[ic] Tax problems (not IRS :-)

[Ed LaFrance]

At 12:10 AM 03/25/2002 -0800, you wrote:

>In the process of setting up a new store and noticed sales tax calculation
>isn't working properly. This is the first store I've worked on that has
>non-taxable (food) items and I can't seem to get these non-taxable items
>excluded from being taxed.
>
>Going through the docs I found some info and quite frankly am more confused
>now than I was before as the docs don't seem to be in sync with what I
>have in my files, etc. Anyway heres some info from my setup:
>
>(catalog.cfg)
>SalesTax        __TAXFIELD__
>TaxShipping     __TAXSHIPPING__
>
>(variable.txt)
>TAXSHIPPING     WA      Tax
>TAXFIELD        state   Tax
>TAXRATE WA=7.7  Tax
>TAXAREA WA      Tax
>
>(state.txt)
>00181   00      US      WA      Washington      7.7%
>
>(after.cfg)
>NonTaxableField => 'nontaxable', (in the dealer, distributor profiles)
>Profile default NonTaxableField
>
>(salestax.asc)
>default [fly-tax]
>
>I have the 'nontaxable' field in my products database and whether I have
>it set to 0 or 1 the item shows as being taxed on the checkout page.
>I noticed in 'after.cfg' in the various profiles it sets NonTaxableField
>to nontaxable while the default profile just says NonTaxableField, I
>changed that line to 'Profile default NonTaxableField nontaxable' but
>that didn't change anything. According to the docs, salestax.asc contains
>lines with the state and taxrate but mine has 'default [fly-tax]' and
>I don't even see 'fly-tax' mentioned anywhere grepping all the docs.
>
>I also tried this on a freshly installed demo and I see the same behaviour
>so I'm assuming I'm missing something somewhere. Really appreciate any
>tips, pointers, etc. on how to set up items as nontaxable.
>
>PS: This is using 4.8.3 tarball and also a fresh CVS (4.8.4) for the
>     demo I tried.

For you situation it may suffice to simply add:

NonTaxableField  nontaxable

...directly in catalog.cfg and reconfig.  If that alone does not work, 
comment out 'include etc/after.cfg' in your catalog.cfg and reconfig 
again.  [fly-tax] is a tag which simply does a dynamic tax calculation 
against the TAX* vars and returns the tax amount in $ (as opposed to using 
a true tax table).

- Ed L.

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