Colorado Retail Delivery Fee

The problem

Colorado requires retailers to charge a flat per-sale fee on retail deliveries by motor vehicle, as its own separately labeled "Retail Delivery Fees" line that cannot be merged into shipping, tax, or any other charge, and to file the total collected each month on Form DR 1786. A store selling into Colorado needs this handled correctly on every page a total shows up, and needs a real record at filing time, not a manual spreadsheet reconstructed from order exports.

How it works

The fee is built as a genuine Magento total collector, the same extension point behind Magento's own Weee/FPT fixed product tax, rather than a shipping surcharge or a checkout hack. On every totals collection it checks whether the module is enabled, the shipping address is in Colorado, the shipping method is not one of the configured pickup-style exclusions (Click and Collect's carrier code is pre-filled), the cart holds at least one item outside the configured exempt tax classes, and the cart is not entirely virtual. If all of that holds, the configured fee amount is added as its own line labeled exactly "Retail Delivery Fees."

What happens after checkout

Once an order is placed, the fee amount that applied at that moment is written onto the order and carried forward unchanged to its invoice, rather than being recalculated from current settings. A credit memo only refunds the fee when it refunds the order's subtotal in full; a partial refund that keeps some items does not touch it, since the delivery that fee paid for already happened.

What the store owner sees

Configuration lives in one place, with the fee amount, excluded shipping carriers, and exempt tax classes all editable without a developer. At filing time, the DR 1786 Filing Report grid lists every order that carried the fee for a given date range with a CSV export ready to hand to whoever files the return, replacing a manual reconciliation against order exports.