To repeat the most important portion of your post THERE IS NO MEANS TO TURN OFF AUTOMATED SALES TAX.

QBO you have completely failed the user community in this regard. Choosing not to charge tax when creating an invoice is NOT A SOLUTION TO YOUR PROBLEM. It is unbelievable that you would make such a suggestion. Stop posting this nonsense to the user community - we are NOT amused.

QBO you are messing with Sales Tax, payments and reporting to state authorities. I have elevated this situation to our local and state political representative with the intention that they will put legal pressure on QBO to resolve this problem and provide users with a means of turning off this infuriating "feature" which I never chose to activate in the first place. 

In the meantime, QBO,  stop posting worthless and ineffective "work arounds" - you are wasting our time.