USA sales tax calculations in WordPress E-commerce themes - yes it is possible!

Nov. 8, 2010 - PRLog -- The Germany based Neuber & Neuber GbR has implemented the first section of a new tax module called "Global Tax" in their E-Commerce WordPress Themes. It is able to tackle the difficult challenge to calculate USA sales taxes based on relevant parameters before the final checkout.

In order to facilitate tax calculations in their E-Commerce themes Neuber & Neuber GbR has implemented the first section of a new tax module called "Global Tax" in their WordPress E-Commerce themes. It is able to calculate USA sales taxes based on different parameters before the final checkout. Since the demand is especially high in the USA it has been decided to start first with a US section.

To calculate USA sales taxes in a webshop before checkout is a difficult task. Sales tax rates in the States are the combined product of the state rate, the county rate and also the municipal rate. Some US states apply a destination source rule, others use an origin based rule and some states don't ask for sales taxes at all. Another important question is whether the shipping costs should be included or not in the sales tax calculation.

“Global Tax” checks in the background if the present customer in the checkout process is from the very same state as the official location of the online business. The next check finds out what sourcing rule is applied in that State or if no sales tax is applied at all. The calculated amount is displayed in the order summary before the customer continues with his final payment. It is also possible to choose if shipping fees should be included in the sales tax calculation or not. Also the rounding of decimal places can be adjusted comfortably in the theme's e-commerce backend.

To make it easier to know the exact amount which is due to be given to the US fiscal authorities, the backend section records the collected tax amounts by the month.

One of the greatest challenges in this field, actually, is the exact determination of tax rates in US States which apply the so-called "destination based sourcing rule" - similar to the State of Nevada at this time.  An online merchant faces the challenge to calculate the exact sales tax amount based on the delivery address within the same US State. However, the rate changes from postcode to postcode. To tackle the particular challenge of ever changing tax rates the developers have prepared the usage of tax rate data of the external information provider ZIP2TAX - http://zip2tax.com

Since the final version of the “Global Tax” should be able to handle any tax calculations in the world, the tax data entry fields in the backend of the Wordpress Ecommerce themes adjust automatically based on the chosen country of the shop. New entry fields will display automatically depending on the country of the chosen shop.

Sales tax / VAT calculations for other countries, especially in Europe, will follow and will be implemented in the WordPress Ecommerce themes step-by-step. The developers of the Neuber & Neuber GbR hope that the release of the “Global Tax” module will especially help US merchants to run their ecommerce activities with Wordpress Ecommerce themes more efficiently.

More information is available at http://www.sarah-neuber.de
and also in a brief video on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnL5SPVTp8w&hd=1



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