Applying a Shipping & Handling FLAT RATE for Physical Products Only

[chakravic]

Hi,

I’m having a problem figuring out how to set up this situation:

1) I need to set physical and digital/non-digital products

2) the physical products will have the same shipping cost (no matter quantity chosen or where shipped — true FLAT RATE)

3) the tax will be regional — and should only be applied for California residents

4) Also, I should note that only the non-digital products will have sales tax applied.

I think what I need is a combination of the shipping from wp-estore and regional tax from paypal but can’t figure out how to set this up.

Can you tell me what to do?

Thank you!

Vicki

[Keith]

Hi Vicki,

For the shipping… just set a flat shipping rate, and then on all of your physical products choose a super low shipping rate (example: 0.01). The reason being… only products in the cart that have an actual shipping rate will trigger the flat shipping amount to be included.

Using a super low amount will not increase the flat rate, but will just ensure that it is included. Hope that makes sense.

When I do this I use: $0.01 for the shipping amount value for each physical product.

More details on the documentation here:

http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/ecommerce/how-the-shipping-cost-calculation-works-in-wordpress-estore-50

For the tax… yes, if you are using PayPal, setting it up in there will be best.

Here’s a tutorial/video: http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/setup-regional-sales-tax-in-paypal-6506

eStore will work with the regional tax you set in your PayPal account profile:

Hope that helps!

Keith

[chakravic]

Hi Keith,

I’ve set this up as you suggested and I called paypal and went through the scenario with a support person there.

The issue I’m running into is that I need the sales tax to show up on only the physical products not the services I’m selling. The person at paypal said they can only do sales tax blanket on all the products. Is there anything that your shopping cart can do solve this for me?

Can I just put 0 (zero) for the sales tax on the WP eStore end for the non-physical products and have that nullify the paypal sales tax on those items only?

Thanks,

Vicki

[admin]

Yes, you can put 0 tax for the digital items and eStore will honor that but I am not sure if PayPal will allow you to override the tax the same way they allow you to override the shipping.

You basically just want to apply tax (for physical items) to customers from California right? Customers from outside California won’t be charged any tax at all correct?

[chakravic]

Yes, correct, we just want to apply tax to physical items for customers from California.

Out of state customers won’t be charged.

Thanks!

[admin]

Lets try this…

You can use the following option to charge tax only when your customer tells the cart that he/she is from a certain/selected area (for example: California).

1. Open the “eStore_advanced_configs.php” file find the following line of code:

define('WP_ESTORE_APPLY_TAX_FOR_CERTAIN_AREA', '0');

2. Once you find it change it to something like the following:

define('WP_ESTORE_APPLY_TAX_FOR_CERTAIN_AREA', 'California residents check here');

Save and update this file.

3. Go to eStore settings menu. Keep the “Enable tax calculation” checkbox unchecked but specify the tax rate you want to charge in the “Calculate Tax” field.

Now, there will be a checkbox in the shopping cart with the text you specified in step 2 of the above modification. When a customer checks that checkbox it will apply the sales tax (specified in step 3) to the shopping cart.

[chakravic]

Hi,

I’m so sorry, but we tried to do what you’ve suggested, and it isn’t working.

Even if we could get it to work, it looks like it’s going to tax ALL items this way, and as we stated before, we need the sales tax applied to ONLY the physical items (the tattoos) and not the non-physical items (digital downloads and private sessions).

Can we give you private access to the site and you try to see if you can make it work?

We’ve used quite a bit of time setting up the store and just want to get it to function in the ways we need it to in order to abide by our tax laws and such.

Thanks for all your help!

Vicki

[admin]

You can edit each product and apply a tax value of 0 for the products you don’t want to charge any tax and it won’t charge tax for those products. Anyway, I will take a look at your setup. I have sent you an email to get access to the site.

[cindyjw]

I am also interested in an answer for this question about tax. My client has physical product and only needs to charge tax to Idaho residents. We need to go live with our cart tomorrow. I’m hoping you found a solution.

Thanks for your help!

[admin]

The solution is in my above post. Please do what I suggested there and it will work for you too. In your case you will just say “Idaho” instead of California.

You can edit each eStore product and specify a tax rate of 0 for the products (if any) that you want to exclude from tax.

[cindyjw]

Thank you for your speedy response. It is working. I do wish there was a more automatic way. Hopefully something can be figured out in the near future.

Thank you, again, for your help!

[Author]

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