Do we still have to manually add US taxes (state, local)?

It's been a while since I had a US client with Commerce needs. Do folks know if it's still the case that you have to manually set up each and every single state and local tax rate? No ability to bulk upload, and no integration with some kind of central spreadsheet that sets it up for you? I heard some murmurings that TaxJar or another extension would do this but I can't seem to see any info about that.

1 hour ago, usingmyhead said:

Do folks know if it's still the case that you have to manually set up each and every single state and local tax rate?

It's exactly the same today Miko 😢

There's a recent discussion on the Circle forum.

7 hours ago, paul2009 said:

It's exactly the same today Miko 😢

There's a recent discussion on the Circle forum.

Does the advanced commerce option offer automated tax calculator based upon zip code? Or in the advanced option does it require manual inputs of state and province tax as well?

I can't believe that in 2020 I still have to enter over 700 lines of sales tax values just for one state (WA) manually! Has no one written any kind of Excel or CSV import feature for this platform? I'm on their most expensive plan, and yet I will have to devote about 8 hours to copy and paste (one OR a few Zip codes at a time!!) to get the sales tax into this. If I had known this up front I probably would have gone with a different platform, but it's too late now. Any suggestions?

Georgia has 970 sales tax regions. I was shocked to discover I'd have to manually enter those, all of them, to open my store here. This seems like such a basic feature that I didn't discover I'd have to do this until just after the 14 day refund window closed. It was literally the last thing we had to do before going live.

We ended up postponing the opening a week and moving the store to one of the several competitors that offer automated sales tax calculation. I closed the account here and just had to eat the full year I pre-payed of the highest tier here. And considering the time I would have had to spend entering and proofreading 1000 tax rates, I think I still came out ahead.

Still, I'm shocked. Never in a million years would I have guessed SquareSpace, who I considered to be the leader in this sort of thing, would make me do this.

So if I'm trying to set up a commerce site to sell to the contiguous United States (48 states)... I'd have to input the zipcode rules for all 48 states?! Tried to contact TaxJar and that isn't even available until Mid-September. 

^ Bump on all this. Has anyone figured this out? I have spent months designing my squarespace site and now am frustrated that this seemingly integral function is not standard for a website builder. Is TaxJar offering beta testers?

the tax person we consulted said that as long as our physical business location is only located in our own state (the only place where our tax id is registered to collect sales tax to) than that is the sales tax we would apply sending to all states. So we applied our state tax rate for the 50 states. Still had to manually enter that for each state - but was way less work than having to put in all the zip codes. 

Hi Emily, I am setting a site up for a client and was wondering the same thing. They are shipping from Florida to all U.S. states. Florida's sales tax is about 8.5%. Are you saying you charge everyone the same sales tax no matter where you are shipping to?

@NikHutch I think so... but I also want to know.. I heard something about this before. Hoping someone can answer with confidence. Why is this so tricky!?

On 9/2/2020 at 4:02 PM, EmilyDunlay said:

the tax person we consulted said that as long as our physical business location is only located in our own state (the only place where our tax id is registered to collect sales tax to) than that is the sales tax we would apply sending to all states. So we applied our state tax rate for the 50 states. Still had to manually enter that for each state - but was way less work than having to put in all the zip codes. 

From what I read this is not true, wasn't there a recent law that stated you do not need physical presence to establish tax nexus in another state? The South Dakota v Wayfair found this: "

• “Any seller which does not have a physical presence in this state shall remit sales or use tax, if the seller meets either: 1. Gross sales from the sale of taxable items delivered in this state exceed $100,000; or 2. The seller sold taxable items for delivery in this state in 200 or more separate transactions”

See here: https://www.salestaxinstitute.com/sales_tax_faqs/what_is_nexus

Of course you need to be doing alot of sales in that state, but i think if you exceed the threshold in a state like California where they tax by zip code, you will have to manually go collect whatever tax is due from that code. 

On 9/23/2020 at 12:59 PM, NikHutch said:

Hi Emily, I am setting a site up for a client and was wondering the same thing. They are shipping from Florida to all U.S. states. Florida's sales tax is about 8.5%. Are you saying you charge everyone the same sales tax no matter where you are shipping to?

I was confused for a while but i think this site clears it up: https://www.salestaxinstitute.com/sales_tax_faqs/what_is_nexus

Essentially there is a threshold for most states and once you exceed it, you must collect the tax by THAT STATE you are shipping to. So ridiculous that US govt did this and IMO a huge example of how stupidly inefficient our laws are pertaining to taxes. Some states who tax by zip code have literally thousands of zip codes.