"Tax Profiles: There is a new settings page in your store settings section. This can be used to create "tax profiles" which give more fine-grained control over how tax is applied to customers. It now supports the US tax system allowing you to have multiple tax rates, filtered by zip code ranges. It also allows you to specify whether you want your shipping rates to have tax removed or not. EU Users of the previous tax system have had their tax profile transferred over."
For any US sellers that will make use of this new system, could you post and let me know how it works out for you, if anything needs changing or if it works fine etc.
Merry Christmas.
Comments
Although Texas might be a little harder since it has multiple anomalies. Still, Google, is amazing and there's an article on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_code that breaks it down as well as many other lists: https://www.google.com/search?q=california+zip+code+range&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=zip+code+ranges+by+state
in NC, you may have a ZIP code that lands in the middle of a range that is taxed at a higher/lower rate. The only way around this would be to implement a table where we could upload say a CSV file containing all ZIP codes and the sales tax that should be applied to each. Any chance on getting something like this implemented in addition to the range?
Charging sales tax isn't something you can do halfway, it needs to be 100% correct from the start.
I am sure it has been approached by other more established sites, instead of trying to figure it all out new, see what has worked for other places....naturally contacting a tax expert in NC would prob yield the best results.
5%: 27000-27010, 27013, 27020, 27022-27024
6%: 27011, 27012, 27014-27018, 27025
7%: 27019, 27012, 27026-27031
etc.
How I handle NC sales tax now is to simply do a tax-inclusive handling of the sales tax for any sales made to those living in NC. I lookup their sales tax amount by their address via Avalara's free tax database and apply that amount to their account in my own accounting system (I use Xero).
If I send a bill directly from my accounting system (Xero) then that customer would be taxed according to their customer record and the tax tables I have set for them based on their address, but again...this is only if it originates in my system. Bricklink and Brick Owl orders obviously originate outside of my system and thus I have no control over taxing...I have to handle it as tax inclusive (reducing my profits for NC customers).
FWIW, ZIP codes aren't the best way to do sales tax as it isn't 100% guaranteed that you will get the correct tax rate. The only right way to do it is based on the full address. Yes...there are ZIP codes in North Carolina that contain DIFFERENT sales tax percentages.
I have a hunch that most small sellers (e.g. Etsy and even here on BO or BL) simply do not handle sales tax properly (if at all).
The best way would be to tap into a third party database (e.g. Avalara) and do a lookup when an order is received. I think they charge ~$0.01 per commercial lookup however...so that may be asking a bit much.