tax on subscriptions

[arossphoto]

I have set up some paid subscriptions and have also enabled sales tax
under the Selling Preferences of my paypal account. However, the tax is not being applied to subscriptions and PayPal has told me that this only works for "Buy Now" and "Shopping Cart" buttons. For subscriptions they say it has to be hard-coded "into the button you've set up on your site".

According to PayPal I need to add this code: <input type="hidden" name="tax" value="7.00">

Any suggestions on how to incorporate this into the vB subscriptions?

Thanks,

Andrew

[feldon23]

Do you operate a physical presence (a business/storefront) in the state that the customer lives in? If not, why are you charging sales tax?

[arossphoto]

Sorry, I probably should have mentioned that I live in Canada and we have a federal tax here called the GST (Goods and Services Tax) which applies to just about every sale made anywhere in this country, even online subscriptions and services. All my members are Canadian so I must charge the tax and it is supposed to be itemized separately on the invoice.

[arossphoto]

I'm still trying to figure this out, and I was looking at the template subscription_payment_paypal. Do you think it's all right to put the code PayPal suggested into this template?

<input type="hidden" name="tax" value="7.00">

Actually I didn't look far enough down the template when I first posted this. I just noticed at the bottom of this template:

<if condition="$show['notax']">
<input type="hidden" name="tax" value="0.00" />
</if>

Do I need to do something to active this?

[Freddie Bingham]

That will appear if you enable the tax option for the subscription.

[arossphoto]

I have enabled tax in my subscriptions, but it was still not appearing when I looked at the source code. I tried setting the tax option to no just for the heck of it and then the hidden tax field appeared in the source code as below:

 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="tax" value="7.00" />

There must be something wrong with this if statement:

<if condition="$show['notax']">

<input type="hidden" name="tax" value="7.00" />

</if>

Even if the hidden field is showing the tax still doesn't show in the PayPal Checkout page. Maybe it's added later, but I can't send money to myself, so I can't confirm this.

[Freddie Bingham]

It is a reverse condition which causes the tax to be set at 0.00 when the tax option is not checked. This is so you can enable tax in your paypal config and still have some items appear without tax.

The display of tax on your paypal page is controlled via the tax options on the paypal side. I am not familiar with how paypal functions with Canadian tax.

[arossphoto]

It is a reverse condition which causes the tax to be set at 0.00 when the tax option is not checked. This is so you can enable tax in your paypal config and still have some items appear without tax.

Thanks but now I'm confused. If the "if" statement is correct how do I get the tax to apply to my subscriptions without setting tax to "no"?

[Freddie Bingham]

Set Tax to Yes in the vB subscription and enable Tax in your paypal.com config.

You will never see a Tax displayed on the vBulletin order page. If paypal supports GST and you have enabled it, then it will appear when the user is redirected to the paypal order page.

[arossphoto]

Now we're back to the beginning and my first post. That's what I did, but the tax was not being applied. After several emails back and forth to PayPal they told me that enabling sales tax under the PayPal Selling Preferences only works for "Buy Now" and "Shopping Cart" buttons. For subscriptions they say it has to be hard-coded "into the button you've set up on your site".

[Freddie Bingham]

Take a look at this:

https://www.paypal.com/ca/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/shipping/EasyCalculateShipAndTax-outside

[Freddie Bingham]

It doesn't for US tax the last time I checked.

If this is the case, there is no provision in the current vB code for you to add a flat rate or percentage based tax.

[arossphoto]

It doesn't for US tax the last time I checked.

I'm not sure what that means.

Thanks for trying to help, but I set up the Regional Tax as suggested in the PayPal document you linked to. I'm going to try removing the "if" statement and setting the hidden tax field to 7% and see if that works. That's what PayPal said I had to do. So if it doesn't work I'll bug them some more.

[Freddie Bingham]

Login to your paypal account.

Select Profile.

Select Sales Tax

Does it say:

To add a Sales Tax rate for a particular region which will be applied to all payments sent to you through the PayPal Shopping Cart, Buy Now Buttons, PayPal Donations, Winning Buyer Notification, and Smart Logos, please click Add. You may define a separate tax rule for each of the 50 U.S. states or for your country.

If the tax variable now supports a percentage then that should work as well.

[Freddie Bingham]

Also vBulletin does not use Paypal subscriptions unless you've set up your subscription as a recurring subscription. Otherwise the payment is the same as a "Buy it now button".