Tax calculation after address (country) selected in checkout - going back to catalog - not logged in

Question

This situation was highlighted to me by two separate clients, and I hope someone can clarify it a bit, or propose a workaround/fix.

The store is in australia, and has tax rules configured for australia. When a customer views the catalog, all prices are correctly displayed as inclusive of tax (10.00) Customer then ads item to cart, and proceeds to checkout. Prices are still inclusive of tax, and correctly displayed as such. Customer then selects USA as delivery, and billing address (guest checkout, not logging in)

Now, in the review, prices are (correctly?) displayed excluding tax, thus magento is picking up the USA address and adjusting price display accordingly. Customer decides they want another item, browse to catalog, but now catalog is showing prices including tax (so still as australian). Cart and Top Cart displays excluding tax, thus taking into account address selected at checkout.

Is this a bug? (magento 1.7, and 1.12 EE) The request is to have the catalog also adjust accordingly.

The complaint was that customer viewed the same product in catalog, than what they had in cart, and now prices differ....and complained about it.

One way I can think of fixing this is to adjust the catalog priceblock code to get the checkout address country, and adjust the prices accordingly. Is this the correct path to fix?

Any other suggestions on this?

Answer 1

Catalog price display does not account for guest checkout region id. "It's not a bug, it's a feature" applies here, but I think it's reasonable that this should exist at least going forward (Magento 2). I'm pinging the PM in charge of tax calc so he's aware of the use case (and to make sure that this hasn't changed in more recent releases).