Determining taxes in an electronic commerce system

摘要

An electronic commerce system includes a broker that enables customers to purchase items from multiple different merchants. A customer anonymously interacts with the merchants to identify items to purchase, and the merchants provide virtual shopping carts including the item and tax information to the broker. The tax information describes tax rates for the item in multiple jurisdictions. The broker determines the jurisdiction applicable to the customer by, for example, determining a shipping address for the customer. The broker uses the tax information and jurisdiction to calculate the taxes to collect for the item. The broker determines the total cost for the transaction, and conducts an electronic commerce transaction for the item with the customer.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method of determining taxes in an electronic commerce system, comprising:
receiving, by a broker computer system separate from a merchant, a virtual shopping cart associated with a customer, the shopping cart including a plurality of items identified by the customer for purchase from the merchant and tax information comprising a default tax table, an exception tax table, and indication information indicating for each of the plurality of items whether to use the default tax table or the exception tax table to calculate taxes applicable to the item, the default tax table describing default numerical tax rates applied to commerce transactions and the exception tax table describing special numerical tax rates applicable to certain items each default numerical tax rate and special numerical tax rate associated with at least one jurisdiction; determining, by the broker computer system, a jurisdiction of the customer; calculating, by the broker computer system, taxes applicable to the plurality of items responsive to the determined jurisdiction and the tax information; and executing, by the broker computer system, a commerce transaction for the plurality of items using the calculated taxes.