Is there a subscription product I can use to calculate tax?

Question

I need some options for calculating sales tax.

Here is a simple scenario:If given an address of a vendor and an address of a person that received goods - I need to make sure that we pay use tax if the vendor has not charged enough.

Paying a subscription for up to date information is what I have in mind. I would be up for, consuming a dll or using a webservice to get the information. Updates would have to be frequent. This is primarily for the United States. What are my options if I'm running .Net?

Answer 1

It is really hard to understand what you are trying to do, but if you are trying to charge users money over the internet for a subscription to your service, I strongly recommend using a hosted payment service like PayPal or Chase Paymentech.

Online payments are a huge industry, and mistakes can destroy your business. Do not do it yourself unless you have a large transaction volume and can hire expert staff to run it.

Both PayPal and Chase can charge recurring subscriptions to credit cards, and provide hooks so you can see who is subscribed.

If this is not what you mean, you will have to provide more detailed information.

Answer 2

Here is a service: http://www.taxcient.com/

They can provide sales and use tax rates across the various districts (State, County, City, Local, Melo Rus, etc) across the US and Canada.

Another provider is Thompson Reuters (who ultimately is the provider of data to Taxcient I believe).

There are many opportunities to screw this up and be liable for taxes you do not know about. I doubt the California Franchise Tax Board would be sympathetic to a programming bug. Be very very careful and consider outsourcing.