One store, two counties, different tax rates

[ibo765]

I am working on a store that operates in two counties but the tax rate in one county is 8% and the other is 7%.
Do I have to duplicate the product inventory to accomodate the different tax rates?

[Qphoria]

No. But county is difficult since county isn't one of the address parameters. Some cities span multiple counties. Also in USA you shouldn't be paying county tax (that I know of) for online purchases. Only in-state customers pay tax.

Read more here: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=4309&p=27585&hilit=tax#p27446

[ibo765]

In the state of Georgia, sales tax is 7% in every county except Fulton which adds a %1 municpal tax.

I can create a separate "tax class" for each county, but that would mean I would have to duplicate the inventory?

I am attempting to use the "Categories" column to separate the two stores. So when the customer selects the Fulton store, the customer would be charged the 8% tax rate for the selected products.

[Qphoria]

The problem still exists that you'd need to add "county" to the customer address parameters or OpenCart won't know who to charge. the Geo Zone system granularity only goes down to the "zone" (aka "state") level

[ibo765]

Thanks..That sounds like a interesting modification project to work on.

Otherwise, my only other option is two stores.

[Qphoria]

2 stores won't help as how are you going to regulate it? Since county isn't a customer parameter, you could have 50 stores and it wouldn't help. The only way is to either charge everyone the full rate or split it in half.. or make the mod for counties.

[ibo765]

Customer parameter?

I thought by creating two separate open cart websites, one for each store, that would be the work around for the county tax differences.

[Qphoria]

How are you going to know what county they are from?

If Customer in county A visits Store b.. he will create an account with "Atlanta, GA" for his zone
if Customer in county B visist Store A.. he will create an account with "Chatham, GA" for his zone.

the zone is still "GA". The store has no idea that Customer 1 is from county A or Customer 2 is from county B. It has no concept of anything lower than state.

[ibo765]

I understand now..You are looking at from the Store perspective. By creating a county "mod", I am assuming the customer would select the store by "county" which would assign a "subzone" which would associate with the correct "tax class" for that zone.

I am not as intimate with this application as you are, so it will take me sometime to dissect this code, but would you answer this question, what is the significance of the Geozone as it relates to customer transactions ?

[Qphoria]

geozone maps to the customers state and country.
a mod would need to be made to add further granularity.. probably best would be be to the post code level. As that would apply internationally as well.

The problem, however, is that shipping and payment modules use a localized geozone check, and they are coded only for state and country. So all payment/shipping modules would likely need to be updated to support the next level of granularity. I'm thinking this should probably be commonized into the opencart code instead of each module having it.

[KG Customs]

On another site I saw this:

Code: Select all

//put the delivery address together for Google's URL
$street = $order->delivery['address'];
$city = $order->delivery['city'];
$state = $order->delivery['state'];
$zip = $order->delivery['zip'];
$mapaddress = urlencode("$street $city $state $zip");
//Your Google Maps API key
$key = "yourAPIkey";
// Desired URL
$address = "http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=$mapaddress&output=xml&key=$key";
// Retrieve the URL contents
$page = file_get_contents($address);
// Parse the returned XML file
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($page);
// Retrieve the desired XML node
$county = trim($xml->Response->Placemark->AddressDetails->
Country->AdministrativeArea->SubAdministrativeArea->
SubAdministrativeAreaName);

I'm not certain if it'd even work, but perhaps it might be possible to modify that for OpenCart somehow?