Why can't I disable taxes on POS transactions?

[Dascalargo]

Let me state up front that this appears to be a bug, and not an operator issue. I'm not asking how to change the way POS calculates tax, rather we're having issues getting it to NOT charge tax on the occasions when we need it to (not) do so.

On occasion, we ship something purchased in store out-of-state. In those cases, we do not charge sales tax. According to the help docs, you should be able to turn off taxes for a given transaction by clicking "Taxes" in the cart and turning it off. We do what it says in the documentation—except that remove the taxes. If you click "Taxes" again, it appears as on again. It just won't stick. Likewise if I try to turn off taxes for an individual item or the customer.

I have checked for both iOS and Shopify POS updates, but we're up to date. I have reported the bug in the app, but I find sometimes that the Community is more responsive. 

Does someone (who has a setup wherein they normally collect sales tax) try turning it off for a transaction and let me know whether this is unique to us or an actual bug? I just have a hard time believing there's nothing posted here (that I could find) if it's truly a software issue.

[boren3459]

I am having the same problem I believe.  We have a location that is outside of the city but Shopify is charging taxes off of our address.  So to get around it for now we have the employees at the location to uncheck city tax at checkout, but it just starting rechecking itself back automatically.  I have tried everything to fix this but I am hoping it is just a bug on their end.  

[Dascalargo]

Unfortunately, customer service responded and, as I feared, was no help. After making it clear what problem I was experiencing, including what I had already tried, the rep told me how important it was to him to solve my problem and then suggested trying the things I had very clearly reported that I had already tried. Sometimes I feel like they don't even read the message before jumping on the response. So I came to the store, after closing, so I could video what I was seeing.

Thanks @boren3459 for verifying that it's not just me.

[boren3459]

No problem, I am surprised their are not more people with complaints on this subject.  I am thankful I found your post as I detest calling into any support exactly to the reason of your comment above.  "script reading"  Unfortunately for me I just happened to try and tackle my original tax problem of removing the city tax as the default option at that location I mentioned above the same day I experienced this error, and common sense tells me I screwed it up somehow in the process.  So 4 hours later I found your post and also found some receipts where this location was charged the wrong taxes on Friday before I starting messing with it.  

[KariTetzlaff]

Hi! I am also looking to turn off tax for most of my products from my Shopify Admin but to no avail. I currently circumvent this by toggling off tax for each and every transaction by clicking on the tax line in the transaction and toggling off both state & local. This has worked 100% of the time for me thus far. 

[Dascalargo]

Interesting. Toggling them off doesn't work for me nor @boren3459, but it does for you? I wonder if the fact that you have two different tax rates makes a difference.

What, exactly, are you trying to do, @KariTetzlaff? It sounds like your situation is different. We're trying to turn off taxes only for certain transactions that are being shipped out of state, but you say, "I currently circumvent this by toggling off tax for each and every transaction...." Are you trying to turn off all taxes? Because that's a very different issue and I (or any number of other people here) can help you with that if you post about it.

[Dascalargo]

Still haven't heard back from support, after their first blunder, but I think I figured out the issue...

The ability to turn off taxes is a feature of POS Plus and is not available in POS Lite. </sarcasm>

[Dascalargo]

OK @boren3459 (and anyone else who cares), I figured something out.

There are three modes in Taxes and Duties under United States: Shopify Tax, Basic Tax, and Manual Tax.

The problem I've been describing occurs in Shopify Tax and Basic Tax, but not Manual Tax. So this clearly is a programming glitch. Since I track taxes outside of Shopify, I can (and have) downgraded to Manual Tax.

So there's a temporary workaround, though I really wish Shopify would just fix it.

[boren3459]

So mine magically started working again I think Wednesday, but stopped working again today.  So mine is definitely a glitch.  It's getting very annoying.  On my first day of having this problem I tried switching to all 3 different tax modes, tried doing them in the line item etc... Couldn't get it to work at all.  Hopefully they get mine working again soon.  

[boren3459]

Honestly I'm tired of messing with it so I'm just going to completely override since I am using Quickbooks anyways for tax purposes.  I switched to Manual Tax which applies state tax only.  For one location I use a Texas location where I only charge state tax since we are out of the city limits.  On my other location where I need city and state I have to select a different state even though it is in Texas as well.  Change that states tax rate to what I need which is 8.25.  This is the only way I can fix this glitch error.

[Dascalargo]

Yep. I'm in the same situation: I do taxes (and inventory) through QuickBooks. And I'm also running Shopify in Manual Tax mode, at least until they resolve this. I only have one physical location, so I don't have the same issue you do, but I was surprised to see that Manual Tax has no support for tax rates other than at the state level. Kinda useless, unless you figure out a workaround, like you did.

Still haven't heard anything on my open ticket.

[Dascalargo · Accepted solution]

I received a response to my trouble ticket a few days ago. They said the most recent update of POS, which is 8.20.0, corrected this error. I just reset my taxes to Shopify Taxes and ran a test transaction. I can confirm that the taxes zeroed out when I set the cart and/or the item and/or the customer to no tax status in the transaction. The change was immediate, no lag.

Very happy to mark this as solved.

[CocoaWilds]

I’m NOT in the US, so my issue was similar (GST adding on-top of tax inclusive price), but for a different market where we have single sales tax rates.

My online store was calculating inclusive prices correctly after I enabled it yesterday, but POS was out of sync and still adding tax ontop, to fix this I had to do the following.

Two possible things corrected the POS which was out of sync with Shopify admin settings.

In POS, go to MORE > Connectivity > Data synchronization > Refresh all (top right).

Failing that, I also deleted the app re-downloaded it (it was already up to date with latest version) and re-logged into our account.

If you’re in the same situation I was and unable to get a solution via Support, I hope this helps you.

Note, previously I just had tax baked into my prices but didn’t have my GST/tax number loaded into Shopify. This all kicked off when I added that and selected the setting to apply tax inclusive collection to set the set variant prices.