Shopify Tax

Shopify Tax offers the highest level of sales tax compliance with the least amount of upkeep for merchants that sell to customers in the United States. The following features are available when using Shopify Tax:

  • Sales tax liability insights decode each state's tax regulations to help determine where you might be required to collect taxes.
  • Rooftop accuracy uses precise calculation technology to collect tax based on your customer's specific address within 11,000+ US tax jurisdictions. This improvement over zip code-based calculations better captures tax rates that can vary within regions, and helps to prevent additional costs when inaccurate tax calculations occur.
  • Product categories automatically suggests categories for each of your products that you can review, approve, or revise, and then applies the most accurate tax rate for that product based on your customer’s local tax rules.
  • Enhanced sales tax reporting can help to make filing easier by providing filterable sales data, enabling you to generate reports ready to send in to each jurisdiction.

You can also choose one of Shopify’s two free legacy tax services: Basic Tax or Manual Tax. These services offer a lower level of automated compliance, and require significantly more work on your part to keep tax rates up to date and to monitor regulation changes. This could expose your business to more tax liability in US jurisdictions. Learn more about your US tax service options and how to switch.

Shopify Tax is also available for in-person sales through Shopify POS. If you have Shopify Tax activated for your online store, then it will automatically be activated for all of your retail locations. Learn more about setting up taxes on Shopify POS.

Shopify Tax Pricing

All stores selling to the United States are able to use Shopify Tax without charge for the first 100,000 USD of US online sales each calendar year. The 100,000 USD threshold applies to each store individually. If you have more than one store, then each store will have its first 100,000 USD of online sales free each calendar year. As of January 15, 2023, after a store exceeds the threshold, the following fees apply up to a maximum of 5,000 USD per store.

  • A 0.35% calculation fee is charged on orders where tax is calculated in stores on the Shopify Starter, Shopify Lite, Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify plans.
  • A 0.25% calculation fee is charged on orders where tax is calculated in stores on the Shopify Plus plan.

Shopify Tax fee threshold

The fees for tax calculations apply only if your store has made sales equal to or greater than 100,000 USD in one calendar year within the US. If your store's sales are below 100,000 USD, then there is no charge for tax calculations. A calendar year is the period starting on January 1 and ending on December 31.

Sales that count towards the threshold are orders that originate in and are destined for locations in the United States, including the following:

  • sales from other channels that you've connected to Shopify (for example, Facebook, Instagram, and more)
  • sales of gift cards
  • sales made through Shop
  • sales that include non-taxable products
  • sales made through all payment gateways
  • taxes and shipping fees on sales

Imported orders do not count toward the threshold.

Shopify Tax fees

Fees do not apply to sales in states where you do not collect tax. In addition, the following fee caps apply:

  • 0.99 USD order cap. No matter how large the order total, you are not charged more than 0.99 USD per order.
  • 5,000 USD yearly cap. No matter how much you sell during a calendar year, you are not charged more than 5,000 USD per year.

If your store's total sales are equal to or above the fee threshold, then a percentage fee is incurred on transactions in your store that have tax calculated. The fee applies to orders from states where you have tax collection activated, including orders where no tax is charged due to products that are tax exempt. The fee does not apply to the following:

  • orders from states where you don't collect tax
  • customers that are tax exempt
  • orders that originate in a country other than the United States and are shipped to a country other than the United States
  • imported orders from outside Shopify
  • orders or portions of orders that are paid for with a gift card

This fee is charged to you on your subscription invoice for Shopify. It isn't charged to your customers and doesn't appear on their invoice.

Learn more about your US tax service options.

Considerations for using Shopify Tax

Calculations using Shopify Tax are only available for certain transactions, where the order must be destined for a location in the United States. If a tax calculation can't be performed using Shopify Tax, then the tax calculation is performed by using registration-based, non-rooftop accurate calculations. For more information, refer to US taxes or to registration-based tax settings.

Calculations using Shopify Tax are not available for the following:

  • orders that are shipped to a country other than the United States
  • Third party app and API-generated orders, such as Buy Button, Facebook and Amazon orders
  • orders that contain one or more products with an associated product or shipping rate tax override

In this section

Ready to start selling with Shopify?Try it free