How do I handle taxes and shipping costs?

Hey everyone, I'm VERY new to selling online and dropshipping. I have two big questions:

1. How do I handle taxes when selling online? How do I figure rates for specific areas? Which areas do I even charge sales tax for? Most of the stuff I've bought online has never been taxed. Some websites only charge tax for CA. How do I know what to do?

2. How do I figure shipping costs for each purchase especially since I will probably have more than one dropshipper? I'm in AR, but what if someone in TX buys a product from me that is shipped from my supplier in DE (for example). Or someone in CA buys something shipped from TX. How do I figure all these different shipping rates into the price?

Thanks in advance!

About the tax part, if both seller and buyer are in the same state then the sales tax of that state applies. You charge sales tax to a buyer from AR. AR sales tax+the local tax of your county. Hope I'm right.

Ok - so unless they are in AR, I don't charge? How do I know where they're from?

I'm using Zen Cart by the way...

I haven't used Zen Cart myself, but from reading their help, what I understand is this:

You can set up different geographical zones, and assign different tax classes to those zones.

So if you have a drop shipper in TX, set up a zone for TX and assign the sales tax rate for TX. If you have another drop shipper in AR, set up a one for AR and assign it a tax rate.

I assume people have to fill out a few details at checkout, like their country and state, so the software will use that data to automatically calculate their final total.

These articles will hopefully answer both your tax & shipping questions:

Tax

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Shipping
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