[docs] User-submitted change to Tax

Interchange server docs@icdevgroup.org
Wed Feb 19 06:27:01 2003


code: tax.main
title: Tax

body of change
---------------
<p>The <b>Tax Manager</b> allows you to set up multiple sales tax rates that might apply to your customers. </p>

<p>Tax is defined on a country by country basis. Selecting the country from the drop-down list allows you to alter the tax settings for that country. Once you have selected a country, you select the tax type for that country.</p>

<h2>No tax.</h2>

<p>No tax will be applied when shipping to this country.</p>

<h2>Simple State / Province based tax</h2>

<p>This is where there is one tax rate for those people in your state and one tax rate for those outside the state as is applicable to the US tax system. Of course, your business might have multiple locations or your state might have different tax rates by city, so you have the option of creating an unlimited number of tax rate choices. </p>

<p>To begin, specify the location to which the tax rate will apply. To create a new entry, click on the red <b>+</b>, then enter the amount of tax to be applied to orders which specify that location during checkout. If you need to delete any of the rates, of if you accidentally created too many fields, click the red <b>X</b> next to that rate.</p>

<p>If you require shipping or handling to be taxed, you should enable this by setting the Preference setting <b>TAXSHIPPING</b> or <b>TAXHANDLING</b> to the states where this applies.</p>

<p>Click <b>OK</b> when finished to save the tax information for this country.</p>

<h2>VAT based on country and category</h2>

<p>Here you specify the tax rates applicable to certain types of goods shipping to this particular country. This is the system applicable to the UK, for example. There should always be a <b>'default'</b> tax, and then you define the tax rate applicable to particular types of goods, for example food, books, children's clothes which have a different tax rate (eg. 0%). The field tax_category in the products table (hidden by default) is then referenced for each item when calculating the tax.</p>

<p>You will want to set up this same schema for all countries where the same tax rules apply, for example all EU countries.</p>

<p>If you require shipping or handling to be taxed, you should set a tax category of <b>mv_shipping</b> or <b>mv_handling</b> in the Tax Data.</p>

<p>Click <b>OK</b> when finished to save the tax information for this country. </p>

<p>If your company has many locations or your sales tax needs are very complicated, Interchange can be set up to work with third party tax software or your own custom code in a UserTag.<p>