Florida County Taxes- 48 hour launch

Hello everyone, hope we are all doing well.

I am working on a site that needs to apply taxes to ONLY Florida Counties.

I have managed to get the tax rates and geozones set up for each county, however, if creating an account does not ask you for a county then how is the proper tax applied if you live in one of the Florida counties?

The only way I can see this working is if I create each county as a zone, but that makes the dropdown for 'state' HUGE!!

I am so hoping someone has some information, as this site needs to launch in the next 48 hours and I just can't wrap my head around this one

Thank you sooo much in advance
T

Unless you knew about it 60 days ago and didn't bother looking into sales taxes, tell whomever dreamed up "site needs to launch in the next 48 hours" to shut up, he should not be setting deadlines that he does not comprehend.

Sorry, you must mess with geo zones and tax classes and tax rates. However, there are substantial relatively recent leads to follow. Run a quick search top right for these terms "sales tax" "new york" washington california 2013 Solved. The ones of interest will probably be on the first couple of pages of datadump (dinna try it).

Thanks for your reply Butte, I did tell the client today that this is not an easy 1-2-3 fix.
They were using OSC and had the counties all listed under Zone (state)

I was hoping their was a better, friendlier way of doing this.

I did a search as you suggested, search 'sales tax' then searched 'florida' within those results, but still did not find a solution. Or I missed it ...god knows my head is spinning.

I just cant get my head wrapped around this. I just need to figure out a way for opencart to know which geozone (florida county) the customer is living in, and I just dont see how this is done.

I know it can be done, I just dont have the foggiest on this one

I have a few moments now to find particular links I had in mind, I can get at them via snippets I remember having posted. Back in a little while . . . [okay, back]

These will get you started,
http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php ... +geo+zones
http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php ... +geo+zones
http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php ... +geo+zones
http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php ... +geo+zones

Look for parallels to Florida. Breathe easy, focus. System / Localizations including geozones, tax classes, tax rates.

You have several ways to tie customers to counties. You'll have submitted cities, zip codes, telephone area codes, and telephone prefixes. However, you can require counties by commandeering the "second address" or just the main zip code (postal code) box by requiring that county be inserted there (such as zip5 county, along the lines of nnnnnn Polk).

There is a simpler way. If your customers are all in Florida, then you can take over the states (zones) drop-down to show counties as such. If they are in several states, then for Florida expand the drop-down to include FL_Polk, etc.. That list can be prepared in a pure ascii text editor fairly readily, then the list can be used in the zone (state) field. See zone table in phpMyAdmin or use admin System / Backup to draw down that table, and open its .sql in a text editor. You can modify a copy of the Florida entry, clone that, and change Florida to the successive FL_Polk, etc., record by record (row by row), in your text editor. You must use either phpMyAdmin or System / Restore to bring back in a modified table in the same .sql format that you got from that method (even with the same data, their .sql syntax differs slightly).

For several reasons you may want to give the new entries new ID numbers (starting after whatever the last one is, see end of alphabet). In phpMyAdmin as well as in Oracle's Workbench or similar, you can insert records and fields fairly easily.

Hey Butte...thank you so much for the detailed message and links.

After several cups of tea and endless reading, I think I finally came to a conclusion on what I need to do.

I got excited when I read this post
http://forum.opencart.com/posting.php?m ... 2&p=417622
until I realized, that I cannot create geozones by tax rate because my client has to submit taxes paid to each county.

At the end I realized, the only way I am going to be able to do this is by doing it the way I really didnt want to, that is creating zones for each geozone in Floriday, as you had also suggested in your message.
If the client was only selling in Floriday, it would not be so bad, however he sells all over the states and canada which will make the zone (state) dropdown super long.

At any rate (no pun intended) I would like to thank you for your help and guidance, it is much appreciated my friend

Thank you kindly
T

oh crud...what about the zone code?
does it matter if I just make it up?

For intance, if I create a zone called FL_Polk
can I safely use that for the zone code also?

I have never done each county separately - I just charge the overall average for the state (currently 7%) and pay that amount to the state every quarter. Never have had a problem in 10+ years of doing it that way. (And yes, I am in Florida). The majority of my sales are out of state, so I have found a few pennies here or there not worth the stress of worrying about it.

Not sure what sort of products your client is selling that he has to pay sales tax to each county - I just pay it to the State of Florida in Tallahasee.

Here in Minnesota the sales tax is collected from the point of sale not the buyers purchasing address.
Most cities here have a added tax over and above the standard state sales tax. We're in a suburb of the Twin Cities and we collect 7.125% for anybody in the state no mater where they live. And we pay the sales tax thats collected to the State of Minnesota in St. Paul.

Yes, some counties have a surtax of .5 to 1. above the standard 6% which is why I collect 7%. The state does not make me tell them sales in each county though so never worried about it (which is a good thing since I suck at geography and honestly have no clue what county most cities are in lol). My local county used to have .5 surtax so I did 6.5%, but that expired last year.

I just wanted to pop in and thank everybody for their feedback and input.
I think I have it all figured out now, just gotta test it all and see if it works as planned

Cheer up, if it can be done (it can) for New York, Washington, and California sales/use tax zoos, then it can be done for Florida. In California charging too much sales/use tax so as to take the simplest way out with a single rate will NOT work, both Equalization (quaintly named) and Consumer Affairs are a-watchin' y'all, right down to the county and city (the tax return and payment forms are sworn).

You can assign IDs to your additional Florida-county zones in phpMyAdmin. First bring up the zone table, then Browse it, then across the top click the ID field so that you see it low to high or high to low. Find highest, do not number any of yours lower than that. However, if you simply add yours in phpMyAdmin, or put together a complete table for phpMyAdmin Import, then the IDs will be assigned and you needn't worry about it. The 67 will go by faster than you think they will.

Compare FL_Polk to FL and its Florida in the zone table. Just follow the example.

You can have "geozones by tax rate" but must include each county, or set up as many there-and-X% as there are counties with X%, then likewise Y%, Z%, etc.. You need geozones (your own special map), tax classes (Sales, county, city, whatever), and tax rates (probably fairly few).