How can I calculate California sales tax for out-of-state shipments?

[AimHighShop]

I opened my store this year and made about $65k in sales. Now I am preparing to deal with tax time for the first time. Shopify collected sales tax for my sales that are being shipped to California because that is where I am based. I know I need to remit that CA sales tax collected. When trying to file my CA sales tax forms it seems like I need to know the total amount of my sales that were tax exempt because they were shipped out of state. I have tried searching around the different reports and options and cant figure out a way to generate a report that tallies the in state sales vs the out of state sales. Is there a way to do that?

I will also happily accept any advice from other CA sellers on how to deal with CA sales tax easier 🙂 

[CloudlabSam]

Shopify doesn't provide a great way to do this. Our Report Toaster report can help. We have a Non-Taxable Sales report that is designed just for this purpose. Please take a look and let us know if we can help.

[patrickatmeca]

do you also have a report that can break down California sales tax by county?

[AimHighShop]

I never found a good one. Had to do it manually for last years taxes. Signed up for Taxjar to handle everything moving forward. Worth the money for sure!

[wbphelps]

Interesting - looked at Taxjar but reviews were terrible, complaints about paying for the app and getting bad data, no help from vendor, etc. Please do let us know what your experience is.  So far I have not found any app that handles California sales tax correctly, I ended up just slogging through creating my own spreadsheet...

[AimHighShop]

I ended up having to deal with last years sales tax with a crazy spreadsheet and break it down by county and then the district bs. It was a royal pain. And the numbers didnt tally correctly at the end. CA said I charged $40 too much in sales tax which im sure isnt correct. Im sure I prob just didnt tally something correctly in the filing lol so I just had to pay them that other $40 which was no biggie. But hopefully it doesnt come back and make them audit me for it lol moving forward I signed up for TaxJar. I spoke with their customer service rep and it sounds like they can handle all the proper filing. So I will let them handle it for this year and see how it goes

[CloudlabSam]

The Report Toaster app can report by county as well. We do this on an account by account basis, so if you install please contact support and we will set it up for you.

[mipler]

Shopify does not divide taxes by country as a default setting, but with Mipler Reports, we have the capability to identify the country by extracting information from the tax title, such as Los Angeles County District, Alameda County District, and others. Just contact our support for more details and examples.

[BetterReports-K]

Hi @patrickatmeca,

Absolutely! We have a built-in Tax collected per month report that breaks down the monthly sales tax by tax name (county). You can create a custom version filtered just for California sales showing taxes by county. This can be displayed in segments (ex. monthly) or aggregate over a filtered time period (last quarter).

What do you think?

I encourage you to install Better Reports and start your free 14-day trial and I'll be happy to set this up for you.

[BetterReports-K · Accepted solution]

Hi @AimHighShop,

Keanna here from the Better Reports support team. I would recommend our app Better Reports for this! 

We can create a custom report showing taxable vs. non-taxable sales and/or in-state vs. out of state sales. We can also show sales by tax names (state and county) which you may find helpful in your tax filings.

In addition to custom reporting capabilities, Better Reports offers more than 80 built-in reports that cover your most common reporting needs including sales, current inventory, refunds, payouts, and more. Our reports can even be scheduled to send at a set frequency to your email or Google Drive!

I encourage you to install Better Reports and start your free 14-day trial and I'll be happy to set this up for you.

[tongbo]

Hi @AimHighShop, the Sidr Tax app is built to solve exactly that. We aggregate all the numbers for you by county and exemption status. You can directly copy/paste the report for filing.