Starting April 1, retailers will be charged fees on the electrical goods by their suppliers.
Retailers will pass on this to the consumers but would like to show this fee as a separate line item on the invoice.

The fee schedule will vary depanding on the product and size - i.e. size of the monitor or TV.

Has anyone given this a thought as to how to implement this?

Gentlemen, this fees will soon come to rest of the provinces and States too. This fee will eventually cover almost any disposable items.

Looking for ideas, please...

Hi Yogi,

We already have this nonsense in BC: it is really just a government tax grab since it really does not result in anything actually being recycled.

HTey best bet is to create misc charges in OE and additional Items in Invoices that credit one or more liability accounts.

I am not sure what the reporting requirements are for the Ontario scheme, but you may have to use GridView to create a monthly report.

Hello:

I'll expand on Yogi's requirements a little since he and I have discussed this before without a good answer.

Yogi's business is fairly high-volume. He is looking for a solution where the fees are calculated automatically when he sells items that are subject to this fee. And I believe that the fees have to be listed separately. If he sells 10 monitors, the fee has to be listed. Then if he sells 10 computers on the same invoice, that fee has to be listed separately.

We considered using taxes but the appearance on the invoice didn't match requirements.

As Ralph suggested, a "Misc Charge" works but requires manual calculation.

Has anyone handled this situation in a different way?

Ralph,

I would like to show this fee as a line item immedietly under the subject item.

In Ontario it seems the Government is letting voluntary group take care of it:
13) Is this a tax? All fees collected from Ontario stewards of WEEE will go towards covering the program’s direct costs of collection, transportation, consolidation, end-of-life management and administration. In addition, funds will be used for public education and awareness, research and development, continuous improvements in technology and program execution. The program is managed by Ontario Electronic Stewardship (OES) which is a not-for-profit organization of brand owners and retailers of electrical and electronic equipment. None of the fees collected from obligated companies will go to government; therefore’ it is not a tax.

And here is more to the confusion, for a program starting in 11 days:

12) Is PST and/or GST applicable to steward’s fees? OES is waiting on a GST ruling from Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) with respect to its WEEE program. Until such time as this ruling is received, OES will be charging GST on fees to stewards obligated for EEE under the WEEE program upon the start of the program. Stewards will be advised of the WEEE GST status as soon as a ruling is received. PST does not apply.

Hi Yogi,

Is it subject to any audit or reporting requirement?

Yogi:

Yes we have this nonsense in BC and there is a very good solution for Adagio. The same one we used in ACCPAC Plus for many years to handle eco fees.

Use either Cost1 or Cost2 and enter the fee. In your tax setup add a jurisdiction for the fee and tax the Cost1 (or Cost2) at 100%. In BC the Fee is GST taxable - this requires a new tax group as he fee must come before GST in order to be taxed by the GST.

The fee will now be charged automatically and you can set it up as either a line item tax or as a total tax.

Andrew:

Yes it is subject to audit and reporting.

Andrew,

AS per their website the reporting system is still under developement.

http://www.ontarioelectronicstewardship.ca/

But I assume we will have to report as per this partiel list:
Classification

$Rate/Item

Desktop Computers *

$13.44

Portable Computers *

$2.14

Computer Peripherals:

$0.32

Including
Mice
$0.32


Keyboards
$0.32


Hard Drives
$0.32


Optical Drives
$0.32

Monitors(with no embedded TV Tuner)

$12.03

TV (includes any monitors with embedded TV tuners)
All Sizes
$10.07

Printing Devices

$5.05

Hello Yogi,

Have you checked out Doug's solution? Does it provide what you're looking for?

Andrew,

I have requested Doug's services to see how this can be fine tuned.
I also would like to get an understanding of how this solution will work with soon to be released Adagio Purchase Order module.

Andrew, go back to say year 1967 when first Provincial Tax was introduced. It took pioneers like me to get the Acouunting systems modified to accomodate these new tax structures.

I appreciate all the "hack" solutions, but at sometime these "Waste Disposal fees" will have to be part of the order Entry/Inventory control systems.

We do not have to use gridview to remit/report GST, PST or any of the Payroll taxes!

Hi Yogi,

Doug's solution does not require GridView to remit the report. It is reported and treated as a tax.

It's not a "hack" solution either. It was one of the tax method anticipated by basing taxes on one of the user cost fields. Having said that, these types of fees are not that common, and so people have to search their collective memory banks to remember how they were implemented.

Yogi:

My apologies for the flippant remarks, it was unprofessional of me.

The tax method in Adagio is designed to meet any taxing regime and certainly Eco and/or Environment Fees qualify as a tax and can be handled by Adagio.

I would be happy to assist you with the implementation. Please note that providing this type of assistance is my business so there will be a charge. You can contact me offline at either douglas@accsyssolutions.com or toll free at 1.888.534.4344 to discuss this further.

Has anyone figured out what to do here to comply with the OES WEEE program? Is Doug's suggestion above about using Cost 1 still the best solution or has anyone figured out another method?? Can we add a tax group in OE and have it applicable only to items with a certain tax status code?? We are just finishing up our year end here and way behind the 8 ball on this WEEE program that starts tomorrow.

Should this thread be in the technical support forum??

Hello Susan:

Doug's technique works very well for calculating the fee just like a tax.

The issue that Yogi has wrestled with is that he wants to see a separate ECO line following each item. For example:
1 - Sold 10 Desktop computers
2 - ECO fee for 10 Desktop computers
3 - Sold 5 Notebook computers
4 - ECO fee for 5 Notebook computers
etc.

Doug's approach will display a single line for the total ECO fee amount. For example:
1 - Sold 10 Desktop computers
2 - Sold 5 Notebook computers
3 - Total ECO fee
etc.

If you only need to see a single total, then Doug's recommendation will work perfectly.

There is no requirement that the fee be shown separately for each item. Having said that, we are looking to see whether there is something simple we can do that would allow the tax to be printed in that way. However, I can guarantee that whatever we decide to do, it won't be done by tomorrow!

Doug described above "The Fee is GST taxable - this requires a new tax group as the fee must come before GST in order to be taxed by the GST."

My question is: For Ontario customers that are NOT PST exempt and therefore PAY PST, how will Adagio know to charge only GST on the ECO Fee and not PST?

Susan, we ended up creating about 5 inventory items for the eco fees with separate catogory code and control account.This way we can show these fees under each effected items.

Andrew, with all due respect...MY customers (at least some) demand that these fees be brocken down as separate line items for charging different departments.

We have 3 supplieRs - one is bunching up these fees as one sum total at the end of the invoice.

The girl who is posting the inventory is also in charge of placing orders. She has stopped ordering anything from this supplier. And I can see why!

Hi Yogi,

I also created 5 inventory items (non-stock) with tax status of GST only.. no PST. That way if the customer pays PST, they will not have to pay PST on the ECO fees. The only problem is that each person on staff will have to remember to manually add these fees when applicable when they are invoicing. I can add alerts to every item where ECO tax applies to help them remember but that is not as efficient as having the system determine and calculate adding the fees.

However I also agree with you that the customers will want the breakdown of fees so they know which amounts pertain to which items so they can build it into their cost and appropriately bill it out to their customers. I suppose we can send them the fee schedule so they can figure out the calculation.

If time permits, I'd like to try both methods and figure out which is best.

The next release of Adagio OrderEntry (the AR 9.0 compatible release) will allow you to place the tax under the item to which it applies using the forms designer. Of course, this will require a change to the specification to add the necessay display section, but it won't be too difficult. You might want to implement the fee using the tax method, knowing that the presentation option will exist in a couple of months.

Yogi,

Please let me know if you find a better solution for these Ontario WEEE Fees. We have way too many alerts set up on way too many items to remind employees to bill out the WEEE fees. Then they have to check to see if the customer is from Ontario and then if so whether or not they are WEEE exempt. This is not an efficient way to handle these fees. We are being alerted to death.

I had a look at adding tax groups and tax types but I can't figure it out. Even if I could accomplish what Douglas suggested in putting the total WEEE fee in the tax section that was taxable only by GST and not PST, it would only give us a total amount collected in a ledger account. How would we submit the detailed report that OES requires with our remission?

Unless I hear otherwise, I'm thinking we have to live with non-stock item codes for the WEEE fees and alerts. Please let me know if you have any better ideas.

Hi Susan,

If you set of the WEEE fees as a tax, then the tax tracking reports in OrderEntry should provide the necessary detail for an auditor. Your PST and GST taxes are only shown as a total amount in your g/l too.

An Adagio consultant is the appropriate place to turn for setting up a new tax.

Susan, Yogi and other Ontarions struggling with this:

One of my clients has a similar issue with envro fees on paint. Like Susan suggests, they created a whole category of non-stock items for the fees. (the category code is the first segment in their item number, so they make the rest of the item code the same as the code for the item the fee applies to.

They use the Order entry History inquiry for Items; select the category and appropriate dates, and produce the detailed report which they can export to Excel.

Hi All,
We're in Ontario, and we followed Doug's suggestion and set up our clients' with the OES tax group.

It works by calculating the OES tax on either Cost 1 or Cost 2. IF Cost 1, then the OES Tax is going to be 100% of the field. You will need a new tax group, say OES, and Jurisdiction 1 will be PST, Justisdiction 2 will be OES, and Jurisdiction 3 will be GST.

GST can be charged on selective lower jurisdictions.

For now, you cannot report on the line calculation tax for the each line item, but for practical purposes say in Point of Sale slips, it really isn't viable. You can report the total for Jurisdiction 2 as an OES fee amount as a summary line item or a total.

To implement, export out the customer tax groups and import and replace with the OES Tax Group. Also export the Item cost1 (or Cost 2) with the related OES fee for applicable item, and reimport back in.

GST initially said you had to report each line item designation for being GSTable or exempt. It was never enforced and most sites still do not report other than on the total.

If you need assistance, call our office in Waterloo. 800-540-3164. We can do onsite or remote installation.

Regards,
Brian