Custom Tax problems

[nicklloyd]

I have a complicated scenario which I will try my best to explain.
I am setting up a product that is a Local Authority Property Search. Each of the UK Local Authorities (all 320 or so) are priced differently, and I have created them as permutations of a component. The search product itself has the usuall vat content.
Also payable for each search is a local authority disbursment, which also varies between local authorities, this is zero rated for vat.

So to achieve this i created a custom tax in business settings called 'Local Authority Dispursements', as this would make it clear on the invoice what this charge is for. I then created hidden products that have a zero 'standard vat' rate and a local authority dispursment custom tax rate of the disbursment cost, say for example one in particular is £11.

If i test the hidden product by unchecking the hidden option, and add it to cart it works fine and adds the custom tax (£11) as long as i give the product a value, it will not add the custom tax to the product if the price is set at £0.00, which is fine.... so I set the proce at £1.00 for testing purposes : I do notice that it displays the product Price as: £1.00 (Excluding: Local Authority Disbursments at 1100%), but still when you add this to the cart it all works fine and the £11 is added as if it were a tax charge giving a otal of £12, and clearly labelled on the invoice as 'local authority dispursment' - great.

All fine so far aprt form the way it displays the product proce in the brochure page ( £1.00 (Excluding: Local Authority Disbursments at 1100%)) why it is displaying it as a percentage i do not know, from what i can gather in the documentation custom tax can be set as a amount in £ rather than a %, and indeed once added to the cart is correct.

So next step....
In the permuations tab of the main product i set it to use assciated procuct tax rates (the hidden product i created an mentioned above), i have had success doing this in the past for standard zero vat rated components, so expected it to work for the custom rate.

when you add the product to cart it then treats the associated (hidden)custom product tax rate as being a % not a £ amount, so a local authority search costing £70 comes out as having a subtotal of £70, vat of £12.25 (this is correct) and a local authority dispursment charge of £770!!! which rather than adding £11 is calculating 1100% on the subtotal.
Is this a bug?
Do you even understand what the hell i'm on about??

[nicklloyd]

amend

sorry, 2nd paragraph should read :

So to achieve this i created a custom tax in business settings called 'Local Authority Dispursements', as this would make it clear on the invoice what this charge is for. I then created hidden products that have a 'standard vat' rate (17.5%) and a local authority dispursment custom tax rate of the disbursment cost, say for example one in particular is £11.

[nicklloyd]

Put simply

ok, to condense this problem, if it is a bug :

when you create a hidden product with a custom tax rate of a fixed £ amount
and then link it to a component of another product in the permuatations tab, using the 'Tax from associated product' option it no longer sees trhe custom tax as being a fixed £ amount but calculates it as a % of the main product price.

[Nadeem]

Hi Nick,

Thanks for providing a condense version of the bug. I will ask this question to the development team and let you know.

Kind Regards

[Nadeem]

Hi Nick

What version are you running? Also when testing this, how did you select "Tax from associated product" option for each permutation? I couldn't able to select this option that is disable.

Kind Regards

[nicklloyd]

Version

Hi,

Im running 7.0.3

In The Permutations tab pricing is set to 'override' (then click apply)
associated product is selected and linked to my invisable product that has the custom tax selected (click apply)
The check the box ' use tax from assiciated product'

I really need to get this fixed as soon as possible as the custom tax is a very important feature with regards to what I need to achieve with my site

Thanks

[Nadeem]

Hi Nick,

Got got some information back from the development team, this is a bug within the software. The workaround is as follows:

Edit Cart.pm within your Site1 folder

Search for '/=/'
You will see...

my ($nBandID, $nPercent, $nFlatRate, $sBandName) = split /=/, $sTax1Band;

Below this line there are 2 if statements, they are identical.

if ($nBandID == $ActinicOrder::CUSTOM)
{
$nCompTax1Band = $ActinicOrder::EXEMPT;
}

($nBandID, $nPercent, $nFlatRate, $sBandName) = split /=/, $sTax2Band;

if ($nBandID == $ActinicOrder::CUSTOM)
{
$nCompTax1Band = $ActinicOrder::EXEMPT;
}

The second if statement should refer to tax2 and not tax1. So the second
if statement should read...

if ($nBandID == $ActinicOrder::CUSTOM)
{
$nCompTax2Band = $ActinicOrder::EXEMPT;
}

Please try this.

Kind Regards

[nicklloyd]

Hi,

Followed instructions, but it does not seem to work.
Please have a look :
I have made the 'hidden product' visable, try and order it. It calculates the custom tax correctly (£11) and shows it neatly in the cart.
http://www.sdsw.co.uk/acatalog/shopindex.html (the product at the bottom of this page)

ok, now lets look at the the product that is associated to this........
this product is using the tax properties from the one above.
http://www.sdsw.co.uk/acatalog/Local..._Searches.html
use only the f1rst permutation (ADUR) please, thats the only one im working on.
Please not this custom tax is now calculated at 1100% NOT £11.

[nicklloyd]

and it still lists the prices on all products as being....eg £10 not including vat at 17.5% and disbursments at 1100%

[Nadeem]

Hi Nick

Please could you advise of the following:

The Disbursement product
Cost £1.00
Subtotal £1.00
VAT £0.18
Disbursment £11.00
Total £12.18


The ADUR product
Cost £70.00
Subtotal £70.00
VAT £12.25
Disbursment £770.00
Total £852.25

Both cases are cost + 17.5% VAT + 1100% of cost.

What's wrong with the above?

Kind Regards

[nicklloyd]

The custom Tax (disbursement) is meant to be a fixed amout , on this product (of £11) NOT 11%.
I was hoping this would allow me to add a fixed dispusment charge to any product (dispursements are VAT exempt, but the product has vat) and show this clearly on the invoice.

Now i actually see what is happening.
When I specified the custom tax as being £11 on a product costing £1 it caculated this as being 1100%, which of course gives you a value of £11 hence my misunderstanding............
I thought that this also would add the value of £11 to an associated product.

Ive just added a dispursment product with a value of £2 and can see now what is happeing. it now reports that the custom tax is 550%.

Obviously this is the way it is ment to work, which unfortuantly will not suit what i need to do. If you go back to my original post you can see what I am trying to achieve.

Damn.

[wjcampbe]

It sounds as though what you need is a component on the product with a price of 11.00, and a pricing model of sum of component prices.

For a similar product with a different disbursemant fee, just copy the original product and change the mandatory component detail.

Will this work?

[Nadeem]

Hi Nick

Have you set the Tax Rate for Disbursement to 11%, if so you then the Tax rate
can be overridden on the Associated Disbursement product by setting the
Custom Tax to £11. But please note, if the order quantity is 2 then the Disbursement will be £22.

Kind Regards

[nicklloyd]

the problem stems from the fact this is a single product with multiple choices (ie local authority areas each with a different price) so im using permutations with price set to override, which dont allow you to have add another component.

[Nadeem]

Hi Nick

Rather than having the price set to override, could you not set it to associate to the a hidden product instead. This way on the hidden product you can set a custom tax.

Kind Regards