Need to pass tax-exempt varible to Authorize.net

General ShopSite user discussion

Need to pass tax-exempt varible to Authorize.net

Postby NuQ » Mon Aug 22, 2005 12:36 pm

We are wholesale only and sell to tax exempt customers only. Our bank,
Wells Fargo tell us we need to set this flag on all internet credit card
transactions which are tax exempt...or at least on those transactions that
use a company credit card.

I contacted Authorize.net and they said this flag needs to be set in the
transaction parameters from our website. Here is the varible defined in
AuthNet's documentation.

http://www.authorize.net/support/AIM_guide.pdf

Is there a way to do this in Shop Site 8? Thanks!
NuQ
 

Re: Need to pass tax-exempt varible to Authorize.net

Postby jim » Mon Aug 22, 2005 2:03 pm

According to the Authorize.net documentation passing the tax_ID (not tax
exempt status) info is optional (pgs. 12 & 16) for most transactions and
conditional (pg 19) for Wells Fargo transaction. As far as I could see
the only thing that is done with it by Authorize.net is to echo it back
to the merchant on their receipt.

For Wells Fargo eCheck transactions you need either the customer_tax_id
OR drivers license number and state and Date of birth. That information
is captured by ShopSite for eCheck payments and is sent to Authorize.net.

Is there to tell if a credit card is a company credit card or a personal
one? Or are you relying on the shopper to say it is? I have never
seen anything in a credit card test account specification that says
there is a way to tell one from the other. Also just because a credit
card belongs to a company doesn't mean that things purchased with it are
automatically tax exempt. I saw nothing in the spec that says that the
tax exempt status is required for Wells Fargo transaction. The only tax
related thing I could find in the spec that Wells Fargo require is the
customer tax id (which is a federal id, like a corporate social security
number) not a state tax exempt id.

Jim

NuQ wrote:
We are wholesale only and sell to tax exempt customers only. Our bank,
Wells Fargo tell us we need to set this flag on all internet credit card
transactions which are tax exempt...or at least on those transactions that
use a company credit card.

I contacted Authorize.net and they said this flag needs to be set in the
transaction parameters from our website. Here is the varible defined in
AuthNet's documentation.

http://www.authorize.net/support/AIM_guide.pdf

Is there a way to do this in Shop Site 8? Thanks!

jim
 

Re: Need to pass tax-exempt varible to Authorize.net

Postby NuQ » Mon Aug 22, 2005 3:15 pm

Thanks, Jim. Maybe I should let you know what I was told. Someone at Wells
Fargo called the owner of the business and said that when someone uses a
company credit card the transaction needs to be flagged as "tax exempt". I
asked the same question you had: how does the "system" know it's a company
credit card? The owner said that apparently, the first 2-4 digits of the
credit card tell Visa/Mastercard if it's a company card or not. He said,
for example, at his brick and mortar store when they "swipe" a company card,
the terminal screen asks "tax exempt: Y or N?". It doesn't do this for
non-company cards.

But like you said, just because it's a company credit card doesn't
necessarily mean the purchase should be tax exempt.

The approach I was trying to take was to just flag all transactions as tax
exempt. I came up with this approach when I logged into our account at
authorize.net and looked at each transaction detail and noticed there is one
field called Tax Exempt. The value is always N. I was thinking that all I
needed to do was to get this set to Y and we'd be set.

But maybe that is just for the merchant's information, I don't know. Maybe
I need to talk to Authorize.net again.

"jim" <beeutahful@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:dedeis$ie4$1@eval.shopsite.com...
According to the Authorize.net documentation passing the tax_ID (not tax
exempt status) info is optional (pgs. 12 & 16) for most transactions and
conditional (pg 19) for Wells Fargo transaction. As far as I could see
the only thing that is done with it by Authorize.net is to echo it back to
the merchant on their receipt.

For Wells Fargo eCheck transactions you need either the customer_tax_id OR
drivers license number and state and Date of birth. That information is
captured by ShopSite for eCheck payments and is sent to Authorize.net.

Is there to tell if a credit card is a company credit card or a personal
one? Or are you relying on the shopper to say it is? I have never seen
anything in a credit card test account specification that says there is a
way to tell one from the other. Also just because a credit card belongs
to a company doesn't mean that things purchased with it are automatically
tax exempt. I saw nothing in the spec that says that the tax exempt
status is required for Wells Fargo transaction. The only tax related
thing I could find in the spec that Wells Fargo require is the customer
tax id (which is a federal id, like a corporate social security number)
not a state tax exempt id.

Jim

NuQ wrote:
We are wholesale only and sell to tax exempt customers only. Our bank,
Wells Fargo tell us we need to set this flag on all internet credit card
transactions which are tax exempt...or at least on those transactions
that use a company credit card.

I contacted Authorize.net and they said this flag needs to be set in the
transaction parameters from our website. Here is the varible defined in
AuthNet's documentation.

http://www.authorize.net/support/AIM_guide.pdf

Is there a way to do this in Shop Site 8? Thanks!
NuQ
 


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