Mike or Penny Novack <stepbystepf...@mtdata.com> writes: > Perhaps totally underestimating the scope of the problem. > > For example, in the US there are 50 states, perhaps half of which have > a sales tax. The problem isn't just that the rates would all be
I think many more than half the 50 states have a sales tax. I think it's more like "over 40". > different but also that to what they apply (or not) would be > different* and you'd need in addition a way to waive sales tax (for > example, this customer is a non-profit that has filed a copy their > exemption certificate with you). That's just for ONE country. It's even worse than that. Some states allow counties and cities to set/add their own sales taxes, too. So here in Georgia sales tax in the city of Atlanta is 8.25%, but drive 15 minutes to get to Dunwoody and taxes drop to 6% (different county and city). From there drive 10 minutes to Sandy Springs (back in the same county as Atlanta, but different city) and taxes are 7%. But wait, there's more! Some items (iirc certain food items) are taxed at a lower rate (3%).. and some items are tax free! > For doing this automated, leave to the folks (if any) trying to > develop a "point of sales" system (that would feed an accounting > system like gnucash with the transaction already properly split). Exactly; the system is WAY too complicated and requires ever-changing locality information. It's better for the people in the locality to know what the local tax rules are. For GnuCash to do this it would require full-time people working on it to make sure it's correct. I doubt anyone would be willing to do that on a volunteer basis; do you think GnuCash users would be willing to pay an annual fee for this service? > Michael > > * You might want an example of complexity? I am in Massachusetts. We > have a sales tax but (in this state) it does not apply to items of > clothing below a certain cost. If I bought a fancy coat for $300 it > would be taxable. If I bought four dress pants at $80 per pair even > though the total for those pair $320 that would not be taxable. If I > went to a supermarket and bought various items of food (for home > consumption), a bottle of laundry soap, and while there from the deli > dept a sandwich to eat while in the store the food isn't taxed, the > soap and the sandwich are. > > And proper calculation of sales tax amounts isn't to compute the tax > individually on each item but to total up the taxables and compute the > tax on that (like many states with sales tax the tax is rounded *up* > to the nearest penny so if figured individually would average one cent > more per item rather only rounding up once on the total). But I am far > from certain all states work it that way. -derek -- Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/ PP-ASEL-IA N1NWH warl...@mit.edu PGP key available _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel