Charge tax in a specific state for a specific manufacturer/collection

Product Development & Sourcing

Topic summary

A dropshipper based in Ohio needs to charge sales tax on products from a California manufacturer, but only to California customers purchasing those specific items. Currently, their Shopify store only charges tax to Ohio customers across all products.

Proposed Solution:

  • Enable California as a tax region in Shopify’s tax settings
  • Create a dedicated collection containing only the California manufacturer’s products (filtered by vendor name)
  • Use Shopify’s tax override feature to apply California sales tax specifically to this collection
  • Test the setup by simulating California purchases

This workaround addresses Shopify’s limitation of not supporting product-specific tax rules by manufacturer. The solution ensures tax applies exclusively when California customers purchase from the designated manufacturer, while maintaining existing tax rules for all other transactions.

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

Hello all, I am a dropshipper out of Ohio and one of my best selling product lines comes from a manufacturer in california. Per the manufacturer, I need to charge sales tax to customers in california who purchase those items from me.

Right now, I have my store set up to only charge sales tax when I sell items to customers in Ohio, but it is for all products, not only certain ones. How would I set up in Shopify to only charge tax to customers in california who buy a product from this one specific manufacturer?

2

Hi @MSchaffer30

I see what you’re trying to do—you need to charge sales tax only on products from a specific manufacturer when sold to customers in California, while keeping everything else taxed normally. Shopify’s built-in tax settings don’t allow product-specific tax rules by default, but there’s a way to set this up with a manual tax override using Shopify’s tax collection settings. Here’s how you can do it:

Step 1: Ensure You’re Collecting California Sales Tax1. Go to Settings > Taxes and Duties in your Shopify admin.

  1. Under the United States section, make sure California is added as a tax region.
  2. Shopify will automatically calculate tax based on destination sourcing if you have nexus in California.

Step 2: Create a Manual Tax Override for the Specific Manufacturer

Since Shopify doesn’t let you apply taxes by manufacturer directly, the workaround is to create a collection with the products from that manufacturer and apply a tax override.

  1. Go to Products > Collections.
  2. Click Create Collection and name it something like California Taxed Products.
  3. Set up automated conditions to only include products from the specific manufacturer (you can filter by vendor name if your products are categorized by manufacturer).
  4. Save the collection.

Step 3: Apply the Tax Override1. Go back to Settings > Taxes and Duties.

  1. Under the United States section, click California.
  2. Scroll down and look for the Tax overrides section.
  3. Click Add a product override, then select the California Taxed Products collection.
  4. Set the tax rate to match the California state tax (based on your manufacturer’s requirement).
  5. Save the settings.

Step 4: Test Your Setup- Add a product from that manufacturer to the cart and enter a California shipping address. The tax should now apply only to those products.

  • Try checking out with a different product and see if tax is skipped.

This setup ensures tax is charged only when someone in California buys from that manufacturer, while all other products remain taxed as per your default settings.

Let me know if you run into any issues, and I’ll be happy to assist!
Best regards,
Daisy