NetBlazon has long been a provider of sales tax solutions for the Miva Merchant platform and so it somehow seems appropriate that we officially launch our latest sales tax offering on none other than TAX DAY. NetBlazon is pleased to announce the generally available release of our latest sales tax offerings for the Miva Merchant platform -- AccurateTax TaxTools.
Simplifying Ecommerce Sales Tax
A little history
In July 2008, NetBlazon received a number of calls and emails from concerned Miva Merchant storeowners in Washington state about the issue of destination-based sales tax collection and their need to collect taxes on a more refined basis than the Zip-Based Sales Tax module would allow. Washington state isn't the only state proceeding with destination-based sales tax either, in various forms Florida, New York, Georgia, California and others are all working on ways to collect more sales and use tax from vendors who operate in their states. NetBlazon realized then that the issue of destination-based tax, more frequent and necessary data updates and ever more granular taxing authority zones were going to require a solution more expansive and robust than our standard Zip-based sales tax module, if they were going to be able to truly provide accurate sales tax information to the e-commerce shopping cart community.
As we all know, sales tax needs to be collected by retail storeowners where they have a nexus - a physical place of business. Many storeowners may simply choose to use some state-based tax solution, but whatever they are using, chances are they are either under or over-collecting on their sales tax, especially in states like Washington, California, Florida or New York where tax boundaries vary widely across the states and in today's economy, sales tax isn't something most storeowners want to have to worry about. Other business owners may be in states like Texas where storeowners are expected to track and report the various types of taxes that were collected on a per tax type basis. When you're talking about taxes at the state, county, city and even metro areas that can get pretty confusing for most folks.
Many states today, require storeowners to collect sales AND use tax, some like Washington base that solely on the destination, others split the difference and require you to collect sales tax from your nexus tax district and use tax from the destination (recipient's) tax district. There's nothing simple or easy about sales tax collection, even the Streamlined Sales Tax Project doesn't technically make it easier to calculate tax rates, just easier to report and remit.
With this in mind, AccurateTax.com began working on the development of a feature-rich "zip+4" solution that would provide the very best, most accurate sales and use tax calculations available today. As many taxing authority boundaries now cross city, county, metro area lines, 5-digit zip code calculations were no longer providing the best, most accurate sales tax rates, but zip+4 rates are more granular and now, AccurateTax's sales tax data can even be broken down by the various tax types that are applicable in your states making it the best method for providing sales tax rate information.
How does this service work exactly?
TaxTools was created as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution, which means as a you use the service you are charged for the amount of calls your store makes to the server. A call is a single XML request made over a secure HTTP link for either Address validation or sales tax information. In a normal checkout sequence in an online store, a customer will insert their address information, at which time the store makes a "call" to the AccurateTax server to have the address validated.
Store and Server Communication
Once validation is complete the shopper proceeds through checkout until a call is made to determine the applicable sales tax. Please note: a storeowner is only charged for sales tax calls for customers where you have a nexus - a physical location of your business and if you have multiple nexuses you can use this tool to specify only those states for sales tax, address validation or both.
With regards to Address Validation, however, you can allow your store to validate the shipping addresses from all of your customers or just those who will be required to pay sales tax. Using the solution for all customers however, may be useful in keeping shipping costs down and avoiding Address Correction fees, or it might save time and money by keeping your Customer Support Representatives from having to track down a customer to find a valid shipping address.
What is a call?
A call is any XML request made from a storeowner's site to AccurateTax servers. AccurateTax supports two types of calls - Sales Tax and Address Validation calls. On a Miva Merchant 5.5 store, the Address Validation Calls are made during checkout once the user enters their information on the Customer Information page. The AccurateTax server parses the information, processes the address through their proprietary algorithm checking for both optimistic and pessimistic address results. If a single result is found, it is immediately returned. If multiple results are found the algorithm further analyzes the information and picks the most likely candidate results and returns those up to a maximum of 4 results to the store. The shopper then has the option to select a recommended address that was returned or they can edit their existing address or simply choose to use the original.
Once a shipping address is selected the user proceeds through checkout as normal. If the ship state is a taxing nexus for the storeowner, then before displaying the Payment Processing page, a sales tax request is made to the AccurateTax server passing the zip+4 code. The AccurateTax system looks up the applicable sales and use tax for that zip+4 range and returns the information which is then added as a basket charge. The shopper is then free to complete checkout and the entire operation took no more than two calls, which are tracked against the storeowner's call limit for the month.
Address Scrubbing Example
US Address Scrubbing and Validation as a Standalone service
Whether you need the AccurateTax sales tax solution or not, AccurateTax has also created what we believe is a truly powerful offering for e-commerce storeowners that has the potential to assist your customers in ways they may not even realize they need assistance. I'm talking about the ability to have US addresses scrubbed and validated against USPS data without the unfortunate limitation from USPS that that information ONLY be used to determine shipping rates with the Postal Service. At present, if your customers are using USPS Webtools, they also had to agree to only use USPS-validated addresses to calculate USPS shipping rates in order to gain access to the USPS production servers.
AccurateTax realized as they were creating the sales tax solution that they really did not want to depend on the idea that a shopper would either know their zip+4 code or have an option for determining it. They also did not wish to tie the solution to a third party site or tool for scrubbing shipping addresses due to potential network/server latency issues. So, they decided to create their own set of algorithms for scrubbing and validating addresses. The result is the first fully independent US Address Scrubbing and Validation service for the Miva Merchant platform.
Prices are affordable and flexible based on the Customer's needs
The AccurateTax Pricing model starts at 20 cents per call for a block of 30 monthly sales tax calls and are on a sliding scale becoming even more affordable as you increase the number of calls. Other comparable services are charging as much as 30 cents per call, so we're sure you and your customers will see the enormous value in signing up now for this solution.
Pricing on for the US Address Validator standalone solution starts at 10 cents per call for a minimum of 50 calls and like TaxTools, the pricing is on a sliding scale that decreases as call counts increase. You can use this service in conjunction with TaxTools or completely separate from it, either option is available and all products can be purchased through the AccurateTax website, or its parent company NetBlazon.
For sales or informational inquiries, you can contact NetBlazon at info@accuratetax.com or call them at 866.400.2444.
