Arkansas tax not correctly calculating?

Hi @tristanmason,

> I am building an online store for a client, and we are seeing discrepancies in the Arkansas sales tax rates imported with WooCommerce Services’ automated tax. The client is telling us that the imported rates are incorrect. What information can we provide to help troubleshoot this?

Thank you for letting us know!

WooCommerce Services uses TaxJar as its backbone for calculating correct taxes. The TaxJar current tax calculations for Arkansas are found at this link.

If they are indeed mismatching, please let me know a product on your site and a test address to use, and what you are expecting to show. We can then do a test and see what is showing vs. what is supposed to show based on TaxJar. If we find the discrepancy we can report it to the developers!

If you do not feel comfortable sharing personal information here you can submit a ticket at https://woocommerce.com/my-account/create-a-ticket/ .

@nixiack8 Thanks for your response! I have been trying the TaxJar tax calculator you sent, and I think I’ve found the problem. The rates are only accurate if a full street address is entered, rather than just a ZIP code.
Lonoke, AR with a full street address – https://imgur.com/a/pjTvMDE
Lonoke, AR with just a ZIP – https://imgur.com/a/4A729Vk

Our shipping calculator only uses country/state/zip, so the tax rate returns incorrect. This wouldn’t be a big deal if it were corrected at checkout, but the same thing happens when the full billing address is entered, even if there is a street address. It appears to AJAX reload the shipping & tax when we enter the ZIP code of the billing address on the checkout page, but I’m wondering if it is only sending the ZIP, not the full street address, leading to the same problem. Thoughts?

Thanks!

Hi @tristanmason,

The rates are only accurate if a full street address is entered, rather than just a ZIP code. Our shipping calculator only uses country/state/zip, so the tax rate returns incorrect. This wouldn’t be a big deal if it were corrected at checkout, but the same thing happens when the full billing address is entered, even if there is a street address.

What are you using for your Shipping provider? Most of the large shipper companies (USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc) can calculate taxes correctly just off of the ZIP/City/State, however if you have something like Residential set up (in particular for FedEx) it can require it to have the full address to properly assess shipping costs. This is so it can determine the accurate price of charging Ground or Home Delivery.

It might be that if you have this setup, it is also not parsing taxes correctly. You can check the logs at WooCommerce > Status > WooCommerce Services > Taxes. You can copy them for support as well as seen in this link.

Let me know the shipper you are using, and if you can post those logs. This can give myself and the developers a clue as to what is going on and further dig into this.

It appears to AJAX reload the shipping & tax when we enter the ZIP code of the billing address on the checkout page, but I’m wondering if it is only sending the ZIP, not the full street address, leading to the same problem. Thoughts?

Depending on the shipper, this is exactly what happens, but WooCommerce Services *should* be just pulling taxes from the City/ZIP usually (if I do a test for Austin, Texas for example it properly taxes for Austin.)

Also, if you can please let me know the origin address of your store along with the shipper, I can put both in my test site to see the results and if needed escalate further to the developers.

I look forward to hearing back from you!

@nixiack8 That’s helpful, thanks!

What are you using for your Shipping provider?

A mix of the Flat Rate method and USPS Shipping Method plugin, however, I’m getting the same results even if I disable that plugin and use only Woocommerce’s native Flat Rate.

You can check the logs at WooCommerce > Status > WooCommerce Services > Taxes. You can copy them for support as well

08-15-2019 @ 08:49:50 - Requesting: taxjar/v2/taxes - {"from_country":"US","from_state":"AR","from_zip":"72227","from_city":"Little Rock","from_street":"[10301 N Rodney Parham]","to_country":"US","to_state":"AR","to_zip":"72086","to_city":"Lonoke","to_street":"705 E Front St","shipping":"8.00","plugin":"woo","line_items":[{"id":"4709-15c13651253aad5936eb335a6ea2ca2e","quantity":1,"product_tax_code":"","unit_price":"18","discount":"0"}]} (WCS Tax)
08-15-2019 @ 08:49:51 - Received: {"tax":{"taxable_amount":26.0,"tax_source":"destination","shipping":8.0,"rate":0.075,"order_total_amount":26.0,"jurisdictions":{"state":"AR","county":"LONOKE","country":"US","city":"BAYOU METRO"},"has_nexus":true,"freight_taxable":true,"breakdown":{"taxable_amount":26.0,"tax_collectable":1.95,"state_taxable_amount":26.0,"state_tax_rate":0.065,"state_tax_collectable":1.69,"special_tax_rate":0.0,"special_district_taxable_amount":0.0,"special_district_tax_collectable":0.0,"shipping":{"taxable_amount":8.0,"tax_collectable":0.6,"state_taxable_amount":8.0,"state_sales_tax_rate":0.065,"state_amount":0.52,"special_taxable_amount":0.0,"special_tax_rate":0.0,"special_district_amount":0.0,"county_taxable_amount":8.0,"county_tax_rate":0.01,"county_amount":0.08,"combined_tax_rate":0.075,"city_taxable_amount":0.0,"city_tax_rate":0.0,"city_amount":0.0},"line_items":[{"taxable_amount":18.0,"tax_collectable":1.35,"state_taxable_amount":18.0,"state_sales_tax_rate":0.065,"state_amount":1.17,"special_tax_rate":0.0,"special_district_taxable_amount":0.0,"special_district_amount":0.0,"id":"4709-15c13651253aad5936eb335a6ea2ca2e","county_taxable_amount":18.0,"county_tax_rate":0.01,"county_amount":0.18,"combined_tax_rate":0.075,"city_taxable_amount":0.0,"city_tax_rate":0.0,"city_amount":0.0}],"county_taxable_amount":26.0,"county_tax_rate":0.01,"county_tax_collectable":0.26,"combined_tax_rate":0.075,"city_taxable_amount":0.0,"city_tax_rate":0.0,"city_tax_collectable":0.0},"amount_to_collect":1.95}} (WCS Tax)
08-15-2019 @ 08:49:51 - :: Adding New Tax Rate :: (WCS Tax)
08-15-2019 @ 08:49:51 - {"tax_rate_country":"US","tax_rate_state":"AR","tax_rate_name":"AR Tax","tax_rate_priority":1,"tax_rate_compound":false,"tax_rate_shipping":1,"tax_rate":7.5,"tax_rate_class":""} (WCS Tax)
08-15-2019 @ 08:49:51 - Tax Rate ID Set for 1 (WCS Tax)
08-15-2019 @ 08:49:51 - :: Tax Rate Found :: (WCS Tax)
08-15-2019 @ 08:49:51 - {"1":{"rate":7.5,"label":"AR Tax","shipping":"yes","compound":"no"}} (WCS Tax)
08-15-2019 @ 08:49:51 - :: Updating Tax Rate To :: (WCS Tax)
08-15-2019 @ 08:49:51 - {"tax_rate_country":"US","tax_rate_state":"AR","tax_rate_name":"AR Tax","tax_rate_priority":1,"tax_rate_compound":false,"tax_rate_shipping":1,"tax_rate":7.5,"tax_rate_class":""} (WCS Tax)
08-15-2019 @ 08:49:51 - Tax Rate ID Set for 1 (WCS Tax)

Also, if you can please let me know the origin address of your store along with the shipper, I can put both in my test site to see the results and if needed escalate further to the developers.

Origin:
10301 N Rodney Parham
Little Rock, AR 72227

I tried some more testing in the TaxJar calculator, and it gives the correct rate if I use a ZIP+4, but the wrong rate if I use a 5-digit ZIP, even if I enter the street address.

What it actually does:
With ZIP+4, TaxJar returns the correct rate: https://imgur.com/a/QdZNvLG
With only a 5-digit ZIP, TaxJar returns the wrong rate: https://imgur.com/a/XeXtZjI

What I would expect to see:
The correct rate should be returned with either a street address + ZIP, or a ZIP+4.

Hi @tristanmason ,

Thank you for sending further details and your testing screenshots.

>I tried some more testing in the TaxJar calculator, and it gives the correct rate if I use a ZIP+4, but the wrong rate if I use a 5-digit ZIP, even if I enter the street address.

Can you please confirm if the same behavior can be replicated on your client’s website as well? As in, does it give the correct rate when you use ZIP+4?

If the same behavior can be replicated on the site as well, then it would indicate that the rate calculation is working as expected – because WooCommerce Services sends data to TaxJar, and returns the rate sent by the TaxJar API.

Also, if you can send us the website URL as well, we would be able to do further testing and check if the rates are returned as expected or if there’s actually an unexpected behavior.

If you do not feel comfortable sharing personal information here you can submit a ticket at https://woocommerce.com/my-account/create-a-ticket/ .

Let us know so we can help you further on this.

Hi @tristanmason ,

I hope you have found a resolution to the issue you were facing with regards to tax calculation. Since we haven’t heard from you in a while, I’m going to mark this topic as Resolved. Let us know if you keep running into troubles. You can either reply here to follow-up with the same problem, or create a new thread to report your troubles to us.