How to hide Tax Amount on cart until Estimate Tax and Shipping has been submitted

Question

Problem

We are currently implementing the Dots/FastTax plugin to extend from the initial Mage_Tax_Model_Calculation class. By doing so, we are able to provide a dynamic tax rate for both cart estimate tax quote and actual checkout.

The issue, however, is that tax is currently showing on an initial session. In other words, when a user adds an item to the cart and proceeds to checkout cart, you can see a default tax amount. This default tax amount usually is estimated to 8% of the total item cost.

Discussion

The plugin is responsible for one key method extension, that is the calcTaxAmount:

    /**
     * Calculate rated tax based on price and tax rate.
     * If you are using price including tax $priceInclude should be true.
     *
     * @param float $price
     * @param float $taxRate
     * @param boolean $priceIncludeTax
     * @param boolean $round
     * @return float
     */
    public function calcTaxAmount($price, $taxRate, $priceIncludeTax = false, $round = true)
    {
        $taxRate = 0.00;

        if (in_array($this->shippingState, $this->taxableStates)) {
            $dots_helper = Mage::helper('DOTS_FastTax/DOTS');
            $taxRate = $dots_helper->getTaxRate();
        }

        if ($priceIncludeTax) {
            $amount = $price * (1 - 1 / (1 + $taxRate));
        } else {
            $amount = $price * $taxRate;
        }

        if ($round) {
            return $this->round($amount);
        }

        return $amount;
    }

In the above implementation, we verify that the shipping state (the state to which the product will ship to) is available in a list of pre-configured taxable states (states to which we would like tax to apply). If so, we use a helper object to get the tax rate. The tax returns a decimal value. Since this is the only method to which we extend from the initial object, I am assuming all other behavior is inherited from the parent.

Question

Is there a way to hide the tax rate on cart summary until the user has engaged the Estimate Shipping and Tax Estimate field?

Answer 1

Solution

Go to System > Configuration > Sales > Tax > Default Tax Destination Calculation

Set the following options:

• Default Country: None
• Default State: *
• Default Post Code*

This will hide the default tax amount on initial load. Only until a user requests an estimate does the summary update with the appropriate tax amount.