State sales tax was something I discussed with Scott to great extent recently, and Scott, don't worry I'm not going to get into this the way I did in my personal support page.

The purpose of this thread is simple..... to see how many other SCC users have the same regulatory issues I have in Pennsylvania.

In PA if your physical location is PA, and you sell something online to someone who lives in PA, you must charge sales tax to that person.

Now, Scott has informed me that this functionality isn't even on their radar yet, my reply to him was that since this is a regulatory issue and not merely something for on a wish list, they should dedicate their resources to it and get it done sooner rather than later. I got the distinct impression that the SCC developers don't think this is an issue for that many users, that it's mainly affecting me and a few others, but not the majority of users.

Here's an excerpt from business.com:

If your business has a physical presence in a state, such as a store, office or warehouse, you must collect applicable state and local sales tax from your customers. If you do not have a presence in a particular state, you are not required to collect sales taxes. In legal terms, this physical presence is known as a "nexus." Each state defines nexus differently, but all agree that if you have store or office of some sort, a nexus exists. If you are uncertain, whether or not your business qualifies as a physical presence, contact your state's revenue agency. If you do not have a physical presence in a state, you are not required to collect sales taxes from customers in that state. This rule is based on a 1992 Supreme Court ruling (Quill v. North Dakota, 504 U.S. 298, (1992)) in which the justices ruled that states cannot require mail-order businesses, and by extension, online retailers to collect sales tax unless they have a physical presence in the state. The Court reasoned that forcing sellers to comply with over 7,500 tax jurisdictions was too complex for sellers to manage, and would put a strain on interstate commerce. Determining which sales tax to charge can be a challenge. Many online retailers use online shopping chart services to handle their sales transactions. Several of these services are programmed to calculate sales tax rates for you. I understand their are other programs I could change to, but the bottom line is, if you are going to create software to be used for ecommerce it should be mandatory that the use of said software should follow all applicable laws. Even if it is meant to be a simple program.

My reason for this thread is simple. If you are required to collect sales tax for sales made to residents in the state that you are located in(and a majority are), I would like you to reply so that maybe the decision makers at CC will understand and realize how many of their users or potential users are effected by this issue.

If you are impacted by this rule it could mean a lot of fines if you don' collect it somehow. At this point I am deducting the 6% PA sales tax after the sale and sending that portion to my state, in effect losing 6% in all of my sales to PA residents. I am not about to collect tax from residents of all states just because that's the only option in the software other than not collecting any tax at all. Some others are even impacted further by city or county tax on sales.

So, if you are impacted by sales tax on internet sales please respond to this thread and let CoffeeCup know . There is strength in numbers.

Scott, as I said at the beginning of this post I am not going to say anything else in this thread. It is merely an effort to show you how many of your users are impacted by their states sales tax rules.

That is also the case in NY, and I very rarely make on online purchase where this is not at least mentioned on the order form. I don't know of a single state where this is not required, actually.

It's the same here in VA as well. This is huge, don't mess with the tax man! We could get into serious doo doo if we don't collect the taxes!

It's the same in South Dakota as well.
rodgw

NJ too. I am stunned to read this isn't on their radar, that's putting every business user in a very tough spot. I would hope this is escalated...

it's not a "nice to have" it's a "must have."

For those of us in Canada this is critical. By law we must collect and remit provincial taxes on all purchases shipped to addresses within our province as well as federal taxes on all purchases shipped within the country.

The tax man has NO sense of humor

I have also been calculating and remitting as a deduction after the sale.

In an attempt to not lose my shirt I have increased the product price to try and recapture the taxes and shipping (that I also can't properly charge for), as a result i have seen sales completly tank!!!!! We no longer appear even remotly competative. It doesn't matter how many times I have tried to explain with text on both my main site and the shopping cart pages that these amounts are included the message is not getting through or is not resonating well with the customer base.

I hate to say it but the money saved on this vs a higher priced shopping cart was lost long ago.

I have commented before, but i will repeat, the basic items that will make this a legal functional shopping cart must be fixed as priority one. It is useless to put an fancy paint job on a car that is up on blocks in the driveway.

The forum has been very quiet lately, please don't assume that is because folks are happy/problems fixed.

folks are giving up and moving on either researching or purchasing a product that will do the very basic things like taxes and shipping.

this cart has great "potential"...but you are at a fork in the road.

Please get busy and make taxes & shipping priority ONE.

R

Same for us here in Oklahoma. Sure would be nice to see it added. ASAP
Hayes

Similar situation here in Kansas. The inability to properly support tax is one reason I cannot implement Shopping Cart Creator as my primary shopping cart. I'm currently using Go Daddy's Quick Shopping Cart (fee is $10 per month plus an annual fee for an SSL Certificate), which is a rather powerful shopping cart program for the money.

I really like the simplicity of SCC and would like to use it for all of my online sales but will not until more advanced features are added (or when the Pro version becomes available).

You could charge everyone tax through the cart and refund those that it doesn't apply to.

I promised I wouldn't add anything else to this thread, but this suggestion is just crazy. No one in their right mind is going to pay a tax when they shouldn't have to just because the merchant promises to refund that amount. Not to mention the added fees your processor (paypal, google) will charge you for the added transaction (refunding money), and the headache of trying to keep up with this.
The only reasonable solution is for CC to obey the tax man and allow us to charge sales tax properly.