Easier entry of discretionary sales-surtax
In the USA in Florida, each county is allowed to collect a small sales-surtax in addition to the standard state-wide sales-tax. Not all counties choose to collect an additional surtax, but many do. The amount varies from 0.5% to 2.0% if it is collected. When the sales tax is reported, the amount of surtax collected must be specifically stated on the tax return, and any amount with a surtax that differs from my business' county must be likewise specified.
Currently Zoho Books allows me to set up tax groups, and this allows me to set a base tax rate and an additional tax rate for those counties which require the surtax to be collected. This works, but must be done for every county individually (there are 67 total counties in Florida). I have a base Florida rate, and for each county I need to add a surtax rate and a tax group which includes the Florida base rate. As the tax laws change, these tax groups must be updated, which is also a manual process.
A side-effect is that sales tax for each
I'm aware of Avalara integration, but it looks to cost 3 times what Zoho Books does, and I'm not aware whether it can handle the complex Florida tax laws properly to begin with.
Can this be addressed?
Ian Nicholson
shared this idea
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Any update on this? The Sales Tax Liability report is awesome, except it doesn't really work for Florida. I have to drill down and manually tally up my taxable sales:
- Sales in counties with base tax rate
- Sales in counties with surtax at the same rate as my business' county
- Sales in counties with surtax at a different rate than my county (and how much was the total amount of those independent of the other rates?)
- Non-taxable (tax-exempt) salesHere's an example of the surtax reporting we must do in Florida from our DR-15 tax return:
15(a). Exempt Amount of Items Over $5,000
15(b). Other Taxable Amounts NOT Subject to Surtax
15(c). Amounts Subject to Surtax at a Rate Different Than Your County Surtax Rate
15(d). Total Amount of Discretionary Sales Surtax DueAnother fun thing is in Florida, sales tax for amounts under $1.00USD is taxed in brackets, so that any value that straddles the line between two brackets is rounded upward. So for example a total of $33.48 might need to be taxed at 7% of $30 + $0.48 aligned to one of the brackets (and I believe these brackets differ for each of Florida's surtax rates!). I don't believe Zoho handles this at all, so I've been trying to keep my totals at full-dollar amounts to prevent any gotchas... What a nightmare! I'm actually glad my sales are low! UPDATE: I believe this was changed in the last couple of years so that it works more like a percentage, as it should have been all along.
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Margaret Luebbert
commented
Our company uses Avalara and we had to set up a custom tax rule for the jurisdictions. It's been working except if I make a change to the invoice then it taxes the entire amount for the jurisdiction. I have to call them to find out the problem. When we used quickbooks we used items for sales tax but not sure if that would work with Zoho books.