[ic] Re: Re: Negative Tax - bug?

[Carl Bailey]

Quoting Mike Heins:
> Quoting Dan Bergan (danb at berganconsulting.com):
>>>
>>> That is simply wrong. The user is over-paying taxes.
>>
>> in Ohio, that may not be the case:
>> http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:sJHJL5Jp2KEJ:tax.ohio.gov/ 
>> divisions/legal/documents/ 
>> 02ST_Opinion020004_TMZ.pdfl&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us
>> (google cache of a tax commissioner judgment pdf...)
>>
>
> A bunch of baloney, in my opinion, and it is the opinion of one tax
> commissioner. The "obtained by buying your product" is ridiculous, and
> I strongly doubt that any court would find in support -- the  
> consideration
> is not fungible.
>
> I am not surprised you had to get it from a cache, as it should have
> been deleted. 8-)
>
> A discount is a discount; if the proprietor chooses to give a discount
> specifically on a taxable item as the promotion, they certainly may.
>
> That all being said, it certainly illustrates why tax calculation
> is so difficult.

Difficult indeed.
But taxability for an entire-cart discount transaction might not need  
to be so.  How about his pseudo-code ...

if ($entire_cart_discount) {
   $tax += $entire_cart_discount * ( $taxable_merchandise_value /  
$all_merchandise_value);
}

The above assumes discount is negative, and totals are positive for a  
"normal" sale, but I think this would work even for refunds assuming  
the signs of the totals and discounts change accordingly.

Carl