sales tax with an If statement

[sbmac]

I'm trying to figure out how & where to place an if (I think it should be an if) statement that will allow me to only have sales tax calculated IF the state of purchase is New York (where I am.) I'm new to File maker (I'm switching over from MS Access.)

So far, I have: If(state = "NY"; tax = (subtotal X 0.8625); 0)

Can I add the calculation in the statement like that?

Thanks for your help.

[David Jondreau]

Close. You're trying to get:

If (state = "NY"; subtotal * 0.8625; 0)

But I'd go one step further and create a Tax Rate field, you can auto-enter the tax rate in there. And you'd get:

If (state = "NY"; subtotal * TaxRate; 0)

This is desirable because tax rates change. If NY raised their taxes next year to say, .87, you'd have to change the calculation, but then all the old invoices would recalculate with the new tax rate. Which you don't want.

[sbmac]

Thanks so much for your help...my Wife Miriam is doing this for me and got stumped.

All the best, Scott

[sbmac]

David,

Do you think there's a way to do an If And Then If ... statement so that I don't have to select the tax rate each time in my invoice?

I'm thinking something like:

If (Date(1,0,2007)

OR:

Can I create a table just with the fields tax rate & year, and then,

in my invoice, make "sales tax" a calculated field that looks at the field "state", and if it's NY, then looks at the field "date delivered", and then compares it to the tax table, and provides the sales tax rate?

Thanks for you help.