Determining taxes in an electronic commerce system

#This application is related to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/112,176, filed Apr. 22, 2005, entitled “Distributed Electronic Commerce System With Centralized Point Of Purchase,” to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/299,168, filed on Dec. 29, 2005, entitled “Distributed Electronic Commerce System with Centralized Virtual Shopping Carts,” to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/477,012, filed Jun. 27, 2006, entitled “Distributed Electronic Commerce System with Independent Third Party Virtual Shopping Carts,” and to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/426,833, filed Jun. 27, 2006, entitled “Electronic Commerce System Utilizing Custom Merchant Calculations,” each of which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

#This invention pertains in general to electronic commerce and in particular to determining taxes to collect in jurisdictions served by an electronic commerce system.

#Electronic commerce on the Internet has become commonplace. There are many merchants offering goods and services via web sites on the Internet, and there are an even greater number of customers who purchase the goods and services. In many cases, the electronic commerce transactions involve physical goods. For example, many customers purchase items such as books, compact disks (CDs) and DVDs via the Internet. Customers can also purchase electronic content such as downloadable text, music, and access to web sites that provide news or entertainment stories.

#FIG. 1 is a high-level block diagram of a computing environment according to one embodiment.

#FIG. 2 is a high-level block diagram illustrating a functional view of a typical computer system for use as one of the entities illustrated in the environment of FIG. 1 according to one embodiment.

#FIG. 3 is a high-level block diagram illustrating modules within a customer according to one embodiment.

#The figures depict an embodiment of the present invention for purposes of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from the following description that alternative embodiments of the structures and methods illustrated herein may be employed without departing from the principles of the invention described herein.

#FIG. 1 is a high-level block diagram of a computing environment 100 according to one embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 1 illustrates two customers 102A and 102B, two merchants 104A and 104B, and a broker 106 connected by a network 108. FIG. 1 and the other figures use like reference numerals to identify like elements. A letter after a reference numeral, such as “104A,” indicates that the text refers specifically to the element having that particular reference numeral. A reference numeral in the text without a following letter, such as “104,” refers to any or all of the elements in the figures bearing that reference numeral (e.g. “104” in the text refers to reference numerals “104A” and/or “104B” in the figures).

#The customer 102 in this embodiment represents an entity that obtains items via the network 108 through purchases or other types of transactions. The customer 102 is sometimes referred to as the “buyer” and the transaction is sometimes referred to as a “sale” or “purchase.” As used herein, these terms also refer to other types of transactions, regardless of whether the customer is technically a “buyer” or the transaction is technically a “purchase.” End-users acting as customers 102 can include end-users purchasing items for their own use or as gifts, and/or end-users purchasing items for the use of a company or other enterprise with which the end-users are associated.