| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Ledger total | Subtotal plus tax, in cents. The exact amount the books keep. Never changed by rounding. |
| Cash total | The amount the customer pays in cash after rounding. |
| Rounding delta | Cash total minus ledger total. Negative, zero or positive. |
| Rule | A row of the jurisdictions table: a statute, an ordinance, or the federal default practice. |
| Tier | One rule inside a state record, selected by transaction_type, with its own method, obligation, citation and dates. |
| Lookup key | The rule’s identifier: a state code (NC), a local key (PA:LANCASTER), or US-FEDERAL. |
| GEOID | A Census Bureau geographic identifier: 2 digits for a state, 5 for a county, 7 for a place, and a letter-suffixed code for a reservation (2430R). |
| Status | enacted, ordinance, default_practice, or a non-binding status (guidance, introduced, passed_one_chamber, passed_both_chambers, awaiting_sig, pending, drafting, failed, proposed, lead). |
| Activation state | The outcome of the activation test for a rule on a transaction: in_force, default_practice, early_adoption_voluntary (govern); pending_effective, not_binding, out_of_scope, awaiting_condition, expired, not_engine_supported (do not). |
| Obligation | obligates (the statute says shall or must) or permits (may). |
| Enforcement | The rule’s enforcement posture as recorded: mandatory, voluntary, operator_choice, safe_harbor, none. Kept for records written before obligation existed. |
| Local transaction date | The sale’s calendar date in the jurisdiction, used for the effective-date test. |
| Local date source | How that date was derived: sender_offset, jurisdiction_time_zone, utc. |
| Statutory basis | The block sealed into the record naming the governing rule and why it governed. |
| Location resolution | The block sealed into the record describing how the place of sale was established. |
| Resolution method | address_geocode, zip_fallback, coordinate_lookup, manual, unresolved. |
| Confidence | high, medium, low, none. |
| Needs review | A location flag: a person should confirm the address. Transactions are not blocked. |
| Engine supported | Whether a local record has been encoded and approved to govern transactions. |
| Dataset version | The release of the jurisdiction dataset the record was decided under (2026.10.25-r2). |
| Small-total rule | A statutory rule for very small totals: exempt (not rounded), round_up_to_nickel (becomes five cents), or permitted_round_up (recorded, not applied). |
| Refund policy | same_rule (the refund is rounded under the sale’s rule and negated) or exact (Vermont: the refund is the exact amount paid). |
| Notice required | The statute requires a posted notice or signage where rounding is applied (Arizona, Oregon, Vermont, Minnesota agencies). |
| Hash schema | 1 for records before 3.7.0; 2 when the statutory basis and location resolution are covered by the chain hash. |
| Early adoption | A merchant’s election to apply an enacted-but-not-yet-effective rule now; recorded as voluntary. |
| Rounding preference | The operator’s method where a statute leaves the choice to the operator. |
| Local adoption | A recorded fact that a locality adopted a local-option authority. |
Reference
Field glossary
The vocabulary used across requests, responses and the sealed record.