Adding VAT breakdown to checkout

Accounting & Taxes
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Topic summary

A merchant in Estonia needs to display a VAT breakdown at checkout (before purchase completion), showing how much of the total price includes VAT while keeping VAT-inclusive pricing throughout the rest of the store.

Attempted Solutions:

  • Searched for Shopify apps but found none offering this feature for free or under €7/month
  • Tried direct code editing, but learned checkout code is no longer accessible in recent Shopify updates
  • Already spent ~10 hours troubleshooting

Suggested Approaches:

  1. Low-cost VAT app - Recommended as the easiest solution

  2. Cart page customization - Add VAT breakdown on the cart page (before checkout) using Liquid code to calculate and display the VAT amount

  3. Shopify Plus upgrade - Only Plus plan users can edit checkout.liquid files for full checkout customization

  4. Checkout Editor - Use Shopify’s built-in checkout editor to add custom information

  5. Third-party apps - Explore highly-rated apps specifically designed for checkout customization

The discussion remains open with no confirmed resolution, though multiple workarounds have been proposed depending on the merchant’s plan level and budget.

Summarized with AI on October 27. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hello

I am trying to add VAT breakdown line in the checkout section (before the user has bought the product) underneath the Total amount. I have added an image for reference.

redis213_1-1749414182946.png
redis213_1-1749414182946.png1850×761 65.9 KB

I have asked the Shopify AI assistant for help and have tried the following things:

  • Searching for Shopify Apps. I have not found a free of charge app that would allow this. (Though, I would also be okay with a small charge at this point (<7€/m)).

  • Editing the code directly. Shopify AI assistant has informed me the checkout section is no longer editable by code with the latest update.

Note also that the product prices should display the VAT included price everywhere. It is only during the checkout that the user should see that part of the price displayed includes VAT (and exactly how much VAT).

For reference, the store is in Estonia (EU).

I have spent ~10 hours trying to figure this out already, please help :sweat_smile:

2

Hi,

Hope this will work

  • Option 1: Use a Low-Cost VAT App (Best Easy Option)
  • Option 2: Add VAT Breakdown to Cart Page (Before Checkout)
    Code example:
{% assign vat_rate = 0.20 %} {# For 20% VAT, change as needed for Estonia #}
{% assign vat_amount = cart.total_price | times: vat_rate | divided_by: 1.20 %}

**Includes VAT (20%):** {{ vat_amount | money }}
  • Option 3: Switch to Shopify Plus
3

Hi @redis213

I have encountered a very similar situation like you before on my store and I get below feedback from my colleagues. You can make them as a reference here and see which one is working on your store.

  1. Please kindly check if your store is under Shopify Plus Plan, as only Shopify Plus Plan user can edit the checkout page content from checkout.liquid file. Otherwise you have no place to do customization.

  2. You can use checkout editor from Shopify to add information you need. It can customize and edit the functionality and the appearance of your checkout page, you can see if it works or not.

  3. Some apps can custom the information of checkout page and you can further check which element you would like to customize and have a test of high star rating apps to do the settings properly.

In fact, you can find out one article from Shopify Help Center about how to customize checkout pages. You can find all you need in this article directly and please read it carefully. I can feel you can find what need in the end here.

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/checkout-settings/customize-checkout-configurations