Tax calculation for special taxing jurisdictions

Question

Our e-commerce has the ability to enable fallback tax if you cannot connect to Avatax. However, it is not perfect. Because the special tax cannot be calculated. The current e-commerce does not have information about special tax area. Which API must I get from Avatax in advance to calculate the special tax as a "Fall-back" tax in e-commerce?

Answer 1

Take a look at the Avalara AvaTax TaxContent APIs to see if they are a solution for your use case.

Example using a zipcode as a filter:

https://sandbox-rest.avatax.com/api/v2/taxrates/bypostalcode?country=US&postalCode=80022

Results sample:

ZIP_CODE,STATE_ABBREV,COUNTY_NAME,CITY_NAME,STATE_SALES_TAX,STATE_USE_TAX,COUNTY_SALES_TAX,COUNTY_USE_TAX,CITY_SALES_TAX,CITY_USE_TAX,TOTAL_SALES_TAX,TOTAL_USE_TAX,TAX_SHIPPING_ALONE,TAX_SHIPPING_AND_HANDLING_TOGETHER 80001,CO,JEFFERSON,ARVADA,0.029000,0.029000,0.016000,0.011000,0.034600,0.034600,0.079600,0.074600,Y,N 80002,CO,JEFFERSON,ARVADA,0.029000,0.029000,0.016000,0.011000,0.034600,0.034600,0.079600,0.074600,Y,N (plus 640 more records)

Example using an address:

https://sandbox-rest.avatax.com/api/v2/taxrates/byaddress?line1=16394%20E%20105th%20Ave&city=Commerce%20City&region=CO&postalCode=80022&country=US

Results:

{"totalRate":0.0925,"rates":[{"rate":0.029,"name":"CO STATE TAX","type":"State"},{"rate":0.0075,"name":"CO COUNTY TAX","type":"County"},{"rate":0.045,"name":"CO CITY TAX","type":"City"},{"rate":0.01,"name":"CO SPECIAL TAX","type":"Special"},{"rate":0.001,"name":"CO SPECIAL TAX","type":"Special"}]}

NOTES:

The TaxConent API assumes that you are selling general tangible personal property at a retail point-of-sale location in the United States only.

The TaxRates APIs assumes that you are selling general tangible personal property at a retail point-of-sale location in the United States only.

Usage of the API's are subject to rate limits. Users who exceed the rate limit will receive HTTP response code 429 - Too Many Requests. Contact your Avalara Customer Account Manager to learn more about rate limits.

Visit Avalara's Developer Community at https://developercommunity.avalara.com/s/ -- An Avalara hosted page where you can get technical support from the team and community about specific API issues.