Hi Forum, can someone answer the following question please. IF a Customer is defined as Tax Liable and has a Tax Area Code of Dallas, TX and a Sales Order is raised but the goods are to be shipped to Atlanta, GA. Where do I specify the Tax Area Code for Atlanta. Do I override the Tax Area Code on the Sales Header or do I override it on the Sales Line. This might sound like a dumb question but I’m still getting to grips with US Sales Tax and just need to know the correct way of doing the above senario. I cannot use Ship- to Addresses because of the nature of the business. Thanks. Paul
The legal requirement is that Sales tax is based on the Ship to Zip Code/Address. The fields are in the ship to address table, and flow onto the sales header. The fields for some bizarre reason are hidden in some versions, so you may need to display them. Be really careful on returns, because you need to specify the same tax codes used in shipping, NOT the return address to the actual company it self.
PS do be carefull modifying US Sales tax, it can be quite costly for the company if you get it wrong [;)]
Hi David, thanks for the advice. Because of the nature of the business, they do not use the Ship-to Addresses that can be defined for a Customer. So I’m assuming that the best thing for them to do will be to put the Tax Area Code applicable to where it is being shipped to in the Sales Header overwriting the default Tax Area Code that is defined on the Customer Card Invoicing tab. Is this correct? As for modifying the Sales Tax, I’m leaving that part to them, it looks relatively straightforward but I can imagine that it is a minefield if a mistake is made. As you pointed out to me some months ago, it could be worse, it could be Canada. Thanks…Paul
basically if the zip code on the customer is where the goods are shipping to, then you should be OK doing it this way. Be aware also that Atlanta is one of the more complex tax regions, so if you get it worked out there then you should be ok for other state/county/town/city combinations.
Hi David, thanks for that. I see what you mean about fields not being on the Ship-to Addresses Form. I have added them and I am going to suggest they do use these although there maybe a bit of protesting. Thanks alot…Paul
you are correct in your thinking, to change the tax code in the sales header when you start the document. if you change it after you have already entered lines, they will need to be manually updated, and a change to the header tax code doesn’t carry over to existing lines only new lines.
Here in California we have a pretty complicated tax structure also. There are over 100 different tax jurisdictions, to keep track of the proper tax code for a given zip code, I modified the post code table (zip codes) to add a field called tax code. I then took a us zip code file and with a little help from Microsoft access made a master tax file that had the tax area code for every us zip code.
so now when some one does a look up on a zip code they can see what the proper tax code should be. This is for the corporate staff that sets up customer cards. We use the ship to granule which make it much easier for the counter sales people, since they don’t have to know anything about the tax codes, they just have to use the correct ship to.
We also made a little routine for users to enter the default tax code on the customer card when it is created, when they enter the zip code, the default tax code it entered automatically.
Hi Themave, thank you too for your input. I think between your contribution and David Singletons I have a much clearer idea of what needs to be done. Sounds like both California and Georgia have real nightmare tax regulations. Its bad enough here in the UK but thats because we are all taxed to the hilt.
I will leave the tax definitions to the guys in Virginia and hope and pray I dont have to sort out problems in that area.
Once again, thanks for your input and I hope you are having a better summer than we are…Paul
PS its sound like you have done REALLY good work in the area of Sales Tax, I’m impressed. Have a good un’
I need to take this question one (or two) steps further. We use Jobs. The Bill-To customer provides the Tax Exempt ID and we store this on the Ship-To Customer Card. The problem is that the Ship-to May already have a Tax Exempt ID, but we have to use the one provided by the Bill-To. This means that after the job is over, we have to remember to go back into the Ship-to’s card and put the old Tax Exempt ID in. What I would like is to set up Tax Exempt Ids on the Job Card and have all sales documents from the job pull from these Tax Exempt IDs. This way, I could set up the customer cards with different tax ids and sales documents outside of jobs would pull the correct ids. Has anyone done this or thought of a different way to handle this scenario?