Using Avalara for Sales Tax, need a way to differentiate Tiktok sales from webstore transactions.

[gdrinkh2o]

I currently use Avalara (avaTax) for sales tax calculations and returns . Challenge is there doesn't seem to be any discernable difference between order number info that comes from Shopify to Avalara, based on the sales channel. I primarily sell on Tiktok and my own webstore/app. Meaning, I need to find a way to identify TikTok orders in Avalara so I'm not double taxed (TikTok withholds/remits tax on its own). 

It appears Shopify auto-generates their own unique order number for every transaction. If I could somehow add an identifier to that number (ie. TTxxxxxx) then I could strip out the sales in Avalara. 

Thanks in adavnce!

[Imogen]

Hey there, @gdrinkh2o! Thanks for taking the time to reach out to the Shopify Community Forums with your question around adding identifiers to these orders within Avalara!

I quickly consulted with the Tax Team regarding your question and they advised that it may be worthwhile to reach out to Avalara's Support Team regarding this request. I have a link to their Support Pages here that you can use to connect with them regarding this request to see what options they may have available to help Avalara differentiate between these orders and their sources! -Imogen

[gdrinkh2o]

Thanks. Yes- I had already contacted them and waiting on further direction. Their position remains that unless there is some type of identifying number, code, info, etc. that comes from shopify, there is no way for them to separate. 

[GLC-Finance]

This is an endless circle from Shopify to Avalara back to Shopify. I've have wasted countless hours trying to resolve this and neither party is willing to dive into the actual integration to make it possible to distinguish between normal taxable sales and marketplace facilitator sales. 

The work around @gdrinkh2o that I've come up with is at the end of every month, I export a sales report from Shopify for the Amazon/TikTok sales channel to Excel. Then I export all the transactions for the same time period from Avalara to Excel. Once I have the two data sources, I can look up on the order number to find the Amazon transactions on the Avalara side. Lastly, I build our a transaction import file that updates the tax amount to $0 for all the Amazon transactions in Avalara. It takes me about 15 minutes for this process. I hope that helps

[BeautyTax]

We are having the same issue. We are overpaying tax on TikToK transactions.

[EchoDM]

Hi, there are definitely some required workarounds but they work until there's hopefully one day a TikTok Shop integration. I work with several multi-channel digital brands selling on Shopify, Amazon, Meta Shop, and TikTok Shop. Meta Shop and TikTok Shop both require workarounds including: adding them as marketplaces within Avalara (with the "Marketplace remits" designation), adding custom rules so that Avalara can distinguish which transactions are coming from these different marketplaces, and lastly and the worst part, manual transaction export from Shopify, some manipulation to get it into the correct import format, then importing those transactions into Avalara each month.  That's the high-level view of what's required. 

[NelliP]

Hi,
On Avalara you can set marketplaces and they will not even show up on the Avalara reports. At least I tested it and that was in our case.
On the other hand we have an issue with TikTok sending through the order WITH the tax included on the lines, which makes no sense to me. The order should come NET, and tax should only be shown on TikTok as they collect and remit. How do you make that work?

[BeautyTax]

We are double paying tax on the TikTok transactions and all TikTok transactions have our warehouse address as the ship to address in Avalara. (Oddly Shopify has the correct ship address but some how this info is not being passed to Avalara.) 

I used the Avalara rules to add location code "TikTok" to any transaction where the ship to address = our warehouse.

The TikTok location code has the "Marketplace remits" designation. 

These rules are not being applied as the transactions come in. I have to select the transaction and recalculate in Avalara for the rules to be applied.

Am I doing something wrong?

Is there a way to have the rules be applied automatically?

[Taxiom_com]

You have the right idea, I would just go back and check the rules to ensure you have it set for a 'location code' and then make sure the filters match what you're needing. The custom rules can be finnicky sometimes.

[BeautyTax]

To avoid Avalara double paying tax on Tiktok transactions we turned on the Channel_Liable field in the Silk ecommerce connector. This will prevent the transaction from flowing into Avalara. For us this was the best solution.

[Taxiom_com]

Not sure if that would be the best way, as the sales from TikTok still need to be included on the sales tax filings, but they need to be done so in a way that shows the taxes were paid by TikTok. Excluding them from Avalara wouldn't accomplish this and it would then serve to have the sales tax filings be under-reported, creating another set of problems.

[BeautyTax]

After we overpaid tax by $112,000 in one month when the my market place remits location code didnt take. Finding out how to prevent the transactions from flowing to Avalara was the best solution for us. This means we have to add a returns adj for WA BO.

[Taxiom_com]

That makes sense, you do the best you can with what you have available sometimes. Are yall still doing it that way currently?