tax zones and shipping zones

Can I use the shipping zones as tax zones, or do I need to set up additional sets of tax zones specifically for the tax rules?

Thanks

Curtis

Hello Curtis,

I think that you'll just have to set the same zone that your shipping method have.

Sorry, I'm not totally clear on that. I just wondered if the following example would work:

I have a shipping zone set up for 'DHL Zone 9 Rest of World', which contains countries except for UK, Europe and North America. When I'm setting a 'Rest of the World' tax rule for this region, can I use this exact shipping zone for the 'Zone', or do I have to set up a separate Tax Zone containing exactly the same countries?

Also, could you clarify the following on how tax rates are used: Are tax rules automatically selected, as I'm guessing the shipping options are, depending upon where the customer is based? So, for example, would a customer logging in from the United Kingdom (GB), automatically be allocated UK tax codes and shipping options based upon their location?

Another point: If I set the 'Default' tax rule, to say 20% (the UK VAT rate), and have 'Default' set in the Tax category on the product, does this get overridden by the customers location/postcode?

Likewise, if I set the 'Tax category' on the product page to, say 'UK standard VAT rate' (one of my categories), in a product, does this get overidden by the customer's location? Or is this box to actually set and define a specific tax rate for that product no matter where in the world the customer is?

By the way, I think HikaShop is an excellent product. I've used a couple of other e-commerce systems, but I'd prefer to use HikaShop wherever possible, if I can get my head around some of its finer points.

Thanks and regards, Curtis

You can use shipping zones for tax rules yes.

Yes, taxes and shipping methods are filtered based on the location of the customer.

If you set the tax rule zone to be the UK, the taxes will only apply to the product price if the user's location is in UK. Otherwise, he won't have the tax.

Tax categories allow you to have different rates for different countries/region of the world. For example, you might have the tax categories alcohol, book and normal.
Then, in country A the alcohol might be taxed at 40%, books at 5% and others at 20%.
In country B, aclohol would still be the same tax rate of 40%, but books and others would be 10%.