Quoting Addicted2DVD:

Quote:
This is an good idea... I like the idea of putting in the tax rate for your state and it automatically figures it for you... but there would need to be a way to say which titles to add the tax to. For example...If I buy something local I have to pay the sales tax on it. But anything I buy off the net I don't have to pay taxes on it. (unless that particular store is located within the state you live) So maybe a place to put your local tax rate... and then when you add the price you paid... there be a checkbox next to it that says Add Tax... or something like that.

This might work for most US states, but here in California sales tax rate changes based on where you are. Each county or city can add a local sales tax onto the base state rate.  

And for users on the other sides of the pond...

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Quoting NewEnglander:

Quote:
My idea would work as follows.... Using bestbuy.com as an example.

I pruchase an item at $16.99, they tell me the shipping is $1.99, tax is $1.14 (6% in Ct.)

I have three fields to enter in this data....

Price: $16.99
Shipping: $1.99
Tax: $1.14

The main profile screen would show me.. Price Paid: $20.12

Say, I made the same purchase at Amazon.com, where I am not charged a sales tax.. There are still three fields.

Price: $16.99
Shipping: $0 (or left blank)
Tax: $0 (or left blank)

(Note: I have amazon prime free two day shipping)

Main profile screen says.. Price Paid: $16.99


If the fields can be left blank with the program assuming that blank means 0, the fields can be added together without causing any calculation errors. If you use a percentage, and you have 0's in the other fields, I think that would generate errors.

Being able to leave fields blank would mean that users over the pond don't have to use those fields. Or, anyone can ignore the fields if they so choose.

For online orders that's fine but for brick & mortar purchases you would have to split out the tax paid from the register receipt. It would be easier if the program had a way to calculate the sales tax based on the rate used in the area where the purchase was made.

Quoting NewEnglander:

Quote:
Why can't you take the purchase price $16.99 and multiply it by .06 (6%) and get $1.02 for Tax?

For one thing, I don't want to have to buy a 10-key just to figure the tax on each and every DVD I purchase. I thought it would be more convenient if the program could do that for us. But, if you'd rather do it manually, fine.

What do you do if you move and the tax rate changes, are you going to change the tax paid for all those other profiles?

What do you do if they raise the taxes, do you pretend that it was never 6% and that it was always 7% or 8%?

You have to be practical.

Unless it can be done so you enter the percentage in a box and it calculates the tax per item, but that's getting even more complicated, I would presume.

Need to think of practical on a programming standpoint, don't we?

Quoting Addicted2DVD:

Quote:
Actually I think in a feature request forum the only thing we need to do is request how we would most like to see something function... then it is up to Ken to decide if he can or wants to do it... or how close to what we want he can do.

That is my opinion at least.

I agree, but, throwing out the ideas of how it should work will also help him to see how we think it should work.

Did I just type that?

Quoting Addicted2DVD:

Quote:
And that is all we were doing too... basically adding on to your initial idea to make it how we consider it would be better... but it seems like you are wanting to fight that... just because it may be a little more work to have it done that way. Once again... that is how it seems.

You were saying how you think it should work... well we were saying how we think it should work. We all like the same idea.... we just have different ideas on how it should be done. So shouldn't we have the same amount of rights to request it to work how we want to see it work... that you have on how you want to see it work?

I didn't and don't mean to fight.

But, it is legitmate to post a concern about using a "fixed" percentage when you cannot guarantee that that percentage will never change.

I have lived in both Florida and Connecticut, luckily they both have a tax rate of 6%.

Say I move to a state that has a tax rate of 7.5%. How does that affect my current profiles if I have to change the tax rate in the program?

All I was trying to do is offer sugestions around that issue. Would you want to find that out before we get this or after we get this? I'd like to see all issues ahead of time, but that's just me.

I like the idea of the program doing the calcuations, but, we're still talking about simple math that I can do almost 99.9% accurate in my head.

6% is only 6 cents on the dollar. Tax is always rounded up. 15.99 would be 16 x .06 or about .96 cents. Tax on 15.99 by calculator is .9594 or, .96 cents. But I digress. This is up to Ken on how to implement it if he does at all.

That is a legitimate concern... and not what my reply was towards.  You even gave the solution to that problem yourself... which I agree with.

What my reply was to was...

Quoting NewEnglander:

Quote:
...

You have to be practical.

Unless it can be done so you enter the percentage in a box and it calculates the tax per item, but that's getting even more complicated, I would presume.

Need to think of practical on a programming standpoint, don't we?

I do not believe we need to think of of how practical something is from a programming standpoint. Many of us are not programmers and wouldn't know what is practical from a programming standpoint anyway.

I wholeheartedly believe we need to state how we would prefer a feature to work... and that is as far as our responsibility in the feature request forum goes. And then... as I said... it is up to Ken if he wants to add it... and the method on how he feels he can add it.

That is where my whole comment came from.

See my post above yours... I already agreed it was a concern and felt there was already a way around that mentioned that would work... and that was not what my reply was towards.