Tax Everything Except for Cart Variant or Child Product

[lonokane]

I have a little issue creating a new product. I will give some detail first.

We are selling Gift Baskets that are a taxable product. The baskets contain 4 bottles of beer that require a bottle deposit of .05 each (.20) total but the bottle deposits cannot be taxed as that is against the law.

So, I have played with many different options using Cart Variants as well as Child Products but each one is adding Tax to the additional .20. I even created a a category called "Deposits" and applied no Tax rules to the products within. I also, created a separate tax rule that would deduct the 8% tax on the Bottle Deposit category and that did not work either.

Am I going about this the wrong way or over-thinking it? Is this type of option not available?