No Tax Weekend

Accounting & Taxes

Topic summary

Topic: How to handle state sales tax holidays (No Tax Weekend/Week) in Shopify.

Key guidance:

  • Verify with the state that a tax holiday is active; do not rely solely on a customer’s claim.
  • During the holiday, temporarily turn off sales tax collection in Shopify for the affected jurisdiction(s). Consider contacting Shopify support to implement and later re-enable settings cleanly.

Accounting/filing:

  • Even in a tax holiday period, you still file returns reporting total sales, non-taxable sales, and taxable sales.
  • Pull these totals from Shopify reports; your accounting system or Shopify should provide the necessary breakdowns for reconciliation.

Open points:

  • The suggestion favors adjusting Shopify tax settings over marking individual orders as “Tax Exempt” without documentation.
  • No confirmation that Shopify will automatically recognize a tax holiday; manual verification and configuration are advised.

Status: Practical steps provided; exact process for automation and documentation remains unresolved.

Summarized with AI on December 21. AI used: gpt-5.
2

My first thought is that while you should listen to your customer about no sales tax, be sure to confirm with the state that there is a no sales tax period. Don’t rely solely on the word of the customer. During the no sales tax period, you would need to turn off the collection of sales tax and that might require having Shopify walk you through it so that you don’t create a lot of work for yourself when you turn it back on.

When you file for periods in which sales taxes are not required, you typically will still file the total sales, non-taxable sales, and taxable sales. You can pull reports from Shopify that will give you those totals. Depending on how your accounting system is set up, your accounting team should be able to pull reports for these totals either within the accounting system or from Shopify.