Shipping, GeoZones, and Reinventing the Wheel

Hey guys,

Another question. I'm having trouble conceptualizing exactly how my shipping and taxes are going to be calculated. Perhaps someone can either answer these questions or point me in the direction of a guide that can. Here we go.

My store ships items from California. For any box that we ship to an address in California, it needs to be automatically taxed a flat percentage (9.25%). For any other box we send, there doesn't need to be any tax at all. So is there a way to have the tax generate automatically during checkout if the customer is from California?

Secondly, my store only ships to the United States and Canada. Should I delete the rest of the countries from System > Localization > Countries? When I try to delete these countries, It says that I have them assigned to different zones. How can I only have it set to ship only to the United States and Canada?

Thanks!

It seems that you are trying to combine your tax and shipping functionality into one set of Geo Zones. This won't work. You need to have one set of Geo Zones for applying 9.25% State and County Consolidated Sales Tax to deliveries within your county, 8.25% California Base Sales Tax for shipments to California counties outside your own, and 0% Sales Tax for shipments anywhere outside California. Since OpenCart doesn't recognize a geographic subdivision smaller than a state, you will also need to invest in an extension to delineate ZIP Codes within your county in order to keep yourself legal.