We are a NYS vendor as well. We ship our products to many places within NY. We have learned that Shopify eliminated our sales tax override for the 80 counties/local jurisdictions in NYS when they migrated us over to Shopify Tax on January 2 2024. They gave no warning of this migration nor did they say that the sales tax override feature would be eliminated. Honestly, I do not think they even knew about it until their customers started to complain about incorrect tax being charged for orders shipping within NYS. At first they did not even acknowledge that it was an issue. Now they are saying they are working on a fix. I initially reported this issue to Shopify support on Feb 21st. The last I heard from them was about 1 week ago. Meanwhile, I am looking for another on-line store solution.
Topic summary
Core issue: Multiple NY vendors report Shopify charging incorrect sales tax and producing confusing reports. Examples include NYC taxed at 8.5% instead of 8.875% and tax being charged on clothing that is exempt in NY, plus county-level inaccuracies.
Reporting problems: Tax reports lack figures needed for quarterly filing and are hard to interpret, especially for NYC; a NYC line item appears without its jurisdiction code.
Migration impact: On Jan 2, 2024 Shopify migrated stores to “Shopify Tax” and, per users, removed sales tax overrides for ~80 NY jurisdictions without notice, leading to mischarges on NY shipments.
Shopify response: Staff directed merchants to authenticated support and noted they aren’t tax advisors. Users say support was slow/unhelpful; Shopify later acknowledged issues and said a fix is in progress.
Workarounds: Mark products with the “Clothing” category for exemptions; reconcile reports by combining 4% state and 4% local components (e.g., NYC + NYS) to reach totals. Significant data cleanup may be required.
Status: Unresolved/ongoing. Some merchants are considering alternative platforms; clarity on restored overrides and accurate NYC/NYS rates remains pending.