Patent ID: 7739146

Claim:
A machine-readable storage device encoded with a computer program product that is operable to cause data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising: handling taxes for a sales transaction in which a buyer makes a purchase from a seller, the purchase having a purchase price and a tax amount owed on the purchase, wherein handling taxes for a sales transaction includes using a tax handling proxy to: identify a remote, third party tax calculation service for the sales transaction from a plurality of available tax calculation services, the remote, third party tax calculation service being provided by a governmental tax authority; transfer sales transaction properties to the remote, third party tax calculation service; receive an indication of the tax amount from the remote tax calculation service; and transfer payment for the tax amount from the buyer to the governmental tax authority without passing through the seller to prevent access to the payment by the seller, the transfer to the governmental tax authority commencing as soon as the sales transaction occurs and being contemporaneous with transferring a payment for the purchase price to the seller, wherein the tax handling proxy is resident in a sales system of the seller and functions as an intermediary between the sales system and the remote tax calculation service.