Tax Exempt Options Available

[bagrok]

Hello,

I have a client that needs for the person shopping on his site to be able to purchase as tax exempt from the checkout. Is this an available option on CubeCart? If not does anybody have the capabilities to modify CubeCart to be able to do this?

Thank you.

[bsmither]

Welcome bagrok! Glad to see you made it to the forums.

 

It is possible, but currently only on a per-customer, per-product basis.

 

The first step is to create a Customer Group. In admin, Customer List, Customer Groups tab, create a new Group. Name it NoTax. The description is: "Tax exempt customers." Save.

 

Open a product for editing. View the Pricing tab. (Without any Customer Groups having been created, there will be only "Retail Pricing" shown under the Pricing header.)

 

Now that there is a Customer Group, there will be a drop-down selector including Retail as well as all the Groups. Select NoTax.

 

Now enter the Price, Sale Price, and Tax Class, that these customers will have for this product.

 

You have phrased your question as:

"needs for the person shopping to be able to purchase as tax exempt"

 

Is this for all persons, or a specific person(s)?

 

Now, for the Customer.

 

With a Customer Group created, there will be tab shown when adding/editing a customer: Customer Groups. Assign this customer as a member to any one or more groups. Select NoTax from the drop-down selector. Click the green circle. Save.

 

Now we have a customer in the NoTax group, able to purchase items at the special pricing for NoTax customers.

[tiger9]

My colleague wasn't precise in his explanation.  We understand that there needs to be a Customer Group NoTax.

We need to have the customer be able to self-select the No Tax group at checkout and at registration. The customer needs to be able to add himself to the group. 

(We are aware of the disadvantage of this, but it's what our client requires.  The bulk of his customers are tax-exempt.)

 

This will be a new cart setup.  If the two Groups, Retail and NoTax, are created before products are added, will I be able to include the pricing and tax class info in the spreadsheet I use to upload my products?  Or will I have to go back and enter the NoTax info separately for each product?

 

Thanks very much.

 

[bsmither]

"We need to have the customer be able to self-select the No Tax group at checkout and at registration."

 

Do these customers have some sort of Federal Corporate ID Number, Resale Number, or anything that the customer, during registration, can enter (actually, doesn't matter what it is -- could be as simple as a self-certifying checkbox)? A couple years back, I created a solution for a store to self-certify wholesale customers by providing their state's resale cert number, plus matching on the billing address state name.

 

"If [any additional groups] are created before products are added, will I be able to include the pricing and tax class info in the spreadsheet I use to upload my products?"

 

CubeCart is not currently coded to do this in one single CSV import. The relationship between a group and the product's pricing is maintained in the CubeCart_pricing_group table. To have a utility like phpMyAdmin import a CSV into this table, you would need to know the 'group_id' of NoTax, the product_id number of each product a NoTax customer can buy at the special price structure, and the tax_type of the "Tax Exempt" tax class. (CubeCart is not currently coded to import a CSV into an arbitrary table.)

 

So, if you routinely dump a current CubeCart_inventory table, to then reload it with an updated CSV -- or (hopefully) just append more products to the existing table, you would need to learn the product_id numbers of these new products. However, if the CSV contains a 'product_id' column that forces the database to use the stated values as the product_id, then you know what the product_id will be.

 

Once you know the product_id, then the CSV is straightforward:

group_id (probably 1 as it's the first group created)

product_id

price

sale_price

tax_type (probably 3)

tax_inclusive (0 for false or no tax included, 1 for true)

[tiger9]

Yes, a simple self-certifying checkbox is all we need. And the checking of it would put the customer into the NoTax group.

What do we need to do to have you create one for us?

[bsmither]

"What do we need to do to have you create one for us?"

 

Just wait a day or two. I'll dig out my notes.

[bsmither]

In the meantime, send me a PM with your email.

 

How skilled are you at making edits to PHP code and executing arbitrary SQL statements?

 

What is the exact version of CubeCart you are using?