Collecting Sales Tax for State and County..

As a merchant located in the state of Florida (USA), I am required to collect the 6% Sales Tax for the State. However within the state of Florida there are 67 counties each with its own discretionary sales tax. I need to have OpenCart identify both the state and county of the customer at checkout, calculate and charge both the state and county taxes. I would be very grateful for any help in setting this up.

Thanks again for your help

Tony

Follow this thread. I just posted a request for more info on this mod.
Hopefully someone will reply and help us on this issue.

http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=5027

I have dealt with sales tax issues, both online and offline for decades. I am not an attorney, nor do I claim to be one. I am simply someone who has run businesses and set up systems for folks in over half of the United States.

And I have been selling online since 2001.

Here is what I have found. Few sales are made in your own state, unless you are promoting to local customers. I would say that at best 5% of your sales will be delivered in Florida. More like 2 or 3 percent would be my guess.

It's the state that really wants to taxes. With that in mind, I would collect the 6% plus the sales tax for YOUR COUNTY. Then, when filling out the monthly or quarterly from show all the sales as being in your county. That way the state will get their money and your county will get a share as well.

It is almost impossible to collect by county or even a more defined area like a sewer or transportation district. Even Zip Codes cross county lines, so while they come close, that are not accurate.

I am not familiar with Florida, but I do know that for several years, starting about 2005, Ohio was the first and only state to get picky about getting the exact tax for the exact delivery address location. The tax people fought tooth and nail, not just with small Ohio retailers, but with many of the national big boys.

It went on for a couple of years, but finally, under great pressure from businesses, the governor rescinded all the bullcrap and Ohio is once again using the location of the seller as the determining factor when taxing Internet sales.

I am sure Florida does the same. As someone who has followed this and other sales tax issues, I feel I would know of anything happening in Florida in this regard, and have heard nothing.

Stop and think about this, and this is part of what got brought up in Ohio - If a person lives in county A, has a large shopping center 1 mile away in county B, are the stores in county B supposed to charge the resident of county A sales taxes for county A or for where the sale takes place, county B?

Then multiply that by millions of transactions a year. When was the last time you had to show ID for a cash sale to make sure you lived in the county you made the sale? See where this is going? The governor of Ohio eventually did.

So forget it, charge the proper combination of tax for your location and move on.

And if they give you any crap, tell them Pete said it was OK.

Yes, county won't complain about getting more money, but some customers will complain about paying money they don't owe. There are other circumstances where this might be needed: two shipping warehouses in two different counties. So I have to charge based on zip code for customer as I can't just choose one county over the other (yes, they do care), and don't know which warehouse it is coming from until the order is packed for shipment. Law is must collect tax for any overlapping jurisdictions. In other ecommerce solutions have been able to add a local tax by zip code feature, and would be grateful if that were available here.