Taxes

Hello I recently purchased PowerStore 3. I am located in Canada and I have clients who buy from me. Some are from the United States and some are from Canada. If I have a client from the US I charge him one tax. If I have a client that comes from Ontario Canada I charge him one tax (different rate). If I have a client that is from Quebec Canada I charge him two (2) taxes: one is the federal tax and one is the provincial tax. How can I have that feature with PowerStore 3 where I can charge the appropriate tax to the appropriate client?

Thank you

The build in tax for PS3 is setup in the admin, it will charge the rate specified based on the state or province you enter. You could use this default tax for your Quebec provincial tax by setting the rate and the state to QC.

For the other tax rules you would need eCart to implement them. With eCart installed in your DW environment you could add in two new tax rules based on the users shipping country. If you have access to this tool and would like some more guidance on implementing the tax rules post back with any specific questions that you have and we will be glad to help you with what we can.

I would dearly like to see detailed steps on how to add Tax rules to PowerStore 2 with Ecart 5. I'm trying to set up a Powerstore for Canada and keep running into issues like this with taxes, shipping and payment *whew*.

I am just learning and will need step-by-step instructions.

Taxes:
1) I do not charge taxes outside Canada
2) I charge rate PST 8% + GST 5% for Ontario Customers
3) I charge 5% for the rest of Canada

Shipping:
Can I just open the ecart object and inactivate the previous entries and create a Canada Post shipping rule?
I would like to base my shipping charges on the total weight of items in the cart.
instructions needed here also.

ALSO: is there any way for my customers to preview the added shipping and taxes BEFORE they enter their payment info. this would be a HUGE issue for me as a shopper?

many thanks in advance,
Nancy

You should get this all sorted one part at a time, it can be difficult to work with more than one objective at once.

You should start with your tax rules. The first rule you will have will check if the user has selected Canada and the shipping country. The value that the user enters into the checkout form is stored in this session variable:

$_SESSION["eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country"]

You will need to setup a new tax rule, the first thing you need to do in this rule is check that this session variable exists, then you need to check to see if it is set to CA. You can reference the session variable by name, eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country.

For the calculation you will choose subtotal for the entire cart 'times' 0.05 for 5%. The next rule for ON customers will be very similar, but you will check the eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_state_province session variable and make sure it is set to ON. Then just configure the amount just like the first one but use 0.08 instead.

With both rules setup a Canadian customer would see the regular 5% tax. If the customer also chose ON as the province then they would see an additional 8% tax.

You can disable shipping rules with eCart, or you can just make sure not to check the box to enable shipping in the settings tab in the admin area. You can get the shipping and tax information on the cart page but you will first need to gather the user's location information. This is why it is done when checking out by default. The user gets a chance to see the order details and amounts on the confirm page before the order is processed.

thanks ...BUT I guess I don't understand exactly how this is to be entered as it's not working.
Do I have to delete any PS2 code or just inactivate the default shipping inside the ecart object? --- I have simply made it inactive for this test.

STEPS I have taken:
1) click on edit the ecart object
2) select the tax tab
3) selected edit on the default sale tax and made it inactive
4) clicked + to add new rule (Canadian Sales tax)
5) set taxable total > 0
6) + added if session variable exists - to text box I pasted "eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country" without the quotes. (I have also tried pasting in the PHP code exactly as above with same results) - see images attached.
7) + added if session variable = statement - pasting in the exact same text as inside "" above and chose = and entered CA into text field.
8) created another rule the same way for Ontario sales tax.
9) ok'd everything and uploaded the WA_eCart directory to server.
The results were as pictured in image #3 after placing and order using my own credentials and logged in.

Just in case this helps... I went through the checkout wizard without finalizing just to see what it looked like and I did NOT get any Tax page at all. it went right from shipping into Database settings.
Why would that happen?

again, thanks for the help :-)
Nancy

The tax rule you have created looks like it is setup correctly. I'm not sure why it does not seem to be working for you. Please post back with a copy of your WA_eCart > WA_Store_Cart_PHP.php page. I can use this to test out your rules and help understand why they are not working.

I have made some progress on this:

the item price was only $0.01 so the only tax added would have been for the shipping amount + 0.01.
SO...I have set up an item priced at $10.99 and the cart will show the correct taxes on this amount when logged in as a Canadian customer.
BUT
does not add tax to the shipping amount which is required in Ontario Canada.

in an attempt to fix this (Newbie at code editing) I found these rules (below) described in the WA_Store_Cart_PHP.php page and changed the false statement to true with no improvement.
The cart is still charging tax only on the item subtotal but I need to charge taxes on the total price including shipping.

function DefineRules() {
$this->Discounts = array();
$this->Charges = array();
$this->Tax = array();
$this->Shipping = array();
$this->ShippingIsTaxed = false;

I have changed this last statement to:
$this->ShippingIsTaxed = true;
and uploaded the WA_eCart directory to the server. cleared the browser cache and even tried another browser with no luck.

any ideas?
thank,
Nancy

I am SO SORRY to be this dense.
I have it all fixed now.
Inside the cart object I need to apply the taxes to the "taxable total" and not the "cart total".
ALL FIXED and working great except my paypal credit card issue and the database options issue addressed elsewhere in this forum.
thanks again for your help.
Nancy

I'm glad to hear that you got it sorted out. It sounds like you are making some progress on your project, I will be looking out for any updates you make to the threads I'm working on with you.