Manual Tax

To make sure that you're charging the correct amount of tax, configure your tax settings on the Taxes and duties page in your Shopify admin.

Limitations of Manual Tax

The following features are not available in Manual Tax:

If you require any of these features, then review the table of tax services to determine which tax service is best for your needs.

Before setting up Manual Tax

If you're new to Shopify, then you need to determine whether you should charge sales tax before you start selling. You might need to register with multiple tax agencies. After that, you can set up your taxes in Shopify to help ensure that you charge the correct rates wherever you sell in the United States.

Before you add tax rates in your admin at Settings > Taxes and duties, review the following considerations:

  • You need to determine whether you should charge sales tax. If you're not sure, then consult with a US state tax authorities or a tax professional. For a summary of state tax rules, refer to the US taxes reference.
  • If you need to charge sales tax in one or more US jurisdictions, then you need to contact each of the relevant agencies and register with them. The process varies depending on where your business is based and where you sell, and on the individual government requirements. For links to various US tax agencies, refer to the state tax reference.

Set up Manual Tax

After you determine where you need to charge sales tax, you can manually set your tax rates.

Steps:

  1. From the Shopify admin, go to Settings > Taxes and duties.
  2. In the Tax regions section, find United States and click Set up.
  3. In the Base taxes section, specify the taxes manually for each state and region. You can choose whether a tax in a region is used instead of a federal tax, is added to a federal tax, or is compounded with a federal tax.
  4. Click Save.

Remove a physical presence

Although you can remove your business's physical presences, you have to keep at least one physical presence for the state that is specified in your store address on the Settings > Store details settings page.

For tax purposes, it's assumed that you have a physical presence at your store address. If you remove that physical presence from the Taxes and duties page, then that location is automatically added back.

You can remove a physical presence from the County, municipal, and state taxes section.

Steps:

  1. From the Shopify admin, go to Settings > Taxes and duties.
  2. In the Tax regions section, click United States.
  3. Click the trash can icon beside the physical presence that you want to remove.
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