We are on Shopify Plus and using B2B. Unsure of a way to go about this - we mainly work with B2B customers and we have products they are purchased from us they use directly in their business and products that they would resell to their customers. For B2B customers that provide us a reseller certificate we want to make the resell products tax-exempt, but the other products used for their business taxable. Nothing I’ve looked at in the backend seems to answer this - if we mark a product as non-taxable that affects customers who didn’t provide a resell certificate and should be charged taxes. If we mark the company account as being tax exempt it applies that to the whole order. Wondering if anyone had a better suggestion for us to make this work?
Topic summary
A Shopify Plus B2B merchant needs to apply tax exemptions selectively: some products (for resale) should be tax-exempt for customers with reseller certificates, while other products (for business use) remain taxable for the same customers.
Current limitations identified:
- Marking products as non-taxable affects all customers, including those without certificates
- Setting company accounts as tax-exempt applies to entire orders, not specific product categories
Proposed solutions discussed:
- Shopify Scripts: Initial poster considered hiring a developer to create custom scripts as a cost-effective alternative to monthly app fees
- Avalara (or Vertex): Recommended by multiple participants as the most scalable solution for high-volume exempt transactions. These platforms can validate certificates in real-time, apply exemptions at the line-item level, and ensure compliance across jurisdictions
Status: The discussion remains open with no confirmed resolution. One participant faces an identical issue with additional local tax rule complexities and is exploring Shopify APIs, though Avalara appears to be the only viable option identified so far.
I think using Shopify Scripts would be our best solution instead of relying on/paying monthly for an app. We will look into finding a developer who could set this up for us. Thank you!
Hi @katiesa_ap , what did you end up going with? My B2B distribution business is facing essentially the same issue. We also have local tax rules that make a specific set of customers exempt for certain products.
I’ve been looking into Shopify APIs but so far the only viable option seems to be Avalara.
If you do a lot of exempt business, the best route may be something like Avalara. Ideally you want the exemption ‘check’ to be part of the tax calculation process… as in the system should check to see if the certificate is valid in the jurisdiction in question for the buyer in question at the time of the purchase. While you can mark someone as exempt and have them be not taxable for forever, it would be more scalable and keep you better protected to leverage some kind of automated solution to handle that.
And then if you had something like Avalara (or I’m sure Vertex could too) then you could have entire company accounts be exempt, or just specific lines on an order.