Hi Barry and everyone,

I've got a procedure question. My version of the script adds the shipping costs to the totalprice and then calculates the tax. This means that the customer is paying tax on the shipping costs, which are a service. I'm not sure this is the way round it should be. So my procedure question is, shouldn't the tax be calculated first, on the prices of the items, and then have the shipping added last?

Thanks for a great script, Barry.

Bob Orr
borr@ourteam.com

-- Bob Orr (borr@ourteam.com), February 08, 1998

Answers

Bob:

In most states, shipping is taxable. I Georgia, where my business is, I have to report sales tax collected on shipping fees as a seperate line on our sales tax forms.

-- Andrew Cook (wspaniel@waterspaniel.com), February 26, 1998.

As far as I know, shipping is not taxable in most states. It is a service. With the exeption of 1 or 2 at the most, shipping is not taxable. I simply rewrote the calculations portions to add shipping last. My major problem is keeping taxes in compliance with states that use zip code to calculate tax rates not one overall rate. What about collecting the use tax? Even though I only have a presence in 6 states I have been told that it may be required to collect the use tax for these customers in advance.

-- Jeff (count@kabooom.com), December 14, 1998.

Shipping is not taxable in any state as far as I know. On the other hand, "Shipping and Handling" may be taxed if desired since that is something different for some reason. My state also has a line on the tax form for tax collected on shipping in the event that tax IS collected on shipping, though that does not imply that tax on shipping is required. Many shipping charges, such as the USPS sharges, are a tax anyway so you don't tax a tax.

-- Don Pierson (pc@accesscom.com), August 19, 1999.

This came to question on a site I was using S-Mart for also. I simply reversed the sub and everything was fine.

-- Ed Curtis (edc@kuntrynet.com), December 01, 1999.