Is there a way to add Avalara to a basic Shopify plan?

[Jacabean]

Hi! We want to add Avalara to our "Shopify Plan" which we pay $71 a month for. I have been told we have to upgrade to "Shopify Plus Plan" - $2000 a month in order to use Avalara. That is a huge jump in price. Is there a workaround for adding Avalara to your Shopify if you don't have Shopify Plus?

Thank you

[Wedevagency]

@Jacabean Where will this Tax plan show on the website?

[Jacabean]

Not sure what you mean by show. Avalara calculates the tax then send the info to the Ava tax website. It should automatically in the checkout process.

[Wedevagency]

@Jacabean As to customise checkout you would need Shopify Plus. Happy to engage you with one of Shopify Plus team members to see if you require it.

[Wedevagency]

@Jacabean I just checked Shopify article that you need to be on Shopify Plus plan. The only way you can do without Shopify Plus is headless approach but that would cost more than $2k Shopify Plus plan.

[Wedevagency]

@Jacabean Spoke with Shopify team they said you have to be on Shopify Plus and sent the link below:

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/taxes/tax-services

[Jacabean · Accepted solution]

Incase any other small business owners need this information, we decided to stay on our "Shopify" plan and not upgrade to "Shopify Plus". We are using the new Shopify Tax program to calculate sales tax and keep track of our potential need to sign up for sales tax in new states. Shopify has a place to extract all sales tax collected that we can upload to Avalara to file for us. Problem solved without having to pay an extra $2000 per month for a plan that is too big and expensive for our small business.

[TaxFun]

Hi, you mention AvaTax below. Is that what you are using with Avalara? We just got a quote for AvaTax (currently on old TrustFile service), and it is 18k a year. Yikes! Granted, we have a lot of returns, but that where the high cost is for us.

[Jacabean]

Wow! That is expensive. Are you signed up for the SST states? Ava didn't tell us about that option at first. The SST states pay for everything! Not all states are SST but it really lowers your bill if you sign up for those states that are using SST. Then you are only paying for non SST states out of your pocket. Good luck!

[Jacabean]

We are now using the Shopify extractor that is available for Ava users. The sales from Shopify are automatically pushed over to Ava once the invoice is paid. This has been working well for us and we didn't have to move to Shopify Plus.

[theotheritguy]

Hi! I'm curious what happens with tax differences between Shopify Tax and Avalara. We just launched our store and a lot of orders have small but frequent differences between the 2 systems. Usually it's Shopify charging city and county taxes that Avalara doesn't. Other times, Shopify uses a county rate and Avalara uses a different county rate. So our accounting team is going crazy over the small but frequent differences in what we the customer is seeing as tax on the invoice generated by Shopify versus the tax we see when we bring it into Avalara?

[Jacabean]

Hi! Yes, that drives me crazy too! It still seems a bit of a mystery but this is what I have figured out. When I connected my Shopify Extractor, a popup populated for me to agree to. I took a screen shot of it and added it below. It is an explanation of what happens to the differences in tax. It says that basically we (the business) always pay on the highest rate. If our customers is charged tax by Shopify and Ava calculates a higher tax rate then we remit the higher rate to the state. If Shopify charges a higher tax and Ava calculates a lower tax, Ava still remits the higher rate to the state because that was what was collected from the customer. So as a company we are always paying whichever the highest taxes rate is that was calculated. That means our company is paying for the extra tax that was not collected from the customer by Shopify which is an added expense. It also means Ava is remitting the extra tax that was collected by Shopify when the customer over paid the tax which is great. It would be a problem if we collected too much tax from the customer and it wasn't remitted to the state even if it's just pennies. So that part is good. I was told by Ava phone support that what extra we pay in tax that was not paid by the customer is refunded back to us on our next return but I don't know that for sure.

 Hope that helps.

 

[theotheritguy]

First… THANK YOU! For replying. I contacted our Avalara rep and he said to put in a support ticket and the support people said I should talk to my rep. At least now I have something to work from. I noticed on Shopify’s tax settings page that it says additional tax options will be available in 2023 with a checkbox to be notified when they are available. Hopefully there will be more options. 

[elaine531]

Your Shopify tax solution is almost a year old but I think might be really helpful to me.  I'm a senior-senior and a Newbie to Shopify.   All this tax stuff is overwhelming for me.  I want to try a POD hobby-business, whatever.  I just want to try it for now but I can't even get the pieces together to set it up.  The taxes, obviously, are a problem.  I can't do anything expensive at this point.  So -- you say stick with regular Shopify and then get Shopify Tax?  How does Avalara fit in?  There is an Avalara rep who's been emailing me . . .   Avalara has a plan that's free for 3 months and then $19 a month afterward.  That seems expensive.  What about filing taxes monthly or quarterly.  Would I have to do that and how difficult is it to do?

I don't have a sales tax # -- where do I get that?   Oh, thank you!

Elaine531

[Jacabean]

Hi Elaine,

I use "Shopify Tax", 90% of Shopify merchants use that. It has the highest level of compliance with a minimal amount of upkeep.

You need to find out what your tax obligations are first then contact that state and they will give you a number. If you are just starting out you might ONLY need to collect taxes for the state you sell in. Avalara has on their website each states rules around sales tax. You can read more about if you even need to collect sales tax for any sates other than your home state. 

https://www.avalara.com/us/en/learn/guides/state-by-state-guide-economic-nexus-laws.html

If you do need to register with other states, you can do it yourself and file the returns yourself with the information you get from Shopify or you can have Avalara register you for the state and file the returns for you. 

Good luck!!

[elaine531]

Thank you so much!
Elaine

[AlexSid]

You can also use lovat for this inquiries. They offer services with easier integration using the app for shopify. 

They even made instructions of how to change tax service - https://vatcompliance.co/5-things-to-know-for-a-transit-from-one-tax-service-to-another/

[SergYem]

I also used lovat services for almost 2 years, and it was quite easy to integrate my shopify store with a step-by-step guide👍
Besides, once you integrate it, all transactions are uploaded automatically so from my side I can advise lovat as well

[Kristina1907]

I've changed already to a new provider - Lovat  https://vatcompliance.co/ . Easy integration with my Shopify store, friendly software to submit my VAT/Sales tax returns. Highly recommended.