Why is tax based on the subtotal and not the discounted total?

[opus2172]

I've already talked to the helpful guys at Modular Merchant about this - they are looking into it and I"m hoping it gets fixed in the future but I thought I'd write here and see if the other users have any advice or have noticed this.

Has anyone noticed that the coupon discount is subtracted from the total AFTER tax is calculated? So in other words, if you were try to give away something for free and discount the sales price, your customer would still have to pay tax.

Seems easy enough to just add the tax to the discount EXCEPT what happens when you're only taxing the state that you're in? We're a Kansas company so we only tax Kansas - no need to tax everyone else.

This means that if someone from another state were to use a coupon code that INCLUDED tax, they would actually get an additional discount toward another product - if they ordered another product at the same time.

Modular Merchant is incorrectly taxing the pre-discounted total. When you go to a store with a 25% off coupon - you don't pay tax on what the original price was - you pay tax on what the ACTUAL SALES price was - that's how sales tax works.

Has anyone else noticed that this isn't correct? If it IS correct could someone tell me a scenario in which it would make sense?

Has anyone come up with a work around to deal with this issue? We do alot of business using free or discount coupons and we just can't believe that such a great service would overlook this rather obvious way of calculating tax!

Please let me know if there is any way to handle this that you're aware of, thanks!
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Brian McMurray
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Opus Communications, Inc.
Training people like to take.
http://www.opustraining.com

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Hello,
I can answer this question. Coupon discounts are deducted from the order's grand total. The order grand total equals the sum of the products, tax and shipping. Coupons don't alter the unit price of the products purchased.

Promotions can be used to alter the unit price of purchased products.

A "Discount Engine" is in the planning phases that will replace both the current Coupon and Promotion modules with a central set of customizable rules that will allow coupon codes, promotions, customer groups and other types of discounts to each be applied in a variety of ways, both to the product's unit price or the order grand total. As mentioned, the "Discount Engine" is currently in the planning phases, and no release date for it has yet been scheduled.
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[opus2172]

I look forward to the new engine - it would make things much better. Right now I don't believe it is working the way that would be expected, or that most carts make it work.

But as you mentioned, a new solution at some time in the future would take care of that - so I hope that does come out at some point - that is something we would love.
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Brian McMurray
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Opus Communications, Inc.
Training people like to take.
http://www.opustraining.com

[candyryan]

So is there any updates or news about the new engine? I can wait to try it.
regards,
candy

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Simulation pret

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