Setting up Taxes in PrestaShop - MD residents only pay state tax

[centreville_trailer]

Hello everyone!

 

I am a PrestaShop newbie and I am trying to set up an e-commerce store for my company. We sell trailer parts and have almost 2,000 products in our PrestaShop catalog. We are getting close to going live, but we have to get the tax portion figured out. When our web developer uploaded all of our products into the catalog via csv file, we had him apply MD state tax in the tax rule field of each product.

 

After doing more research on the laws in our state, it appears that we must charge MD state sales tax (6%) to Maryland residents, but we are not responsible for collecting taxes on sales to customers in any other state. We are currently looking to get this in writing from the state of MD to prevent any future tax audits, but for the time being the biggest hurdle is to get this configured in PrestaShop.

 

Being new to PrestaShop, I don't exactly know how to apply taxes so that only orders sent to customers within MD pay MD sales tax and orders shipped anywhere else do not pay any tax. I do know that even if you create a new tax rule, that it must be applied to each product for it to work. Would this be true even if I just edit the current tax rule that is applied? Would that automatically change how the taxes are applied since that rule is already applied to every product? Or would I have to repopulate that field in each product? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Also, I am not that technologically advanced, so please respond in easy to understand terms. Thanks so much!

Edited March 20, 2014 by centreville_trailer (see edit history)

[bellini13]

So you need to define a few things

 

1) You create a Tax Rule (this is really the Tax rate).  AKA 6%

2) You create a Tax Rule that says for all Zip Codes in Maryland, USA, apply the Tax Rate from step 1

3) You define that taxes are based on the delivery address.

4) You apply the Tax Rule (in step 2) to every product.  Exclude products that are exempt from sales tax, if any.

[centreville_trailer]

What if I were to just edit the tax rule that is already populated in the tax rule field of every product? For example, the tax rule that is automatically set up in PrestaShop titled "US-MD Rate (6%)" is the tax rule in every product. What if I were to edit that rule by adding a zip code range (MD zip code range) in the edit screen and save it? Would that automatically change how the rule works that is already populated in every product? Or would I still need to repopulate each product with that tax rule or do I have to create a new tax rule altogether? Thanks!

[bellini13]

if you already have a tax rule defined (step 2) and used by all products (step 4), then use that.  Why would you create a new one?

 

Don't over think this, it is not that complicated.

[tomerg3]

We have just released a Tax module that uses the FREE 3rd party service TaxCloud

 

The module calculates the exact tax rate by the street address, lets you assign different TIC codes to your products (in case some are not taxed), and it also sends all the information to TaxCloud (which can be used to file your sales tax automatically in many states).

 

This is the only way to charge the correct taxes for each customers, as there are multiple tax rates for each state, and even multiple rates for a single zip code.

 

http://www.prestashop.com/forums/topic/323869-module-taxcloud-calculates-sales-tax-in-real-time-for-every-state-county-city/