Need to set up multiple taxes for one state

I need some guidance with the taxes. I charge membership to auto dealers in WA State so my members are WA state residents only. WA state has many tax rates depending on where you live so basically I need to set up a tax rate for each zip code (some zip codes will have the same rate). I have read the information provided by this thread: www.hikashop.com/support/forum/4-how-to/...ipping-location.html .

There's almost 700 zip codes in WA state, some that will have the same tax rate. I understand that the tax rules go off of either address_country or address_state. From reading the above thread, I should change the address_country to tax zone and label to Zip Code and set up each tax zone per the tax that needs to be charged for each zip code. But when I do this, the customer will have to choose from a drop down menu of close to 700 zip codes. This is not feasible. How else can I set up the proper tax per each zip code (or a tax rate for multiple zip codes)?

Thank you for your help.

-- HikaShop version -- : 2.1.3
-- Joomla version -- : 3.0
-- PHP version -- : 5.3.27

That's the only solution we have for now as tax rates cannot be restricted by zip code.
What you can do is to propose the user to select his location/county as per the list here:
dor.wa.gov/Content/GetAFormOrPublication.../forms_LSUExcel.aspx
There are 350 different combinations.

This is the only solution to shipping by zip code?

I can't figure out what the correlation is between zones and sub-zones. For instance, I'm willing to make each state a zone and each county a sub-zone, but then when I create a new tax rule I can only base it off zone (not sub-zone).

Doesn't seem like HikaShop is really conducive to handling American taxes... In the US, a state might charge state tax, then a county might add to that, and the city might add to that. It all depends on where you live (complicated, we know). This is why it is generally collected by zip code (or a range of zip codes). The ability to import these zip ranges would allow us to collect the correct amount of taxes.

If not possible by zip- I'd be okay with taking it to the county level and charging the most expensive of the potential city tax rates within that county. However to do this, I still need the ability to sort the tax rules by sub-zone. Furthermore, I could make the counties a "sub-zone" of the states, but I can't figure out how to dictate that the customer choose a state and then the drop down box populates with the counties of that state (similar to the relationship between country and state). I assume there is a purpose for having the sub-zones, I just don't know what that purpose is or how to utilize it.

Anyone have a better way to handle this?

Thanks, everyone!

EDIT:
Another question... When I add a new tax rule, I am asked to select a zone. When I go there, I can select multiple zones (good!). However when I click "OK" I see that only one zone has been populated. Why be able to choose more than one if they won't be added...? Or am I missing something?

Hi,

That's the only solution for now as I said.
I agree that it's not ideal but it's better than nothing. Handling zip codes for tax rates is in our todo list for the future.

Regarding your last question, you can indeed select only one zone per tax rule. However, you can create new tax zones via the menu System>Zones with several zones as sub zones of your tax zones and then add a tax zone to a tax rule which will then apply to all the sub zones of the tax zone.

Understood, and thank you for the explanation of the Sub-Zones.

As a suggestion, I'd propose the following:

• Allow users to select which Sub-Zones they want effected by the tax rule. Some states have several thousand sub zones (if done by zip code)
• I'm even okay with users selecting their zip code from a drop down because they can type it in and it will eliminate the result set until theirs is the only one left. With that being said, I would like to narrow down the zip code to only include those that have the specified state as a parent.

This is really the only "shortcoming" that I've found with this component so far. I'm using the Business Edition- and for those that are wondering if it's worth the money.... "STOP WONDERING!!!!" Just buy the business version. You'll be VERY glad you did. It's an EXCELLENT component.

Note this is why I suggested Taxcloud (or any real-time tax look-up service) in another thread.

The problem that isn't covered here how often tax codes changes, which is typically annually or even quarterly if you factor in county/city level (which my state requires). So even if you get this setup with 300+ zones, you have to update those 300 entries every time.

Another way of handling this is like what ProductCart did with their ability to import entries from Excel. The states typically provide you CVS or some spreadsheet that you can use as a data source for the import. Once I setup my import procedure, it was easy to gab the quarterly CVS files and import, even to the point the client could do it themselves by just following instructions.

I'm working on yet another project the requires this level of tax code compliance and very sadly I won't be able to use HikaShop because of it. That level of sophistication is too much for the client to manage much less cumbersome to setup.

Sadly in Joomla, VirtuMart is the only cart that has a decent solution for this (they have a TaxCloud plugin now ), but I absolutely hate that bloated and cumbersome extension. Setting up and managing that is far worse than dealing with this issue in HikaShop.

I suppose I could write a SQL import tool to do it, but the front-end (customer) experience isn't desirable or worth the effort. There are other non-Joomla based solutions that have much less resistance to setup, maintenance, and a better UX (which translates into more sales).

I really hope this gets added soon as it is the one glaring weakness that keeps me from using HikaShop as our go-to solution in our shop. Right now I can only use it for states or products (non-taxable) that don't require this kind of tax base calculation.

Love the HikiaShop otherwise.

Correction, that should VirtueMart has a Avalara Avatax plugin...tax cloud one to pulled as it wasn't fully compliant. Sadly Avalara charges an arm and a leg for their service. TaxCloud is much better for small businesses.

Hi,

Next version of HikaShop will support tax restrictions per post code ranges/regex. Of course, you will be able to restrict tax rules on a state and on top of that on a post code range/regex so that your taxes don't apply to someone with the same post code in another country/state.

Do you think that will be out before the end of the year? I have a project I'd love to use this for but taxes is one thing holding me back.

One additional item are many states in the US that have "in city limits" and "outside city limits" for the same postal code. The way I've seen this solved in other carts is you promote the customer during checkout to choose which tax code rate/label applies to them. E.g. let the customer make the error if any one.

The real time services uses the street address to determine which one is applied (and resort back to prompting if it cannot be determined).

I really hate the complexity of the destination based tax, but unfortunately this seems to be the way it going here in the USA. Not sure how the VAT in Europe works but seems source based which is a lot easier to work with.

It will definitely be out before the end of the year. The feature has already been developed actually. We were hoping to do the release this week as I won't be much available for a release next month but it might have to wait until the end of october. In any case, we can always provide a pre-release of next version if you want to test it. If interested, please use our contact form to request it with your order number included in your message.

I didn't know that tax rates could vary for the same post code of the same state. So that is not in the plans and will be quite hard to add in the future as the architecture of the system is not made for it. To handle that, it will probably be easier to support taxcloud or something similar.

In Europe it's quite simple. There are only taxes per country. So you apply the tax of your country to everyone in Europe unless they have a valid VAT number and are not in your country (it means that they are a company exempt from paying the VAT outside of their country).

That timing would work for the project I have in mind. Thanks for the information.

The 5 digit ZIP postal code in the US unfortunately isn't very accurate for tax jurisdictions.
It is solved by using the full 9 digit code, but almost nobody knows that except businesses.
Some carts / sites solve this by providing a look-up service to the post office's site.

Do you think there will be any import options (say from CVS ) in the future or will it all be manual entry? One state alone typically has several hundred of these entries alone. Our state has over 800 as it is and they update quarterly. So even one state is a pain to manually entry/update. If you get into multiple states, it is nightmare.

Thank you for the information on the post codes.

You can already import tax rules via CSV. But not from the HikaShop interface. You can do it via phpMyAdmin in the hikashop_taxation table.

Yeah, but I don't want clients getting into phpMyAdmin *cringe*. That would be a nightmare waiting to happen much less more than the average small business operator could handle in my experience.

If you allow them to only access that table of the database, it would be similar as having an import of a CSV directly in HikaShop. The worst they could do would be to remove all the tax rules from the table and you would just have to add them back by importing the CSV. But I understand your concern that it's more complex.
A CSV import is a lot of work if you want to do it properly. I believe that doing an integration with taxcloud will be easier.

Agreed with TaxCloud. It pretty much makes most of this easier overall in comparison.

Wish I had the time to do it, I have one contract developer I work with that if we both could find the time we would develop a plugin. But time is always in short supply.

Please develop Tax Cloud plug in!!!!!!!!! We need it!!!!!

From the website

"Join our TaxCloud Partner Program
If you are a shopping cart, ERP, or order managment system provider, we want to talk to you! You can offer TaxCloud to your merchant customers entirely free of charge (no-cost to you, or your merchants). Contact us by emailing inquiry@taxcloud.net, or call (206) 452-1686, option 1 to learn more. "


Thank you for all the support here guys.

Hi,

I have added it on our TODO list, we already have a lot of features waiting.
If you need to have this faster, you can ask us a quote via our Contact form or post a request on the commercial job section of our forum, or ask to a third developer.

Thanks for officially adding it. I appreciate it as I'm sure others do too..

Little things like that gives me confidence continuing forward with HikaShop.
Keep making the best Joomla eCommerce extension even better.

YES, critical for US taxable shopping! PLEASE prioritize this development!!!!!

Hi,

Just wondering if anything ever came of this -- integration with tax cloud?

It seems like the best solution. Maybe those of us who need it could get together and pitch in $$ to off-set development costs. What would it take? I'm not a developer so have no idea if this is even feasible.

I would be interested in any feedback.