You make it sound like nobody has to calculate that amount.
Just because it isn't the store manager, doesn't mean that amount just magically appears.
Um.... I'm guessing that you've never actually owned a retail business, or owned property. But that is an assumption on part, so if this seems basic it may just be I'm starting from a wrong place.
Property Taxes: Different jurisdictions will have different methods, but generally I think this is a good example. The various boards and authorities and districts and government bodies that receive taxes go through (annually usually) a process where democratically elected people (generally) decide on a budget and set a tax rate per $ of property value - sometimes you will hear of something called a "mill-rate". The Property Owner (who may or may not be the Store Owner as well) is not involved in these calculations at all, except for their involvement in the democratic process of electing the politicians.
There is a separate body that maintains a database of what each property is worth. In some places they calculate how much it would be worth if you sold it today on the open market, and in other places it's the value of last purchase on the open market. The Property Owner has no involvement in this process... except if they decide to appeal the assessed value.
Once a year the Property Owner receives a bill. It states what the assessment office has determined is the value of your property. How much each level of government is collecting, and what you need to pay. For the Property Value the extent of their involvement in this process can be as simple as opening an envelope, looking at the number, writing-out and signing a cheque, signing a declaration on the Tax Bill, and mailing it back. That's it. They do not calculate a single thing. The minimum wage admin clerk can get the cheque ready for signing.
Sales Taxes: For just one level of government. [Read the bit above regarding programming cash registers, perhaps multiple times in a year]. Just for arguments sake (and this makes things easier, not harder) lets say the sales tax is remitted on an annual basis. Bigger companies tend to remit more often and this whole process can happen on a monthly basis for them.
Start with a blank form. This can also be done online, but generally you are working from a printed worksheet. Big companies will at least have their company info preprinted on a form.
Again, different jurisdictions will have different formats.. this was typical for British Columbia... which had a simple to middle-complex provincial sales tax format before we combined our Federal and Provincial Sales Taxes into a single Harmonized Sales Tax.
Calculate your total Gross Sales for the period, and record. Calculate your returns on those sales, and record. Calculate Net Sales from those two figures. Yes - the Province wanted to see those numbers. Calculate the Sales Tax collected on those sales - Now it gets fun....
a) Do you use the "Simplified Calculation" where you simply calculated the amount owed using a percentage that was less than the actual tax rate, but was supposed average out the Taxable Sales and the Untaxed Sales. At this point you would record that figure, then add in any adjustments (errors made on the previous return, etc), calculate your commission and subtract that figure from the tax owed.
(BC was kinda cool that way... they would pay you up to $14 to fill in your tax form, but only if you met the deadline for filing. I used to miss the deadline on a regular basis, so I would not calculate the commission. Then BC would send me a re-assessment notice telling me that I had a $14 credit, and that I should add that to the "adjustment" portion on the next remitting form and include the re-assessment reference number. Sometimes I'd forget to do that, and then I had a whole flurry of notices from BC. We'd get sorted in the end, though I had a rather large file by then.)
OR...
b) Do you record the detail on all sales for the year, and calculate the sales tax actually collected on those sales, less the returns and the adjustments, commission paid by BC etc. You would record all of this and then send in the form and the cheque. I used this method, by the way.
There were ways to legally minimize the tax you collected from your clients, and therefore owed to BC. For instance... When I did a photo session for clients, if I billed the photo session and the CD as two different line items on the invoice I would only need to charge Sales Tax on the CD (a tangible product) and not on the photo session itself (a service). So, I'd charge them 7% on $1 and zero-rate the rest (usually in the $hundreds). But I had to list it on the invoice as two lines, and while I was never audited - I still needed to be able to produce a copy of the invoice - all my invoices - for up to 5 years after the close of the tax year had I been asked.
In order to take advantage of these strategies, and not get caught by the closing of loopholes, I needed to read the monthly tax bulletins. Not onerous, since they were usually just a few pages and mostly dealt with hotel taxes, liquor taxes, and fuel products. In my conversations with my American photographic colleagues, the BC system seemed to be on the simpler side of mid-range in terms of complexity. The advantage of the BC system was that if I had expanded to anywhere else in the province I would use the exact same form, and in fact could amalgamate locations into a single form.
When you have each City and County within a State collecting their own sales taxes, then the number of forms increases. More importantly the reports you need to run from the software are very different. However... the property tax form, while different for each jurisdiction, is still just a number that you pay. For the property owner there is no complexity in it... it's just an invoice like any other.
