| Ravi Shankar 2004-05-01, 7:34 am |
| Hopefully you'd have solved the problem by now otherwise..
We solved a similar taxation problem by creating a
attribute for the product to hold the TAX Class.. So for
products this would have a value of "PRD" while for
services it'd have a value of "SVC". Then we built a
table where we maintain the tax rates for every state
against these tax classes.
Then in your case I'd just modify the pipeline component
that obtains the tax rates based on the
item._product_tax_class (eg.) and assign it to the
appropriate keys and everything would work fine...
At a later date if you want to introduce another product
class that has different taxes in different states all
you'd need it to add the tax class, states and values in
the taxation table (probably build a BizDesk Module for
front-end) and in the catalog against the products store
the tax class...
HTH.
>-----Original Message-----
>Hello All,
>OK. I finally have to do some real customization work in
Commerce Server but I'm
>not sure how to go about it (too many choices).
>
>Up to now, all we have sold on our site is copies of our
software product. This
>was easy. Start with the subtotal, add the standard
shipping charge based on
>country, add the flat tax rate based on state and
subtotal, and voila, the total
>charges!
>
>But now, we are adding "Support Incidents" to our
catalog (A support incident is
>where a customer can purchase one, three or five support
incidents, where they
>can speak to a live person instead of being limited to
the FAQ pages on the
>website). Since this isn't a "product" but a "service"
this has mucked things up
>a bit.
>
>Our controller has done some homework and has come up
with a matrix of how much
>tax we will be charging for the support incidents. The
problem is that in some
>states, we are required to collect tax on the support
incidents, and in some
>states we are not.
>
>So, for example, if a customer has 2 products and a
support incident in their
>basket, I need to charge tax on the products, but only
charge tax on the
>incidents in a couple of the states for which we collect
taxes.
>
>Currently, there is a pipeline component that is written
in VB to calculate the
>tax, based on the state. Now we have to iterate through
the line items, and only
>apply tax if the item is not one of the support incident
SKUs.
>
>What's the best way to do this?
>
>Option 1: The web app is written in C#, and it would be
no big deal to iterate
>through the basket, add the tax as needed, Add my
shipping/handling, calculate
>the totals and save everything to the Order/ Basket.
However, I'm worried that I
>will miss setting some required items in the OrderGroup,
Basket, OrderForms if I
>do this by hand.
>
>Option 2: Write a scriptor in VB, and call it from a
pipeline component. I don't
>do VB, so I'm a bit leery, initially, at least.
>
>I've found some examples of calculating the tax on the
MS website, but nothing
>that matches the "conditional" tax that I need to
implement.
>
>So.. I need some suggestions. How should I approach this?
>
>
>TIA,
>
>-tomas
>.
>
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