UK tax exemption on Books, how to calculate

My client sells both Books and other equipment.
In the UK, books are exempt from VAT (Value added Tax which is normally 15%)

In the SQL Database that comes with Powerstore
Books are assigned a category of 1
Equipment is assigned a category of 2

How can I setup the Tax part of eCart, I have full version of ecart 4.5, to calculate the tax due on the total order bearing in mind that the Books are zero rated and equipment is rated at 15%

Cheers

First add a column to your cart: Category

You will have to update the add to cart on the results and detiails page to make sure that the category is stored from the database in the cart.

Create a Calculation in your cart object:

TaxableValue = (([Category]!=1)?[TotalPrice]:0)

Then you can create your tax rule based on the total of the TaxableValue column instead of the TotalPrice so that it won't include items with Category of 1

I have the same issue, I have an page on my site where people can donate. I have to make the donations tax exempt. I copied the calculation you provided in my cart object, but I am having a problem setting up the trigger and the calculation on the settings page of the Merchandising Rule. Could you tell me exactly how to set the trigger and the calculation. My tax exempt items are category 1 and taxable items are category 2. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

No trigger is needed... just always add the tax when a taxable item is in the cart.

Create a calculation as listed above to figure out the taxable value... it would be just like above in your case:
TaxableValue = (([Category]!=1)?[TotalPrice]:0)

Then set up the rule to tax based on the total of the TaxableValue column if it isn't zero.