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Ask HN: Calculating Destination-based Sales Tax Rates by Zip Code

1 points by jeffreyshaw ↗ HN
Have any of you guys experienced a similar headache as what I'm dealing with today...?

I'm trying to put together a database such that I can calculate sales/use tax rates for customer orders, based on the destination zip code of the ship-to recipient.

I have found services online that maintain these tax rates for each state/county/city and provide the data through a web service look-up tool (for a fee per lookup). However what I really want is just an excel sheet of every zipcode (or zipcode range) and the associated sales tax for that region. I'll then code my own tool to look up the associated tax rate. I don't mind if the data is not 100% accurate or if it's a bit outdated.

Anyone have a database like this and willing to help out a fellow startup?

5 comments

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jeffreyshaw
To further clarify, only need data on USA zip codes. Thanks in advance.
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jeffreyshaw
Thanks Benferhat for the links.

However, zip-tax is SaaS-only and charges monthly fee. And zip2tax sells the database for $660.

Seeing as how this is not proprietary data and that I am a lean-startup (read: poor), I find it hard to justify paying $660 for an excel file that likely many other people have loaded up in their e-com platform. If you do have it please let me know :)

Benferhat
I hear you, but are you sure that would be legal? It's public information, but the compilation wouldn't be cheap or easy to build and maintain. I'd think they'd want to get paid. I heard of a similar issue with time zone data compilations a while back.

btw, PayPal provides this service for free.

18pfsmt
As a small ecommerce player, I can't see why you would even bother doing this in any state other than the one in which you operate. I don't think Newegg does this, for example.

BTW, I live in a zipcode with 2 cities that have different sales tax rates.