In many states, all products are subject to tax, and hence all versions in your
store should be linked to the tax. However, in some states, some items such
as food from a grocery store may be exempt.
Note that this system will not work if you have more than 1 state to which tax
must be charged. In that case, some modifications will be required.
6.18 Destinations
A web site is accessible to users across the globe and you want to be able to
deal with those users as smoothly as you deal with customers in your own
country. Clearly shipping cost and tax due will vary depending on the location
of the customer.
6.18.1
Charge tax by country
A UK company needs to charge VAT (sales tax) to customers in the UK and
Europe but those outside of the EU are not required to pay this tax. Deciding
on whether residents of a particular country must pay tax is something you
might want to check with your tax authorities or accountant. In some
countries like the US, tax may also be different depending on the state or
province the customer is in. In this case, we would advise adding US states to
the dropdown menu from the US destinations table included in the database.
You can then treat these as different tax jurisdictions.
6.18.2 Shipping
zone
Shipping to different locations costs different amounts of money. CactuShop
lets you place each country into a shipping zone each zone will have a
different scale of charges applied to it. By default, zone 1 is domestic (UK),
zone 2 is regional (Europe) and zone 3 is worldwide. Depending on the
location of your shop, you may need to adjust these settings, making your
own country zone 1 and working outwards from there. To add more shipping
zones, create a new set of band records in the
tblCactuShopShippingRates
and a new
zonearray
name in the config settings.
Shipping is also dependent on either the total value of the order or the weight
of the order. Which of these factors is actually used is decided by the
calcshipcostbyweight
setting in the
config.asp
file. Default of n will result
in shipping costs being calculated based on order value. Change the value to
y for shipping cost based on weight.
6.18.3
ISO country code
WorldPay and other payment systems need to know the country where goods
are being shipping to. Because country names can often be quoted in
different ways (UK, England, Great Britain, GB, etc.), standardized ISO codes
are often used. You probably won't need to change these, but if you do, you
can do it here.
6.18.4 Country
name
Some parts of the world like their coups and revolutions and seem to change
their names on a regular basis. Keep up with foreign affairs by listening or
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