Cannot "enter states" for USA customer

[Stickerman]

When I test the ordering process for our North American market I change the default country from the UK to the USA. When I click on "proceed" during the checkout stage I am asked for the state in the USA but there is no way I can enter this here. In any case the state in the USA is of no significance at this point.

How do I avoid this?

[jont]

Have you tried deleting out the states under Advanced | Locations against the USA?

[Bruce]

You cannot enter the states for the USA because you have chosen Simple Tax or Simple Shipping. I noticed on another thread

Even though I have set up a "North America" tax zone and the "Tax 1" shows "No tax levied" and my "No tax levied" tax has a rate of 0% (this is the only way the system would let me set up separate tax zones for the UK, EU and North America) VAT is applied to orders where the country of origin - as I entered it in the checkout screen - is the USA.

This is happening because, you did not need to create this tax zone, delete it, in the 'No Tax Levied" zone, click on edit and add Canada and North America along with None of the Above. This is if you have "Tax by Invoice Address" and shipping set to simple. The other option would be to charge shipping by either weight, value or quantity and have a shipping Zone for North America. These areas of the software are closeley related.

Kind regards,