I've been working on an eCommerce site, and have bumped up against the beast that is Sales and Use Tax. In Georgia, sales tax is based on where the consumer takes possession, and for the most part these vary by county. However, there is also an Atlanta tax that is split between two different counties. I have no problem with any of this. However, the state seems to be doing everything in its power to make it difficult to figure out what the tax rate for any given location is. Tax rates are only available as pdf files for counties, and to determine whether a particular address is subject to the additional 1% tax in Atlanta you have to consult an Access database of street addresses that as far as I can tell is organized by Zodiac sign.
Because dealing with all of this is new to me, I've been asking around to try and figure out how other eCommerce sites deal with sales tax. The short answer is, "they don't." Levels of compliance vary, but so far everyone has fallen into one of two camps. Either they only collect county taxes, and ignore Atlanta, or they just go with the highest possible tax rate and call it good.
Here's what I don't get. It's a pain in the ass for small commercial enterprises to figure out what tax to charge, but it should be a piece of cake for the state. Given the general lack of compliance I'm finding, I have to think that if the state provided a web service to help eCommerce sites know what to charge that the increased tax revenues would easily pay for it. So why don't they do it?
Posted by Jason at August 30, 2006 07:04 PM