Sales tax calculation web service access with PHP/Ruby/Java/ASP

[anandvc]

I'm wondering if anybody here has used a web service with their E-commerce site for calculating sales tax based on the buyer's zip code, etc. I know there are web services out there like
http://www.strikeiron.com/productdetail.aspx?p=351
and
http://www.serviceobjects.com/products/dots_fasttax.asp
and they both seem to provide sample PHP/Ruby/ASP/Java-based code for integrating with shopping cart solutions and e-commerce based sites. Have you used any such services? If so, what's missing from these services today that needs to be there? Would you see yourself using such a service?

Basically, I am trying to figure out if making a competing web service and PHP/Ruby/ASP/Java libraries that provides sales tax data with real-time web lookups would be valuable to web programmers. I'm also assuming that our service could be cheaper to these ones above.

Any thoughts based on your experience would be highly appreciated.
Thanks everyone!

[roban]

Charging sales tax in New York I have to calculate by zip code. I have a program via database and php that does it for me after I set it up in my back end.

I think it would be a valuable service to some if the price is right.

[marc77]

Sounds like an interesting project :-)

[expertis]

Hi anandvc,

Have you done anything with this project? I'm trying to find a webservice right now for integration within a custom cart. I really don't want to have to update all tax rates manually, so a third party solution would be ideal.

My problem is the volume isn't high enough to justify the other solutions mentioned. Otherwise they are exactly what I need.

Thanks,

Spencer

[marc77]

My problem is the volume isn't high enough to justify the other solutions mentioned. Otherwise they are exactly what I need.

How about a hosted shopping cart solution ? These are ideal for low volume applications.

[expertis]

Hi Marc77,

Thanks for the reply. I'm open to any suggestions for carts that support sales tax down to the municipality level. The reason we are using a custom cart is due to the number of small niche sites we have. Most of the carts are geared towards charging for each domain, which is fine, but our model is having many small very focused sites, so trying to implement one of the tax solutions is costly because of the way they charge for the service. I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks again,

Spencer

[marc77]

We are working together with KingCart (they support our affiliate management software), but I'm not sure if they can fulfill your requirements. You may have a look at their site at http://www.kingcart.com .

[anandonsite]

Either zip code or address (for very accurate)is good enough to determine sales tax. As the area covered can (sometime) span multiple tax jurisdictions. You may need a applications that would retrieve it based on street address and zip code. There are companies out there that would allow you to perform such queries via a web service, for free. I am in the process of looking into taxdataservice.com. They charge between 6 and 14 cents per query, depending on monthly volume.

[Dynamo321]

Our solution already successfully calculates sales tax depending on the state the purchase is made. Further development can be made to calculate based upon zip code however we have found our customers have been happy with country or state-wide taxation calculation.

Over and above that: pre-tax and post-tax fees like shipping and handling can also be done as an automated process.

If anyone finds a competitor that already performs in the same manner (with no need of custom programming) please let me know because I have yet to find one and I would like to stay up to date with what the world is doing. If I knew of another I would mention it in my post. Thank you very much everyone.

[jhelmig]

I see this thread has had some recent traffic so I wanted to post an updated link (the original post in 2008 points to an older product version).

http://www.strikeiron.com/Products/S...nServices.aspx

We now provide three levels of tax solutions from basic (zip code based) to online which includes rooftop accuracy and a wide variety of product and service categories.

All are available through a Web Services API (SOAP or REST) and we have sample code and integrations into several ecommerce shopping cart platforms.

[mchowdhary]

Calculating sales tax on fixed rate is just one part of the puzzle - keeping up and updating the database with all the regulations is another. Remittance and Reporting is another challenge.

@GoECart, we are partnered with Avalara and they are great! You can also check out Vertex and CCH