I have just searched for hours and still cant figure out the best way to charge sales tax. I have a solution in FM 7 with tables for Contacts, Invoices, Invoice Line Items, and Products. I have to charge 6% sales tax for people in NJ. The only exception is when a dealership (non-taxable) is located in NJ.

I was thinking the best way to handle it is to automatically fill in a checkbox (IF State = "NJ") that says "Charge Sales Tax". This would allow me to uncheck the box in case its a non-taxable dealership.

Is this really the best way to handle this? If it is how would I go about automatically adding the sales tax amount to the "TotalOrderPrice" field? I would rather have this done automatically (maybe a calculation), rather than attaching a script to a button.

Please let me know the best solution.

Thanks!!

Sounds like a reasonable method. You would want to have a Sales_Tax field, which is a calc based on TotalOrderPrice*.06, and then another field which is a calc which adds them together. The reason for the two fields is that you'll want a separate field showing how much tax you've charged (you are passing this money on to New Jersey, right?) and, in case they change your tax to something like 8.25% (which we have here in NY) you'll want to ensure that you don't lose any rounding that happens in the calc.

-Stanley

Thats what I want to do. But how do I handle non-NJ sales? I dont have to charge them tax (mail order). I want the "TotalOrderPrice" field to run the calculation only if the person is from NJ.

Use a Case statement, like Sales_Tax =

Case (State = NJ ; .06*TotalOrderPrice ;

0.00)