I want to disable E-Junkie's tax calculation and use Paypal's. How?

[laura_jane]

I am trying to set up taxes. I have tried E-Junkie's tax calculation and it does work fine, but frankly, I don't like how the tax interface works and I am already invested in E-Junkie so I don't want to go elsewhere.



What I would like to do is use Paypal to calculate the taxes just like a regular Paypal Standard button would work. However, after trying to set up the tax information in Paypal, I discovered that by checking out with Paypal through E-Junkie, Paypal will not apply the taxes I set up.



Why does Paypal not apply the taxes I set up? The reason is because E-Junkie is intentionally disabling Paypal's tax calculation in all circumstances by passing the tax_cart=0 parameter in the Paypal GET request.



If I could remove E-Junkie's tax_cart=0 from the Paypal GET request, either manually, or by setting some configuration option, I would be all set, however, I have searched for hours and can see no way to modify this functionality.



As I have said, I am invested in E-Junkie and do not wish to switch cart systems, however, this is a huge blocker for me and may mean abandonment of E-Junkie in favor of another solution.



Thank you.

[E-junkie_Guru]

The 'tax_cart' parameter specifies the tax amount calculated by our cart when the order is sent to PayPal checkout. Tax amounts passed by any third-party shopping cart bypass any tax settings at PayPal's end, which only apply to PayPal's own purchase buttons; otherwise, it can become a rather confusing situation with tax being added both by the cart before checkout and again by PayPal during checkout.



If you could explain some particular tax setup you're having trouble configuring at our end, we'd be glad to advise you how to accomplish that. Note that you can cover a whole range of zip codes by entering a partial zip code in our Advanced Tax Settings -- e.g., entering 857,7.5 would apply 7.5% tax to all zip codes starting with 857 (from 85700 thru 85799) -- then you could override that for even more specific whole or partial zip codes -- e.g. 8570,8.0 and 85701,8.5. For extremely complex tax configurations, you may find it easiest to set things up in a 2-column spreadsheet, export that to a CSV text file with unquoted values, open that CSV in a plaintext editor like Notepad or textEdit, then copy and paste into Advanced Tax Settings.



Since E-junkie is a centrally-managed system shared in common among all 12,000+ sellers subscribed to our service, functions which do not already have configurable settings in Seller Admin cannot be modified for just one seller without applying the very same modification for all other sellers.

[laura_jane]

Hi Tyson,



Thanks for your detailed response.



Based on your response, it sounds like it is not possible to avoid passing on the tax_cart parameter. Thus, it is not possible for me to combine E-Junkie with PayPal's global tax settings, even if I leave all tax info blank in E-Junkie, correct?



Thanks,

Laura-Jane



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PS: The reason I want to do this is similar to this thread: http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/4442 (Australian finds sales tax in cart verbose and complex, bad UI)



The way I have it set up with E-Junkie WORKS, but I am dissatisfied with the user interface. I find it clunky and overly complex to make the customer choose their country from a giant list, as well as type their postal code before they commit to buy. (And, yes, I have set the default country to my country of choice.)



To get more specific, my main objection is that if you are from the default country and you simply press BUY you get a prompt that forces you to enter your postal code. But I don't even need to know their postal code, country is enough for my needs! So I don't want to force them to add their postal code, and I certainly don't want to prevent them from buying in order to make them fill in their darn postal code first!



My main concern is cart abandonment. I want the least number of barriers between customers and the buy button. :)



So... it sounds like probably my only alternative is to hack the javascript to get it to display how I want.



I am a happy customer, but am just trying to see how far I can take E-Junkie and make it work best for me and my clients.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Laura-JaneBased on your response, it sounds like it is not possible to avoid passing on the tax_cart parameter. Thus, it is not possible for me to combine E-Junkie with PayPal's global tax settings, even if I leave all tax info blank in E-Junkie, correct?

Yes, that is correct for our Cart buttons. However, there's still one approach you might consider: if you use our Buy Now buttons for PayPal (rather than Cart buttons) and enable Sales Tax/VAT in the product's settings, it appears that WOULD engage tax settings at PayPal's end. Which makes sense, as our Buy Now buttons bypass our cart entirely and take the buyer directly to instant checkout for just one item at a time, sending a checkout request that "looks" to PayPal's system just like their own Buy Now buttons would produce.



That said, I'll suggest to Development that might finesse how the postal code field in the cart is handled, so if Shipping is not enabled for any item in the cart, and if applicable Tax settings are not state/postcode specific, we might only show the Country menu. I can't promise this change would be effected anytime soon, but it'll at least be on the wishlist for consideration as a feature improvement. :^)

[laura_jane]

Hi Tyson,



Thanks for your quick response.



PayPal route won't work for us in this circumstance. If we use our own PayPal button then we lose all of the E-Junkie cart features (ex: ability to buy multiple products at once)--the main reason we went with E-Junkie to begin with.



In our case we're still going to hack the code up a bit to display the cart to our liking. (Insodoing we did discover that when viewed on mobile devices a different page is displayed--not the cart that we modified. More info on how cart is displayed on mobile devices here: http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/4425)



Anyway... no need to respond to this but wanted to give update for anyone reading this in future.



And thanks Tyson for adding to wishlist, it would be much appreciated by many I am sure. Thanks and TTYS