Handling Colorado's Mix of Home-Rule and State Collected Taxes

[HunterHillegas]

Hi,

We have a physical presence in Colorado. Colorado is generally a 'destination state' but that only applies to municipalities and counties where CO collects and administers the taxes. Some cities are 'home rule' cities and in those cases, the nexus is not based on the destination.

The city of Louisville, CO is one example. Shopify collects sales tax for customers in that zip code even though we have no physical nexus there.

Support has told us that "Shopify cannot currently differentiate between home-rule and state administered jurisdictions." and suggested we use overrides - that would be 70+ overrides that covers huge parts of the state.

How are others handling sales tax collection in Colorado? Is Shopify going to fix this problem?

Thanks.

[Gazebo]

Shopify is exactly zero help on this as they are most things. I'd start working on those overrides

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[Gazebo]

We are stuck in the same boat.

[eCommAccountant]

I'm an Accountant residing in Colorado; for all of my Shopify bookkeeping clients living inside Colorado, and those living outside but shipping into Colorado causing sales tax nexus, I simply file the sales taxes required for them. I've found the 3rd party sales tax apps do not work for Colorado and our 700 different taxing jurisdictions.

[gomorose]

Are you taking on any new clients? 😉 I think I'm going to need help this tax season.

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@eCommAccountant wrote:

I'm an Accountant residing in Colorado; for all of my Shopify bookkeeping clients living inside Colorado, and those living outside but shipping into Colorado causing sales tax nexus, I simply file the sales taxes required for them. I've found the 3rd party sales tax apps do not work for Colorado and our 700 different taxing jurisdictions.

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[eCommAccountant]

sales tax has no seasons, it's your liability made by each order daily.

https://www.yourremoteaccountant.com 

[Jroyce1180]

@HunterHillegas well I thought I was the only one running into this. Shopify has an exclusive contract with Avalara's AvaTax which is only for Shopify Plus members. There is no accessibility by any Shopify Developer to the Shopify Tax Services API (other than Avalara). 

Tax Overrides are a solution. I am mid developing an app that will make this an easier process. 

[Jroyce1180]

Shopify is 100% not going to fix this. They specifically state they are not responsible for correct tax calculations and this is up to the merchant and their tax professionals to work out. For some areas it is impossible to get accurate tax rates using the Shopify App. If you are a Shopify Plus merchant you get Avalara's AvaTax which is better, but it still does not get the tax right for states like Colorado. 

I am working on solving this for Colorado by providing an app that automatically sets all the tax overrides based on Colorado's Source of Truth for Sales Tax - TTR. Rates are provided for free to all merchants in Colorado, but in order to use Shopify, they need to manually set up all 700 separate tax rate possibilities. That is what I hope my app will be able to resolve. 

[pspahn]

@Jroyce1180  were you ever able to get anything accomplished with this?

I'm coming in a little late to the game with Shopify, but I have previously worked on Magento plugins for Colorado sales taxes since this has been a problem for a long time.

Are you familiar with the new SUTS system? I see you've referenced TTR in previous posts and I don't know who they are, is that who has helped develop SUTS or was that a previous partner of theirs?

I'm in the Denver area and have experience with this issue if you are looking for help.

[AuralHiFi]

Were you able to develop an app that solves this issue? Would love to have it.

[eCommAccountant]

There are way too many complexities (that change frequently) for an app to
be able to process correctly.