How can I refund only the tax amount from a sale?

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A merchant needs to refund only the tax portion of an order for EU customers with VAT numbers, without affecting the product price or invoice accuracy. Shopify support confirmed this isn’t natively possible—refunds always reduce the product total rather than isolating tax.

Official Workaround:

  • Cancel the original order
  • Create a draft order with tax marked as free
  • Mark as paid and send new invoice

Community Solution (Most Effective):

  1. Mark customer as tax exempt in customer settings
  2. Unarchive and cancel fulfillment on the order
  3. Edit order: remove all items, then re-add identical items (tax won’t apply)
  4. Process refund for tax amount
  5. Re-fulfill order without notifying customer

Multiple users report this workaround successfully removes tax while preserving order integrity. However, it’s labor-intensive and doesn’t work for already-fulfilled orders without canceling fulfillment first.

Ongoing Issues:

  • Tax overrides only work before purchase, not retroactively
  • Lump-sum refunds create accounting software problems
  • Feature requests submitted but no timeline for native tax-only refund capability
  • One user reported support promised a fix within 48 hours (April 2023), but no confirmation of implementation
Summarized with AI on October 27. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
21

I have an order like this; I’m ducking out for the day - but left a note for myself later. I plan to:

  • Update the custoemr
  • Unarchive the order
  • Cancel fulfillment
  • Edit the order to replace the products and recalculate tax
  • Fulfill the order (Not notify the customer to prevent extra notifications)

I expect should work

22

Works! Thanks!

23

Works! Thank you!!!

24

Legend!

25

Odd quirk of this… I did this on an order where one of our staff already refunded an amount equal to the tax without realizing that he was messing up our tax reporting. Even though we already refunded an amount equivalent to the the tax amount, and the edited order showed a net payment equal to the total, Shopify still thought we owed another refund equal to the tax amount.

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