4 ms·

'This' doesn't exist yet, so nobody can handle it for you today. It's not yet a law, and even if it were to become one, it will be months before any state meets

'This' doesn't exist yet, so nobody can handle it for you today. It's not yet a law, and even if it were to become one, it will be months before any state meets the requirements to begin collecting taxes. Until that happens, the tax codes, databases and software they have to make available don't exist. Once they do exist, yes there will be a business opportunity here, written right into the bill in the form of Certified Software Providers.

tantalor 14y ago
Can a certified provider charge for the service? Can I use an uncertified provider? Can I create my own and compete with the certified providers? How difficult is to become "certified"? Do you have any sources on how this process works?
- dangrossman 14y ago
  Yes, read the bill. It's shorter than the wikipedia page about it. http://www.marketplacefairness.org/bill-text/ http://www.marketplacefairness.org/bill-text/
  - tantalor 14y ago
    I see. So they bid it out. Thanks!
madaxe 14y ago
Sensible folks put together their eCommerce platforms in such a fashion that enacting this legislation is a single config flag. US sales tax is a pain in the ass, however, largely because you end up with (after state, county and city tax) percentages like 4.568398%, and you end up in rounding hell, particularly if you sell items which cost $0.05. Either way, it's moot. It'll never make it into law, house republicans will block it.
- dangrossman 14y ago
  This could never be implemented as a single config flag. You need, at minimum, 50 new inputs on every product listing screen in your store administration screen, in order to categorize each product separately for each state. Say you sell coffee -- one state does not tax that as a basic food, one state does tax it as a luxury good, one state does tax it because they don't tax any foods but do tax coffee... You can't program this problem away.
  - madaxe 14y ago
    Yes, you can. We maintain a comprehensive list of taxable good types - very atomic, includes stuff like different kinds of tobacco products, children's car seats, different kinds of food and drink. Each product is categorised into one of these "product tax types", once. The PTTs map to differently ID'd bands of taxation in each state, county, city. It's a lot of data, but it's out there, for the most part. So yeah, it is just a config flag.
    - dangrossman 14y ago
      Mapping the products to those PTTs for each state requires up to ~50 inputs per product. You're saying they can be select boxes instead of text boxes; big deal. Those mappings have to be made by some person. That's not a config flag. I run an online store counterpart to a family-owned retail store; that's hundreds of SKUs I'll need to go through and figure out how they're classified in each separate state. Software can't do it for me.
      - madaxe 14y ago
        Nah, you only map to a single PTT, and those are then mapped internally to state tax codes. i.e. you say "its diapers" and we then go "it fits in this band in Des Moines, this band in Culver City, this band in Podunk, etc.". As to having to do it for every product - nope - we allow bulk flagging of any datum against products by category or product metadata. Sure, there's manual work there, but there's no additional requirement for any of our merchants, as they've already got this data in place for the appropriate calculation of tax rates when they're shipping intra-state. If we didn't have it set up this way, our some of our customers with millions of SKUs would have man-decades of work ahead of them!
dragonwriter 14y ago
> 'This' doesn't exist yet, so nobody can handle it for you today. It's not yet a law, and even if it were to become one, it will be months before any state meets the requirements to begin collecting taxes. Until that happens, the tax codes, databases and software they have to make available don't exist. Once they do exist, yes there will be a business opportunity here, written right into the bill in the form of Certified Software Providers. That's the obvious answer, but its misleading. Its true that it will be at least 90 days (and maybe as much 180) before any states start collecting taxes. States that are members of the existing "Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement" meets the basic requirements from day one, but no state can begin collecting taxes until the first calendar quarter beginning 90 days after the enactment of the Act. But there are already several (including Intuit) Certified Software Providers for the states that are members of the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement, so anyone seeing this as a "business opportunity" is going to be jumping into a field where there are already big players.

tantalor 14y ago

Can a certified provider charge for the service? Can I use an uncertified provider? Can I create my own and compete with the certified providers? How difficult is to become "certified"? Do you have any sources on how this process works?

dangrossman 14y ago
Yes, read the bill. It's shorter than the wikipedia page about it. http://www.marketplacefairness.org/bill-text/ http://www.marketplacefairness.org/bill-text/
- tantalor 14y ago
  I see. So they bid it out. Thanks!

madaxe 14y ago

Sensible folks put together their eCommerce platforms in such a fashion that enacting this legislation is a single config flag. US sales tax is a pain in the ass, however, largely because you end up with (after state, county and city tax) percentages like 4.568398%, and you end up in rounding hell, particularly if you sell items which cost $0.05. Either way, it's moot. It'll never make it into law, house republicans will block it.

dangrossman 14y ago
This could never be implemented as a single config flag. You need, at minimum, 50 new inputs on every product listing screen in your store administration screen, in order to categorize each product separately for each state. Say you sell coffee -- one state does not tax that as a basic food, one state does tax it as a luxury good, one state does tax it because they don't tax any foods but do tax coffee... You can't program this problem away.
- madaxe 14y ago
  Yes, you can. We maintain a comprehensive list of taxable good types - very atomic, includes stuff like different kinds of tobacco products, children's car seats, different kinds of food and drink. Each product is categorised into one of these "product tax types", once. The PTTs map to differently ID'd bands of taxation in each state, county, city. It's a lot of data, but it's out there, for the most part. So yeah, it is just a config flag.
  - dangrossman 14y ago
    Mapping the products to those PTTs for each state requires up to ~50 inputs per product. You're saying they can be select boxes instead of text boxes; big deal. Those mappings have to be made by some person. That's not a config flag. I run an online store counterpart to a family-owned retail store; that's hundreds of SKUs I'll need to go through and figure out how they're classified in each separate state. Software can't do it for me.
    - madaxe 14y ago
      Nah, you only map to a single PTT, and those are then mapped internally to state tax codes. i.e. you say "its diapers" and we then go "it fits in this band in Des Moines, this band in Culver City, this band in Podunk, etc.". As to having to do it for every product - nope - we allow bulk flagging of any datum against products by category or product metadata. Sure, there's manual work there, but there's no additional requirement for any of our merchants, as they've already got this data in place for the appropriate calculation of tax rates when they're shipping intra-state. If we didn't have it set up this way, our some of our customers with millions of SKUs would have man-decades of work ahead of them!

dragonwriter 14y ago

> 'This' doesn't exist yet, so nobody can handle it for you today. It's not yet a law, and even if it were to become one, it will be months before any state meets the requirements to begin collecting taxes. Until that happens, the tax codes, databases and software they have to make available don't exist. Once they do exist, yes there will be a business opportunity here, written right into the bill in the form of Certified Software Providers. That's the obvious answer, but its misleading. Its true that it will be at least 90 days (and maybe as much 180) before any states start collecting taxes. States that are members of the existing "Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement" meets the basic requirements from day one, but no state can begin collecting taxes until the first calendar quarter beginning 90 days after the enactment of the Act. But there are already several (including Intuit) Certified Software Providers for the states that are members of the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement, so anyone seeing this as a "business opportunity" is going to be jumping into a field where there are already big players.