US Sales Tax: Experiences

alsol

Hello there,
A US subsidiary of a customer from Switzerland is using Navision 3.7 CH but wants to start using the US Sales Tax modules. They have the licence and we changed the forms in order to show the needed fields.

But is there a resource where we can get the US tax rates? What are your experiences with US Sales Tax, do you enter the rates manually? Or has anybody any experiences about third party software integrated with Navision?

I would appreciate any comment.

Regards

ara3n

Tax in US is calculated based on where you are shipping.
NA has a lot of localization done to the W1 version for this.
So adding the fields to the form is not enough. You'll get the Sales tax granuale, but not the US Sales tax localization.
But nevertheless you might get the right tax calculation with the W1 version. I've not tested it.


The resource we recommend to clients is CCH. Tectura has written an addon to load the rates.

The resource is http://tax.cchgroup.com/SalesTax/default

They have their own download utility for AX, NAV, and SL but not for NAV.

The tables that get populated are
Tax Area
Tax Area Line
Tax Jurisdiction
Tax Detail

With CCH you get one rate for all your items.

The order resource is Vertex
http://www.vertexinc.com/tax-software.htm

Tectura has written an addon to load the file as well.

With Vertex you can get mulitple rates. Meaning if you sell vegetables and computers, you can load the two groups of tax groups.

Good Luck.

tedcjohnston

Quick update.
You can get a tax tables from CCH with product information in it. You need to ask for the Zip sales Database with Taxability.

Unfortunately, the structure of the data is completely different from the structure of the data without taxability. Thus, you have to reprogram the load.

Some things to watch for:
1. In some states (SD, MN) there are Indian reservations that have their own tax. Thus, in those zips, the tax goes to the tribe not the state. You can't build the tax area in a top down fashion and assume all zips in a state pay state tax.
2. The CCH data will tell you by zip code if it is inside our outside a city limit (or both). You then have to look at the flags in the tax detail to determine the tax rate in and outside the city. Some zips will straddle the tax area so you technically have to use zip + 4 to find the correct tax rate.
3. There are some states (IL) that are origin states. If you are shipping from inside the state, you tax based upon the rate of the shipping location. If you are shipping from outside the state, you only collect state tax (per the state tax agency as of 1/2009).

One other warning, if you get the CCH data, be careful. At least three times in recent memory, I've downloaded their updates, run them into the system, and ended up with bad rates. When I call CCH for support, they have a new download available to fix the problem. They know about the problem, but they don't tell you about the problem.