[anonymous5133]

You just use tax software to do it. Then you can just classify each item. Most small businesses only sell a few thousand products and others sell less than a hundred. How does it take to classify all of those? A few hours tops. After that the software does the rest....condoms going to 32932 zip...taxable...raw rice going to 92322 zip...exempt. very easy for a computer to do. The software provider would do all the research.

[RobAtticus]

I think his point was as a consumer it is difficult to know your final bill since some items are exempt, some are taxed at a lower rate, etc.

[astura]

Yes, exactly.

[hakfoo]

This still requires vendors to correctly mark up their products-- to a level of detail that handles all the local rate differences, and shopping carts to be retooled to store said classifications and pass them to whatever tax-calculation service you need. Not to mention paying for the service to query.

It's probably less of a problem for someone starting from zero, but I'd imagine there's a type of vendor that's a huge nightmare. The firm that basically said "we can sell anything we can get from our vendor", and stocked their cart with thousands of SKUs, many of which exist only as lines in CSV files so they may not even know what they are offhand. The cart was probably built in the Eisenhower administration so good luck extending it.

It would be interesting to see some states offer a "trade convenience for savings" model-- rather than try to navigate a maze of regional rates and product categories to decide if a widget is taxed at 8.2% or 8.3, just file a one-page form and charge everyone 8.5% on everything. Saying "pay us $50 per year more in taxes, rather than spend $50k and ongoing service subscriptions to optimize the rates down to the penny" is a pretty compelling argument.

[astura]

1) I was talking about a consumer in a grocery store not having a clue as to what they'll actually pay until they get to the register, not a company shipping products.

2) Zip codes have zero to do with taxing jurisdictions; zip codes merely tell you where the closest post office is.