Fare vs Base Fare
 

For those of us trying to fly enough by year's end to make or retain status for another year, the VX Booking Engine has been confusing. When you choose your cabin class, you see the word "fare" in the booking box, some info about taxes and fees and some info about how many points you might get. The fare, however, is NOT the "base fare" which is the number you need for calculating status points. If you continue the booking, you finally get to a screen that says "base fare". That number x 5 represents the number of status points you get for the flight. The difference between the fare on the page where you choose your flights and the base fare that you see later on is that the base fare doesn't include the Federal Excise Tax and the fare on the first page does.

I may be the only person who is trying to get to 20K status points in the most inexpensive way possible, but for others in the same boat (plane?), using the wrong fare number could leave you short of status points.

Booking using a TA makes it MUCH easier IMO.
The 'fare' is the lowest number.
The 'total' is fare + taxes.