Shopify Tax Setup Trips Up New Sellers Every Time
Small online retailers are experiencing significant challenges navigating Shopify's intricacies, including tax setup, gift card migration, inconsistent shipping rates, and high shipping costs. Many are migrating from other platforms like WooCommerce, highlighting a desire for simpler solutions but encountering unexpected hurdles within Shopify's ecosystem. This complexity impacts their ability to efficiently manage their businesses and serve customers.
SOURCES (60)
“I made my seller profile a couple weeks ago and i simply dont get it after fees and shipping ill be barely making even undercutting the other similar sellers in my space and I still cant make a sale ive gotten a few visits and…”
“I'm trying calculated shipping right now but it's not working. When someone buys several items it's charging crazy high shipping fee and giving shipping labels for each item in that one order. Can someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong? I sell glass beads. Here is an example of what I currently have for dimensions. submitted by /u/beemaboy [link] [comments]”
“Hi all, I have a very small books reselling business on Shopify and have been getting more and more queries from EU buyers. None of these items would go beyond €150 for sure so am looking at large letter to small parcels only. Most people say they are happy to pay for shipping but my worry is obviously the steep shipping costs and hidden fees. As an experiment, I arranged UPS standard delivery for a 2kg parcel to Amsterdam for a £90 order. The shipping cost was £13, and then the buyer had to pay”
“Using your home address as your business address isn't automatically an issue, plenty of small stores do that in the beginning. The bigger thing is making sure your shipping policy, delivery estimates, returns, and contact info all line up everywhere. Merchant Center usually cares more about consistency and transparency than whether you're physically shipping from that address.”
“My US associate tag used to work across European marketplaces with the old PA-API 5.0, but it no longer works with the new Creators API. Is anyone else experiencing the same issue? Is there a solution, or do I need to register a separate account for each European marketplace? Thanks. submitted by /u/jamesidayi [link] [comments]”
“Hello. Interesting eh. Do you update all of those figures manually for every SKU, or do you pull them automatically from Shopify/ad platforms? And what usually happens when one cost changes—do you immediately know which products have fallen below your target margin?”
“the shipping the buyer paid for reappears when I increase the height of the package to 5 inches, I don't mind switching from padded envelope to boxes but it's so weird. I haven't changed my shipping profiles in years and have had orders to Canada before. Did something change? submitted by /u/DingusCat [link] [comments]”
“For local pickup only with a huge item count, honestly skip Shopify, the monthly fee doesn't earn its keep when you're not taking payment online. Since you already have Square: Square Online is free, syncs with your existing account, supports local pickup as the only fulfillment option, and handles hundreds of items fine via CSV import. The real bottleneck at 1,000+ discs is cataloging, not the platform, so build one spreadsheet (title, format, condition, price) and bulk upload rather th”
“Has anyone come up with a solution or found an app to offer free shipping on the variant level to a select discount group? The scenario: Trade Members get free samples (currently priced to $0 using WSH Wholesale Pricing) but they should also get free shipping on those samples. The samples are variants of the product. Everything I've found so far is on the product level. The only exception is Advanced Shipping Manager, but I can't justify $155/month for something that we're already lo”
“Hi, I'm based in Canada and trying to find a print on demand service (something like Printify or Gelato) that will act as the merchant of record. I want to use it for merch for our podcast, but I need the POD to handle sales tax collection, remittance, and all that compliance stuff on their end. We're not interested in being the ones making the direct sale to customers, which is why the merchant of record part matters to us. Any recommendations appreciated. Thanks submitted by  ”
“Hi, I'm in the middle of sorting out my Google Merchant Centre account and having a spot of bother. We're UK based and only ship within the UK. All my products have sizes and weights listed and I'm also using shipping classes on my site that then pull into GMC as shipping labels. I have 5 shipping classes - Small, Medium, Large, X Large, Oversize. For the UK Mainland, small/medium/ Large/ x Large shipping classes cost the same price. Oversize is more expensive. For Jersey & Guern”
“a marketplace aimed at bypassing import tax? :) I can see it, but it would be illegal. You're supposed to declare anything you're carrying for commercial purposes, which this would be. If you don't, it's actually quite compelling as the buyer could save up to xx% on items from import taxes. but literally tax evasion. If the buyer does declare import tax, then savings for buyer won't be enough. international shipping is like 10-15 bucks for a small item so what would the platf”
“I did this as a workaround not realizing shopify was going to consider that nexus as if I have a location in that state. I do not meet nexus requirements for said state, can I just ignore this alert or is Shopify going to cause me issues by report this bad info to the State? submitted by /u/evilblackdog [link] [comments]”
“Ebay has their own payment system, which is what I use. For shopify, it was paypal and shopify payments.”
“Hello everyone !!! For those selling or shipping into the EU/UK, is there any decent all-in-one way to work out your actual profit before setting a price? I’m talking about product cost, VAT, duties, DDP shipping, payment fees, returns and warehouse/3PL costs. From what I’ve seen, most people seem to use Google Sheets plus quotes from their supplier or 3PL, but everything is spread across different places. Do you guys have one workflow that works well, or is it normally a mix of spreadsheets, Sh”
“Hello everyone !!! For those selling or shipping into the EU/UK, is there any decent all-in-one way to work out your actual profit before setting a price? I’m talking about product cost, VAT, duties, DDP shipping, payment fees, returns and warehouse/3PL costs. From what I’ve seen, most people seem to use Google Sheets plus quotes from their supplier or 3PL, but everything is spread across different places. Do you guys have one workflow that works well, or is it normally a mix of spreadsheets, Sh”
“Hello everyone !!! For those selling or shipping into the EU/UK, is there any decent all-in-one way to work out your actual profit before setting a price? I’m talking about product cost, VAT, duties, DDP shipping, payment fees, returns and warehouse/3PL costs. From what I’ve seen, most people seem to use Google Sheets plus quotes from their supplier or 3PL, but everything is spread across different places. Do you guys have one workflow that works well, or is it normally a mix of spreadsheets, Sh”
“My Shopify store has started growing which is good, but now packaging has become a headache in my business. Every month we launch new products, limited editions or seasonal bundles. The products change quickly but the packaging process feels old fashion. By the time I approve a design and receive the boxes, we are already planning the next launch. I have started looking into Ai because it seems like a faster way to create new packaging concepts but I am wondering if anyone has built an efficient”
“Hello all, I’m an upcoming CS student on holiday looking to build a few side projects, and I recently came across the changes around VAT and cross-border selling in the EU. For those shipping into the EU or UK, how do you normally calculate your actual margin before deciding on a selling price? Especially when comparing direct shipping with DDP against using an EU warehouse, while accounting for VAT, shipping, fulfilment fees and all the random extra charges. Do you usually use Excel or Google S”
“ran into this exact thing building welcome flows for a few stores. the $ cap trick can't work for you because you're on live UPS rates, so ground and 2nd day air prices overlap depending on cart weight. there is no cap value that separates them cleanly. if you want to keep true free shipping: shopify flow tags every new customer on their first order, then the shipping discount app runs an automatic discount conditioned on that tag + rate name containing "ground". klaviyo just p”
“We use an app called Shipping Discounts. It might help you. We use it to set conditions for free shipping. Like the shipping option has “ground” in the title. That way our Priority shipping options never get included when someone gets free shipping.”
“We created a shopify discount code in Klayvio for free shipping on your first order and set a maximum amount but noticed its being applied to the 2nd day air shipping option. We only have 2 shipping options via UPS (ground + 2nd day air) And want to limit the discount code to only allow ground shipping. **We tried capping the shipping amount that would be allowed to $15 but 1.) some people went to place large orders where just ground shipping costs $20+ and 2.) Still noticed people would bypass”
“Hello all, I’m an upcoming CS student on holiday looking to build a few side projects, and I recently came across the changes around VAT and cross-border selling in the EU. For those shipping their products into the EU or UK, how do you normally calculate your actual margin before deciding on a selling price? Especially when comparing direct shipping with DDP against using an EU warehouse, while accounting for VAT, shipping, fulfilment fees and all the random extra charges. Do you usually use Ex”
“Hello all, I’m an upcoming CS student on holiday looking to build a few side projects, and I recently came across the changes around VAT and cross-border selling in the EU. For those dropshipping into the EU or UK, how do you normally calculate your actual margin before deciding on a selling price? Especially when comparing direct shipping with DDP against using an EU warehouse, while accounting for VAT, shipping, fulfilment fees and all the random extra charges. Do you usually use Excel or Goog”
“Seeing the l,w, and h of each product and using the volume of the item to fit into boxes is a correct approach, probably the best one in the market right now. Most of the shipping apps also use this logic to pack items. There are already solutions for this problem in the market. PH MultiCarrier Shipping label is one such solution you can use, but if you want to develop your own, go for it; the algorithm you are using is definitely correct.”
“How exactly do you go about international shipping? I looked online and it’s really expensive to ship something out of the states. submitted by /u/Lost-Bed-9267 [link] [comments]”
“what works for one store, wont work for another. It depends on a lot of factors. So nothing anyone tells you here is going to make a blind bit of difference to you - apart from, you'll know what 1 person on Reddit did and their results.”
“For those of you selling to USA from EU, how do you test you products, particularly those that are only fulfilled in USA? Tried to buy a candle sample and it became very expensive with the shipping. submitted by /u/pinkcottoncandy77 [link] [comments]”
“I'm planning a Shopify setup for two markets: the US and a European market. The branding is similar, but each market has: - Different teams - Different languages - Slightly different product catalogs/inventory - Different checkout/payment methods - Different shipping and taxes I'd like some level of separation so each team can work independently without affecting the other market. Would you recommend: One Shopify store with Markets One Shopify store with market-specific theme logic Two s”
“Nothing will be legible if you print international labels at A6. It’s not designed to.”
“For me I have two printers, one A6 label printer for domestic labels and one A4 printer for international and packing slips. Depending on country, it will either print on half the A4 page or duplicates the same label (one for customs to keep and the other attached to the parcel). I'm sure you could force it to print to the A6 but it will be scaled so much it won't be very legible as it is a completely different design and layout from the MyPost Business labels.”
“Calcurates has been a huge help for us with this similar task. Volumetric box assignment is something we are doing. They have a public Slack channel for support and they've been amazing.”
“Hello everyone! I'm looking to sell pinback buttons and ship them in 6x10 bubble mailers. However the post office quoted me around $11 for national shipping and $25 for international, how is everyone affording this without putting too much pressure on the buyers? submitted by /u/Swimming_Software357 [link] [comments]”
“As a consumer what I would expect: "Shipping from az EU-based warehouse, without customs and within x days." I don't care if your webshop originally is outside EU-based, you still can have an EU-based warehouse, even if you are Chinese, and still ship me without customs.”
“Hey! I’ve got a boring question that I think many people (from EU) are struggling over. Essentially, what is the most optimal way to deal with taxes (especially in the US market). I’ve heard of different methods: (1) Register an LLC in Delaware that is owned by your European company, so when you take out dividends, you only pay the taxes of your home country. (2) This one I’m not too sure about, but a couple of people in my circle have registered companies in UAE, but the cost seems too high, es”
“Don't quote anything until you know the scope, "basic" is a trap. Get product count, whether he's providing images and copy, and if he wants payments/shipping configured. For a first store I'd land around $300-500, but charge for your time learning too.”
“Appreciate the feedback. I think I’m just going to chill and save my receipts. But no one would be showing up to my door, right? Worst case, I just get something in the mail and it’s just the $160 tax + a small interest fee, right? I can’t imagine anything more serious. In the grand scheme of things, you don’t think this is anything to be concerned about?”
“The seller has to make at least $100k in tangible sales to customers in Florida before they are required to collect sales tax from the buyers.”
“I purchased some collectibles from a small online shop out of state and I noticed they didn’t charge sales tax. It was a couple purchases for a total of $2,000. It should be taxed at 8% as the item is shipping from out of state to Florida, so about $160 in sales tax. Am I responsive to make an extra tax payment? submitted by /u/AdventureKnuckleball [link] [comments]”
“Shopify does not expose any language settings from my understanding.... What I would do is go to the order printer template at wrap it in something like {% if shipping_address.country_code == "NL" or shipping_address.country_code == "BE" %} [Dutch labels] {% else %} [English labels] {% endif %} However that will only change the text you write. You may want to look into Order Printer Pro, it looks like it should fix your issue.”
“People gotta stop saying that digital to store order fulfillment is "simple", it absolutely is not.”
“The 10–20% gap sounds like payout timing and fees more than a normal spreadsheet mistake. Taxomate helped us stop chasing every Shopify order one by one, though I still keep product costs checked separately because old COGS changes can quietly mess up profit.”
“I abandon carts all the time once I figure out how much you're going to charge me for shipping. I'm used to free or cheap, but if I see $100, I'm out. Roll shipping costs into the price of the product, then I know what I'm getting into.”
“I have a pretty casual shop. I calculate shipping for larger items, but I offer free shipping (of course an estimated amount is worked into the item price) for smaller items that would otherwise seem too expensive to ship alone (like, $12 shipping for a $20 item.) I didn't expect to sell several of these at once but I did, and I feel kind of unsure about the customer having paid enough to ship several items because I think the cost to ship them all together is about the same as to ship one.”
“Honestly, I'm not that surprised. Shopify Shipping aggregates a huge amount of volume, so the rates they negotiate can be difficult for an individual merchant to beat, even at your scale.”
“What's your average shipping cost on these shipments? I have decent rates for a private account with UPS. We ship mostly from one location, and our average shipping price for under 5 lbs is probably $9-12. We get way better deals on 3 day, 2 day, and NDA than I usually see on most websites. Our average weekly ups bill is probably $3k-$4k, probably way less volume than what you are doing.”
“Shopify has very good rates for small parcels. Think of how many people are using their account to ship - do you really think your volume comes anywhere close to it? Your UPS rep isn't lying when they say they can't beat it. They are already barely making money on these small shipments by competing with USPS on pricing via Ground Economy. They aren't going to negotiate with you to literally lose money on the shipments. The negotiations come in when you're shipping packages that d”
“I've been using Veeqo, I like having my charges not apart of my shopify invoice. Was using pirateship but moved to veeqo for the auto print(lazy) and 5% back on labels purchased. Referral link if you want to check out. https://www.veeqo.com/?refer_me=veeqo-aa-20-fd-kx”
“I am now really confused. This is what we’ve understood and working with for our brands. Sharing that & asking if we are missing something, isn’t that what community is for? You haven’t still pointed out what actually we misinterpreted about this regulation. That’d help me take it back to the brands I am working with, also the others with the same concern here.”
“I was on tax jar when I hit the same bundle duplication issue and their support took weeks to even acknowledge it was a problem on their end. I decided to try tax wire and the reporting actually reconciles correctly now without me spending hours every month manually cleaning up numbers that should have been right in the first place”
“I shipped a package to Canada that could not be delivered. When sending it, I was only charged $18, but upon return I was charged $50. I think the rate was higher and they also charged a return package fee. Honestly if the package is worth less than a certain amount, it might be easier to tell them to discard it. I wish I had done that for my return. They also did not bill back to shopify and sent me a bill instead for the shipping.”
“I have an international package that was shipped using a UPS label purchased through Shopify Shipping (Shopify’s discounted UPS rates). The package is currently being held in UK customs awaiting payment of import duties. We have since been informed that this order is fraudulent, so I’m trying to determine the most cost-effective way to have the package returned. Does anyone know whether the return transportation would be billed using Shopify’s negotiated UPS rates or UPS’s standard rates in the”
“shopify has apps (like zonos or easyship) that calculate duties/taxes at checkout and handle customs forms automatically so you're not filling them out manually. look for ones that do DDP (delivered duty paid) so the customer pays everything upfront and doesn't get hit with surprise fees later. takes like 10 minutes to set up and you just print the label”
“I'm not upset, and I'm still going to buy it, I'm just curious. Im from Australia, and I want to buy a pendant for a necklace, that's $20, but when i went to checkout, the shipping was $30. Which took the price wayyy up, and I'm super broke lol. Do they make the actual seller pay for shipping themselves?? Like, I've bought stuff from America, and the UK before, and the shipping wasn't that much. I'm still going to buy it, and the seller is super lovely, but I'”
“I’m pretty sure even if it has the same HS Code, if it is a different line item so one necklace, one earrings but both imitation jewellery, it’s still €6 instead of €3 for both but correct me if I’m wrong”
“I am about to lose my mind 😭 I turned on duty collection and added EU as a managed market in anticipation for the new EU 3€ levy. However, Shopify is sraight up taking the number of products in cart and multiplying it by 3€, and it seems to be disregarding the fact that most items share the same HS number? I noticed this when a customer from Poland ordered $122 worth of things, and she paid $61 in duties + $35 VAT on top of that. I triple checked: the same products have the same 6 digit HS numb”
“Just got my first sale on Shopify Dropshipping a product on Alibaba through DSers. Does AliExpress automatically take the cost out of my Shopify balance to pay for the order? If not, is there a way to use the Shopify balance right now to pay for the product cost? Also, when should I click the request fulfillment button for DSers on the Shopify Orders Page? Do customers automatically get the tracking info from AliExpress/DSers? Anything else I should know? submitted by /u/Super_Rush79”