Tax rates here are pretty crazy, we have different taxes for city, county and state for most all the areas these days. Not everyone has a county tax, but most seem to have a city and state tax these days. Multiply that times x number of counties with x number of cities and yes it gets pretty daunting the number of data entries it takes to get your taxes setup.

In the UK we have Value Added Tax (purchase tax) which is currently at 17.5%. In January that goes up to 20% courtesy of the fallout from the recession. Businesses whose turnover is less than £40,000 (approx $60,000) dont have to apply it onto goods at all. That explains why many smaller UK businesses operate under more than one trading name, to keep below those tax thresholds per business.

Wow that's high taxes, here so far the highest I've seen in my area is in my town with the combo of all three taxes coming to 10% which I think is going up to 11% soon.

11% is about the max I have seen in the USA. But when I export to Canada them poor guys up there have to pay 14% to get customs to release the shipment. But if they ship from Canada to the US it is 3.75%.. That is NAFTA hard at work.. North America Free Trade Agreement incase anyone don't know what nafta is.

Last place I worked I did a lot of exports and imports. Taxes are always higher going out of the US then coming back in (and we wonder why we import more then export). But then again healthcare is a God given right in most other countries which is paid for by taxes. However, here in the US there are just too many freebies given to the rich and then the greed of the rich makes healtcare for anyone other then the rich something we do not have here and may never have. No one but the rich can afford it.

Told you I would get off topic.. I went from tax problems in a shopping cart to NAFTA to VAT then the rich paying less taxes then everyone else to greed and even to Americans dieing at the road side or living under bridges for lack of heathcare and jobs in the richest country in the world.

It's not really going off topic, as an understanding of tax systems is one of the many chores that online enterprises have to endure. It also helps to compare and contrast what happens in other countries too, as that gives you more of a global picture.

I thought different tax amounts for each province and territory here in Canada was bad, but each zip code in US?? I can see how that can be a nightmare. Here in Ontario our taxes are 5% Federal, 8% Provincial, which are now usually combines together into our new HST (harmonized sales tax ). When we ship Internationally though, there is no tax.