bookstore owner

[Alliene]

Hello, everyone. I'm trying to launch an online bookstore. All is going pretty well, except that I need to revise how taxes are computed.

Alliene Turner

[jpf]

And how would that be?

As a default - it can handle any kind of VAT, GST, Excise Tax, Retail Sales Tax, RST, PST, State tax and even different City/county level taxes (IE California!).

The ONLY kind I would think might cause issues is a set $ per item or a variable tax like min/max tax.

Please explain what the issue is?

[Alliene]

So the tax issues are:

1. I have set the California rate at 9.75% in the admin area, but when sales are calculated, a rate of 8.75% is applied. I can't find where this is set and so must assume the developer has it hard-coded somewhere.

2. A big portion of my books are donations to a nonprofit library Friends group and money from their sale is returned to the library, and so should not be taxed. I have set each of these items to --none-- under the Tax Class options, and set each taxable item to Taxable Item. But when book sales are totaled, everything is taxed, regardless of how the Tax Class is set.

I also have some weight issues for Media Mail postage rates set in the USPS module -- I have painstakingly listed book weights in ounces and pound, then in decimal-value ounces and pounds, and now in kg. But the weights never seem to be accurately totaled. Does anyone have a magic formula for shipping books at the USPS Media Mail rate?

Thanks, Alliene

[jpf]

Do you have osCommerce or osCMax installed? Is this a fresh install?

We can't enter BOTH pounds and ounces for each item - only has a single general number as a "weight" - how that is handled is up to the shipping modules (UPS and USPS takes this number as LBS).

Taxes are not HARD coded in any place - unless some one installed and butcher it for you.

Check in your admin for your TAX ZONES (should only have the TAXABLE zones listed - like specific states for state taxes or whole country for GST/VAT), TAX CLASSES (what are the taxable option for items) and check the TAX RATES which assigns the taxable rate - with the first two - the TAX ZONES and TAX CLASSES.

Remove any that you don't need.