administration > Profile Fields and rearrange the sort order. I made Country 180 so it would be last. My code also prints the word "Tel: " in front of the telephone number because many people don't format their number properly and it gets confusing if it is just a numerical value without spaces it could be misinterpreted as part of the address.

    As far as the tax issue is concerned, in the Multi-Vendor version once the super admin has created all the tax regions for the vendor, each vendor just needs to select the proper tax regions in every one of their product details. There will be a lot of checkboxes because it will show all regions even from other states. They just have to be careful to only check the regions for their state and ignore the regions for other states. This is where the CA-8.000 naming convention really helps, and also it makes it easy to find the right location when the tax rate changes.

    Actually I should correct and clarify a few things.



    It is best to create the location first then populate the cities and also add the state in the state input field. Then go to the Tax screen and create the corresponding tax entry. Then you enter the Shipping Method and finally the product checkboxes.



    I realize the procedure seems a bit convoluted but it does work and it offers extreme flexibility. There is a very tight relationship among the Tax, Locations, Shipping Methods and the product tax checkboxes. Everything needs to be in sync or you will get unexpected results. You should probably take my comments about MVE with a grain of salt as I have not actually worked with that version. Pure speculation on my part.

    Finally as my third conditionally approved pending post I would like to report that as a php developer and new to cs-cart, I appreciate the professional quality of the code base I have looked it over and it is very well done. My only criticism is that in the effort to make everything in the application MVC and all if does suffer from a little bit of latency but not too bad and entirely acceptable for the trade off of having a stand alone non-load balanced e-commerce solution. Over all I like the platform quite a bit.

    [quote name='mstone' timestamp='1374864927' post='165881']

    I just started working with cs-cart for the first time yesterday (ver. 4.0.1). I am also in California where we have lots of different tax rates depending on where the delivery address is. BTW it has always been the case in California that the tax rate is the delivery address, not the billing address or the vendor's location. I imagine some smaller states have a single tax rate which would allow you to just create one tax region, but in places like California and New York there are dozens.



    I have the Ultimate version but I would imagine that the tax set up would be similar in the Multi-vendor version. It was a bit confusing at first but I now have it working well for California.



    Basically this is the procedure:

    Visit your state tax board for a list of cities and their respective tax rates. In California you can view the rates here http://www.boe.ca.go…-bin/rates.cgi.



    There are several common tax rates such as 8.000%, 8.500%, 9.000% and so on.



    I set up a tax location for each unique percentage and named them CA-8.000, CA-8.500 and so forth. Then go to Taxes and click on each row of new named locations and enter the appropriate tax rate.



    Next go to Shipping Methods and select each of your active shipping methods and select the checkboxes for all of your various tax regions.



    Next in the locations screen click on CA-8.000 and scroll down to the input field “Cities” and enter all the cites that have a tax rate of 8.000%. List them with a line return after each city. Rinse and repeat for all the named tax regions.



    The final step is to go to each product and check all the boxes in the tax section that correspond to your named locations. The only down side to naming them that way is that it shows the cryptic naming convention in the cart instead of “Sales Tax”.



    To solve this issue, go to your template editor and basic > templates > blocks > checkout > summary.tpl.



    On line 53 edit out the

    . Where it says {$tax.description} instead just type in “Sales Tax”.



    It is a good idea to document any changes you make to templates so you can redo them if you need to upgrade.



    Another change I made was to the Billing and Shipping address blocks because I did not like the default non-standard formatting. To correct the format to standard USA norms you can follow this code (don't type in the the line with “//”).


    ```php

    //basic > templates > blocks > checkout > order_info.tpl

    //starting at line 11

    {if $value}

  • {if $field.field_name == 'b_phone'}Tel:{/if} {$value}

  • {if $field.field_name == 'b_city' || $field.field_name == 'b_lastname' || $field.field_name == 'b_address' || $field.field_name == 'b_zipcode'}

    {/if}
    {/if}
    //then do the same thing for shipping section by changing the "b_" to "s_" in each field_name
    ```

    What this does is makes line returns where necessary. Also go to Administration > Profile Fields and rearrange the sort order. I made Country 180 so it would be last. My code also prints the word "Tel: " in front of the telephone number because many people don't format their number properly and it gets confusing if it is just a numerical value without spaces it could be misinterpreted as part of the address.

    As far as the tax issue is concerned, in the Multi-Vendor version once the super admin has created all the tax regions for the vendor, each vendor just needs to select the proper tax regions in every one of their product details. There will be a lot of checkboxes because it will show all regions even from other states. They just have to be careful to only check the regions for their state and ignore the regions for other states. This is where the CA-8.000 naming convention really helps, and also it makes it easy to find the right location when the tax rate changes.
    [/quote]
    Hello, is the ''Cities'' are suppose to show up on the check page, if yes, I don't see them. I live in NY and I want to add all the Cities and they all have different taxes, I tried to add all the Cities under NY in the locations section, but it will not work. NYC Tax is 8.875% and Auburn NY is 8.00%, Allegany NY 8.00% how do I set that up, so customers can see the name of they Cities on the checkout page? any help will be much appreciate. Thank you

    So will we have to set up a sales tax location for every vendor depending on where their home state is?



    Or If I'm from Utah, is that the only place I will need to worry about collecting taxes from when sales are made from here?



    Or say I had a vendor from Idaho. Will I have to set up a sales tax rate for Idaho, and when that vendor gets a sale from Idaho, will tax need to be collected?



    Best,



    Aaron McNeilis

    Daily Nutrition

    I've just ran into this. What a nightmare indeed. I will have to setup tax for every city, county and state for every vendor that resides in that state.

    I'm in WA state and everything is by County. trouble is some counties have different rates, so they actually go by zip code.



    We could of done it the above way, but felt that organizing it by zip code instead of tax rate was a better long-term idea.



    The nice thing is that in CS-Cart you can use wild card characters in zip codes to cover a range of codes.



    What a PITA!!



    Jack

    Would be nice if there was some website that you could download CSV files or XLS that had all up to date tax info. Considering taxes can change every quarter, that is a lot of tax info to track. Utah doesn't tax by zip. I also think that CS Cart doesn't make entering the info an easy way and as previously said, the vendor should manage their own taxes.

    There's an affordable service you could use called [url=“http://www.zip-tax.com”]http://www.zip-tax.com/[/url]. You should be able to implement this into cs-cart rather easily.

    Nice find, but I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to implement the API.

    thoughts on this [url=“Account Suspended”]Account Suspended ???

    also found this company that says their compatible with CS Cart, but don't mention MVE. [url=“http://www.speedtax.com/technology-partners”]http://www.speedtax.com/technology-partners[/url] I sent them an email and will keep you guys updated.

    From everything I've read you just have to collect tax for the sales that happen within your home state or Nexus locations. So I will only collect sales tax within Utah until the rules change. Amazon does have to pay in multiple states and I think if you do over 1 million in sales then you would too. But I'm just going to worry about my home state until then.

    I am having the same trouble!!!It appears that there are only two ways to make the current version of Multivendor work for my state taxes (which collects taxes for State, City, and County jurisdictions based on point of delivery). I can either implement a Cloud based tax calculating system such as TaxCloud into CS.Cart, with all taxes being collected by me, the marketplace owner, and being remitted to the state, or I can try to configure the existing CS.Cart to collect the taxes and then pass the collected taxes to the vendor to remit to the state. The trouble with trying to configure the existing cart is that my state does not provide rate boundary information so I am not sure how I could determine which city and county taxes to charge. Have any of you living in states with multiple tax rate boundaries determined a successful solution? Please share any suggestions!