We have a scenario with unique tax calculation criteria that can’t adequately be addressed by Shopify at checkout. We’d like to use estimated tax through checkout, pass the order to our ERP, process the order and return the finalized tax amount. According to Shopify’s documentation, support chatbot and Shopify Plus support, this is possible. However, everywhere else I read, it’s not possible. Is this possible and if so, what’s the process to realize this in integration? The ERP in question is NS and we’re using Celigo to integrate systems.
Here’s the link I was referencing indicating that this should be possible:
Tax Estimation
1 Like
Hey @BG_NBY,
It’s not currently possible to pass defined tax rates to the checkout. The tax calculations are going to happen during checkout using the configured tax settings on the shop.
Can you share what specific criteria you’re experiencing that can’t be adequately addressed? I’d be happy to get that feedback over to our tax teams.
Alternatively, there are a few tax apps available. Have you checked to see if these apps will fill in the gap you’re seeing?
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/taxes/tax-apps
Hey @KyleG-Shopify, thanks for replying. I can’t share too much due to proprietary info, but short answer is we have complicated tax calculations and liability based on the combination of our customers, products and referring partners that none of the existing tax solutions offer.
Today, we have to calculate tax using a custom middleware during cart/checkout and capture the “tax” as a line item on the order so we at least have accurate tax calculations for authorization/capture. However, this throws a wrench into using Draft orders (no middleware in backoffice) and interactions with 3rd party apps. We slice this in our ERP and put the “tax item” to actual tax in our backend for reporting/auditing.
Ideally, we’d be able to implement custom tax calculations middleware that’d work like Avalara or whatever else that’d do exactly what we needed. Alternatively, we’d need a method to allow the middleware to trigger consistently pre-authorization across every touchpoint (B2C, Draft Orders, 3rd party apps processing, etc) so at least it would be consistent.
1 Like
Thanks for sharing what you can! I’ve passed that feedback on to our product teams. I can see this would be useful, especially when creating draft orders.