HELP! Need Custom Tax Rates & Restrictions for CERTAIN product categories for different locations!

[Chris_ZFO]

Alright... I have two problems and contacting Shopify directly has yielded no solutions. I own a vape shop in New York State and also operate an online store, shared inventory. I have TWO major problems and if they cannot be solved within the next few days unfortunately we'll be forced to move platforms to clover. 

One.... NY just recently imposed an additional 20% tax on all e-liquid products. I've managed to add this tax manually by creating a tax modification forcing the normal 4% NYS sales tax to 24% on the categories containing the effected products. When added to the other 4% municipal\region tax it totals correctly but apparently this will not work for our application. New York is REQUIRING that this 20% tax be listed separately on receipts by itself, and labeled something like VAPOR TAX accordingly. There is no way to currently do this within shopify and they've refused to help stating that the checkout portion of their platform is locked down for security reasons and these kinds of modifications are not supported. This means Shopify is useless for businesses like ours unless they make some serious changes. 

My second problem is that other states have recently imposed flat-out bans on flavored e-liquids or vaping entirely. We need a way to restrict shipping particular products (or products within designated categories) to certain states we specify.  For instance, if someone from Massachusetts were to visit our site we cannot sell them ANYTHING, they have a full ban. But if someone from Washington were to visit, we can sell them anything EXCEPT flavored e-liquid.  Currently we have removed effected states from our shipping rates so they're unable to purchase anything.... but this also means someone in a state that only banned particular flavors is now unable to buy hardware or anything else unaffected by the ban.... and it's costing us a LOT of customers. 

I'd really like a solution to these problems in the hopes we don't have to migrate our entire store elsewhere.... but I'm not holding out much hope. This is a last ditch effort to receive some help. If you think you can solve these issues I'd even go as far as hiring a professional to see these changes implemented quickly. Any help is appreciated. Thank you. 

[AdanRamirez]

With ShipperHQ, you’re not limited to customizing your shipping rates and methods based on only a couple of factors. Here’s a list of factors that you can customize your shipping by:

• Zones defined by Country, Region/State, City of Zip/Postal Code
• Price, Weight or Quantity Filters
• Per Quantity or Weight Unit Charges
• Minimum and Maximum charges
• Shipping Groups and Customer Groups
• Shipping origin-based rules 
• Box-based rules
• Surcharge or Discount Live Rates
• Hide or Show Shipping Options

This is handled by our Carrier Rules functionality, which you can read more about here. The nice thing about shipping rules is you can be as granular as you want, which means you have a major impact on how much you charge and the type of delivery options you provide.

[SharonReeds]

Hey @Chris_ZFO ,

I'm sorry to hear you're experiencing these gaps in Shopify's platform. I have a potential suggestion for #1, and a solution to #2.

1. I'm wondering if you can use Zonos for the New York tax rate for the e-cigarette products. It's typically used for international orders, but I would reach out to their team to see if you could use them to handle the New York taxes on these special items. As far as I know, they don't technically alter checkout as Shopify restricts, but it would be a separate line item for this special tax.
2. You can easily set per-item restrictions up in our app, Intuitive Shipping. You can also use us to add special messages to rates at checkout to maintain customer expectations, i.e. Some items may ship separately; orders processed before 3 pm will ship same-day, etc.. Shipping is a reality on every order, so adding touchpoints like this into your customer's shipping journey makes for a better experience overall. For your particular setup, I recommend reaching out to our team via phone, email, or chat (chat is right inside the app!) since we don't have a Help Centre article that covers this particular scenario.
   
   Alternatively, if you have a lot of time on your hands, you can use Shopify's shipping profiles to create zone restrictions for particular products (unless you have price-based free shipping, then this won't work). Their profiles are product-based, so you will want to start by creating a document that outlines your products and their restrictions, and then set up the profiles and zones accordingly. Our other app, Automate Shipping Profiles, will really help you save time if you choose to go this route. Create your Shopify shipping profiles and then assign the products to each profile in the Automate Shipping Profiles. Once you activate the app, all of your products will be automatically added to their appropriate Shopify shipping profile, along with any future products added to your catalog. Without Automate Shipping Profiles, you'll be stuck manually assigning each product to its respective profile. 

Feel free to DM me if you need any further assistance! 

Warm regards,
Sharon