Virtuemart Destination Based Sales Tax for Joomla

Posted by: Tom Granger

October 15th, 2008

We’ve just completed another Virtuemart Destination-based sale tax module for Joomla. You can see it in action here: Ozonegear.org

When considering Destination-based Sale Tax calculations for Virtuemart you need to deal with:

1. Solve the problem with getting your customers to give you their zip + 4 information during the registration or checkout process. Since most people, including myself, do not readily know our zip + 4 information - you need to have a method for suggesting to the customer what it might be. You see this on high-end systems such as Buy.com or Amazon.com.
2. We do this by taking the user input and when they enter in their address we make a call out to either the USPS Web Service or Yahoo Maps API and send the zip and map it to the missing +4.
3. Then, you present them with what you “think” is the +4 based on the info returned. When the customer selects it, it then writes to their customer profile in the database.
4. You can also make this call out during the registration process or anyt time that they update their address information.
5. Then, in our case we get the sales tax tables from the WA State Department of Revenue and compare it with the zip +4  information for that order, based on destination and then get the correct tax rate for the specific destination now based on the zip +4.
6. Then, it is just a matter of clean up in Virtuemart, Zen cart, OSCommerce or whatever other shopping cart you are using to calculate the tax against the order + shipping to arrive at a final total that reflect destination-based sale tax for your Wa State order - or any other state for that matter so long as the information is available.

It is not exactly a drop-in module by any means - but it does take care of your destination-based taxes, calculations and reporting in less money than a trip to your accountant for advice.

If you want more information on how we can work for you and solve your destination-based sale tax project, whetehr for Virtuemart or any other shopping cart - contact us today.

Entry Filed under: PHP & MySQL, AJAX, Client Projects, Virtuemart & Joomla