Tax is an essential aspect of any business. You have to apply and collect the proper sales tax, file & submit before the deadlines, and comply with constantly evolving legal rules and regulations.
Managing all these aspects is quite daunting & stressful. Though Shopify has a built-in tax engine, its functionalities are quite limited. You must select the best Shopify sales tax app to automate the heavy lifting.
A good Shopify sales tax app works on your behalf – from calculating taxes, tracking nexus updates, and filing returns to providing tax exemptions, it has got covered. This lets you break the clutter and streamline the entire financial flow of your online store business.
In this article, I picked some of the best Shopify sales tax apps and reviewed them based on their core tax functionalities, unique features, and other subjective parameters. Read till the end, and I’m sure you will find a Shopify tax app that aligns with your business’s goals and objectives.
Ready? Let’s get started.
1. TaxJar
TaxJar is the best Shopify sales tax app that simplifies and automates the entire tax operations. It guides you on where you should be collecting sales tax based on economic nexus laws and provides jurisdiction-level return-ready reports to optimize tax operations.
Even if you sell across multiple sales channels, you can easily tap into new markets by managing sales tax compliance. It aggregates the entire sales tax data of different channels into a single dashboard. You can view all your transactions and state-by-state reports with city, country, and special district breakdowns.
The best part worth mentioning is its automating of sales tax filing & remittance. TaxJar will automatically submit returns and remittances on your behalf to the states you’ve enrolled in, so there’s no need to remember any deadlines.
With TaxJar, sales tax management is uncomplicated & hassle-free. From calculations to reporting, you never have to lift a finger.
Key Features –
- Track economic nexus across states
- Jurisdiction-level sales tax reporting
- Product tax code catalog
- Leading multi-channel data aggregation
- Simple & Advanced CSV import
- Customer exemption support
- Audit support
Pricing Plans – TaxJar offers a 30-day free trial with full access to its Professional plan – the ability to import 60 days worth of order data for reporting, API, Integrations, and team & user management. To upgrade to paid plans, you must contact their sales team.
2. Zonos Duty & Tax
Zonos Duty & Tax is an ultra-powerful sales tax app for Shopify stores. It breaks the complexities of international commerce. It enables online retailers to calculate accurate duties & taxes and display true landed costs at the checkout by considering VAT, brokerage, disbursement, etc.
It will also effectively handle all the non-resident country taxation schemes, including registration, collection, reporting, reconciliation & remittance – all at no extra cost. This makes global trade compliance easy and relieves the headache of coping up with evolving tax trends.
On the whole, Zonos is a win-win solution as it helps you simplify tax & duty issues with international customers and accelerate your cross-border eCommerce to the next level.
However, to use Zonos, you have to enable the Shopify CarrierService API for calculating landed cost quotes. This is available only in the advanced Shopify plans.
Key Features –
- Enable customers to prepay duty & tax for faster clearance
- Import tax & duty calculations
- Multi-lingual support – communicate with shoppers’ language
- Get rid of the refused package and credit card chargeback
- Supports EU IOSS and UK VAT
- Cross-border tax management
- Carrier API integrations
Pricing Plans – Zonos has four pricing plans. Since it is catered for advanced Shopify stores, you must contact the sales team to discuss pricing.
3. Avalara Returns
Avalara Returns is another powerful sales tax app for Shopify Plus stores. It simplifies the end-to-end sales process and lets you file tax returns within minutes. You just have to select the states you’re registered in, and Avalara presents you with appropriate forms to make you return-ready.
It also lets you track your thresholds and know when you’re nearing nexus. Thanks to Avalara’s built-in economic nexus heatmaps, you can stay on top of sales tax obligations.
Before filling, Avalara reviews your return in the same state-approved form you were already familiar with. Besides, it also handles your nontaxable items and exempt sales, so you don’t have to pay more or less.
Key Features –
- Single dashboard to access filing schedules and rules
- Edit and adjust sales data after sync
- Collect and upload your returns
- Receive alerts for potential errors
- Manage your filing entities & users from one account
Pricing Plans – Avalara offers a 60-day no-obligation free trial which allows for five free sales tax return filings. After the purchase, you’ll have to pay $19/month and $25 per optional e-filing that Avalara performs on your behalf.
4. TaxCloud
TaxCloud is an affordable Shopify sales tax app that delivers stress-free tax compliance. It works closely with all the states to present you with industry-leading tax data, automated filing operations, and the best value for your business’s transactions.
It determines the applicable sales tax rate based on the product and service taxability. Also, being an officially Certified Service Provider (CSP), TaxCloud’s tax rates and rules are frequently audited, tested, and validated to keep you stay on track.
It can also file returns and remit your collected sales tax proceeds to the appropriate state and local jurisdiction. It has got you covered even if you need support regarding any state-issued notices or audit inquiries.
Key Features –
- Get detailed tax information for your products during the sale
- Offers substantial waivers across 25 streamlined member states
- Indemnification in member states
- Handles communication with member states on your behalf
- Comprehensive and exportable tax reports
Pricing Plans – TaxCloud’s base price starts at $10, covering the cost of access and maintenance of historical data & reports. The pricing increases based on your usage level. However, it doesn’t impose any termination fees or usage limits.
5. Invoice Falcon
With over 4400 happy users, Invoice Falcon lets you send rich and professional-looking invoices that are tax-compliant. So you don’t have to create separate invoices for billing and tax, as it is easily combined into a single entity.
While sending an invoice, you can add your legal and tax information via its customizer module. After including the necessary details, you can save the changes & you’re done. It even updates your existing invoices automatically to include the changes you made so you can print, download or send invoices quickly.
In addition to this, it lets you create pro forma invoices, quotes, drafts, credit notes, packing slips, etc. With a few clicks, you can also set payment terms, due dates, taxes, discounts, purchase order numbers, and custom products to your invoices.
Key Features –
- Automatically send a PDF invoice to customers
- Legislation and tax compliance
- Display your ABN, VAT, or any business-related registration numbers
- Track and manage payments
- Set a default due date for all unpaid invoices
- Multi-language support
- Print and send invoices in bulk
Pricing Plans – Invoice Falcon is free to use upto 50 invoices. Once you go beyond the free limit, you’ll be charged $9.99/month for accessing unlimited invoices. You can opt for the Business plan costing $15/month to unlock more advanced features.
6. Quaderno
Quaderno is a simple and easy-to-use Shopify sales tax app that automates tax compliance worldwide within minutes. It has empowered over 10,000+ businesses to scale their presence by letting them eliminate baffling tax management issues that act as a barrier to their growth.
It accurately calculates the sales tax rate on every transaction by verifying the buyer’s location, applying accurate tax calculation, and adding it to the transaction at the point of sale. This streamlined process boosts the checkout process and makes it easier for you to manage tax regulations.
Regardless of wherever you sell, Quaderno handles your sales tax automatically. It tracks your sales data in each country and notifies you when you pass a tax threshold. It also collects your tax information across sales channels and delivers actionable reports so you can file returns instantly.
So with Quaderno, you get all tools needed to simplify your digital tax compliance. Since it complies with tax regulations globally, you can easily tap into a broader target market without managing tax for each transaction.
Key Features –
- Automatic threshold tracking
- Multichannel tax reports
- International tax alerts
- Send customizable tax receipts
- Instant updates when rates or laws change
- Track real-time revenue in visual dashboards
- Complies with tax rules in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and the EU
Pricing Plans – Quaderno’s pricing plans are based on your number of monthly transactions. The paid plans start at $29/month for upto 25 transactions and go upto $149/month, allowing upto 2500 transactions/month.
7. Tax Exempt Manager
If you want to offer a VAT exemption for EU B2B customers, Tax Exempt Manager would be a suitable sales tax app for your Shopify store. It is best suited for store owners complying with the European Union Tax laws.
Cross-border deliveries of goods to companies within the EU are tax-free and are subject to tax by the buyer in the destination country. However, there’s no VAT charged on exports to countries outside the EU. In such cases, VAT must be paid and requires proof that goods have been exported to countries outside the EU.
So to get rid of all these complications, Tax Exempt Manager has designed its algorithm – it collects and automatically validates your customer’s VAT ID via the VIES web service of the EU. If it matches the pattern, your customers can easily buy without VAT.
As a result, they are exempted from paying taxes. The best part is that your customers don’t have to register or log in to enjoy benefiting from VAT exemption.
Key Features –
- Easy to install
- Works well with net and gross prices
- Lists the overview of all orders created after a positive VAT ID check
- Tax overrides are supported
- Saved VAT ID can be printed on the invoices
Pricing Plans – Tax Exempt Manager offers a 14-day free trial. The Paid plan costs $9.99/month.
8. DUAL Price Display Pro
This Shopify sales tax app allows you to display two kinds of pricing for your store’s products. You can showcase the pricing details by either including or excluding VAT for each product. Even if you choose another variant, the prices automatically change to the selected variant price.
All these changes are possible due to the app’s built-in configuration. It enables you to perform a wide range of functionalities, thus giving you complete control over how you want to display your product’s pricing.
In a nutshell, you can opt for this Shopify tax app to give your customers a clear idea of how you charge taxes for your products. In this way, you tend to improve transparency and build trust.
Key Features –
- Customers can view the tax included and excluded price in the search results
- Set the tax rate in percentage
- Easy-to-use app configuration
- Display tax includes/excluded prices on the homepage, catalog products, product details, etc.
Pricing Plans – Dual Price Display PRO offers a 7-day free trial. The Paid plan costs $14.99/month.
Wrapping Up
As your business expands in multiple countries, you have to stay on track with the evolving tax changes & deadlines. However, to overcome this manual burden, you can use one of the above-listed Shopify sales tax apps to streamline and automate everything – from calculating taxes to filing returns.
I hope this article helped you find the most suitable sales tax app for your Shopify store. If you are looking for more apps to add to your store, here are a few hand-picked articles you should read next –
