What happens if I change a rate?

Hi @jodzeee! I understand you’re seeing some discrepancy with sales tax rates. Changing the rates in the table would not work, no. What discrepancies is your client seeing?

I’m told they use this to calculate their taxes for their brick & mortar store: https://www.sale-tax.com/Minnesota (sorry, I had the wrong link in my original post). Sometimes they tell me the tax is wrong and want me to fix it.

Hi there!

Can you explain the exact discrepancies that you are seeing? What state is the store located in (the settings on the site), what address (only provide the city, state and zipcode, do not post a street address in the forum) and what taxes are being charged on your customer’s site?

We’ll need a little more information to look into this.

Rochester, MN 55902

The tax that was charged was 7.375%

but according to this, it should be 8.125%
https://www.sale-tax.com/RochesterMN

Hi @jodzeee. Thanks for the additional information. Minnesota is a state where the sales tax laws are quite complex, so looking at the individual taxes within the total tax rate given by a site like sale-tax.com is often necessary rather than simply looking at the total.

In this case, it looks like the Rochester part of the tax rate is not being charged. 7.375% plus the Rochester rate of 0.750% results in 8.125% exactly. This is likely because your client’s store is not in the same tax district as Rochester (or that part of Rochester), and, therefore, only the state and county taxes are being charged.

There are several states that take this approach to sales tax, which makes things confusing for store-owners. Do you have any other examples we could double-check?

I don’t have any other examples right now. I think what’s actually happening is that the customer lives outside of city limits, so they’re not getting charged the city tax by JetPack. But my client uses sales-tax.com as their resource, which apparently includes the whole ZIP code in that tax rate – so they don’t match up.

Can you explain the tax rates that are saved in the Standard rates table? Are those saved to make it faster to look up later? Does JetPack re-check based on the address and updated it accordingly?

What I mean is, the rate for ZIP code 55902 was saved in the table as 7.375% because that customer lived outside of city limits, so the city tax did not apply, just the state and county. Next time a customer with that ZIP code purchases something, will the lower rate be charged because that rate is assigned to the 55902 ZIP code in the table even if they do live in the city? Or does JetPack check against their address each time? And if so, then why are the rates saved in the table?

Hey @jodzeee,

Can you explain the tax rates that are saved in the Standard rates table? Are those saved to make it faster to look up later? Does JetPack re-check based on the address and updated it accordingly?

The rates used with the Automated Taxes option enabled come from the TaxJar API calculation that the plugin utilizes. The first time a rate is returned by the API, the plugin adds that rate to the Standard Rates table, allowing those rates to be recorded and used to increase site performance for API requests with the same info.

Normally, the rate saved in the Standard rates table include the City name (that was used for the initial calculation) as well as the zip code, and if that matches it will use that rate. In this specific case, if the rate that was saved is not generally accurate enough to be used more broadly, I’d suggest deleting that row in the table (using the “Remove selected row(s)” button) and re-calculating the tax rate on the site for an address that is charged the City tax as well (as it will re-add it to the Standard rates table then).

The Automated Taxes feature included in the free plugin is a bit limited, especially compared to TaxJar’s own integration plugin, for example. With tax rates in this plugin and core WooCommerce generally, if the info entered by a customer matches what is saved in the rate table (whether added manually or via Automated Taxes), that is the rate that will be used- because it matches. However, if it doesn’t match, then a new calculation will be done and added to the table (like if the City name entered by the customer is different but in that same zip code).

If you have other questions, let us know!

Okay, that all makes sense. Thank you for your help!

My pleasure, @jodzeee!

I’ll leave the thread open for now in case you have other questions, but feel free to resolve it if not. ??

Thanks!

Okay, just one more question. Wouldn’t just going in and changing the tax rate effectively do the same thing as deleting it and re-adding it by using an address with the correct amount?

Hey again!

Yes, changing it manually will function similarly to forcing it to recalculate based on a new address.

Perfect! Thanks again to all for your help!