Last Updated on by Dan S
Originally Published September 23, 2021.

Depending on your country or business model, you might not need to charge taxes on your products. If you don’t have a Tax Nexus in your country yet, there’s no need to charge taxes on your products in the Shopify store. 

However, the ‘charge tax on this product’ box might still show on your product variants pages. 

Does this do anything? Or, is there a way to remove this box from your product page?

Here’s what you should know. 

What does ‘Charge Tax On This Product’ checkbox do?

When you upload a product on Shopify, it will automatically be shown to charge taxes. That’s because Shopify’s default setting lets you charge tax on your products. If you do not have a Nexus at the moment, you shouldn’t collect taxes. Here’s an easy way to override taxes. 

  • Go to your Shopify admin. 
  • Select Settings. 
  • Go to Taxes. 
  • Override taxes by unchecking the box. 

Further information on tax overrides and exempts can be found in the Shopify documentation.

How to bulk update “Charge Sales Tax” For All Variants

Bulk Editor Method:

  1. In Shopify, navigate to Admin > Products, select the products for editing, and click Bulk Edit.
  2. In the Bulk Editor, click on Columns on the right and enable “charge taxes” to apply tax settings.

CSV File Method:

  1. If you prefer working with spreadsheets, first select your products for editing, click edit, and then export them.
  2. Open the exported CSV file, locate the “Variant Taxable” column, and change values from false to true to enable tax settings.
  3. Save your changes and import the CSV back into the Admin to update your products.

How to show taxes on the product page

Typically, Shopify calculates the taxes on the sales on the checkout page. However, you might want your customers to see the taxes on the product page, especially the international buyers. 

Shopify has the Geolocation feature, which automatically detects the location of your customers. However, this feature does not automatically update the price of the products according to the customers’ local tax rates. 

Since Shopify does not natively have this feature, you can get in touch with a Shopify expert and pay them to make an app for you with this functionality. 

As for the local tax rates and how they differ from international ones, you will have to get in touch with a local tax expert. Shopify experts are not authorized to advise you about the tax amount.