On Shopify Plus, we’ve validated the VAT number up-front - it checks out - but the platform still won’t peel off the VAT that’s already in the goods price. So we’re not being double-charged, thank god, it’s just not removing what should never have been there. And drafts? Absolute shambles - most apps don’t even touch them. Been six days of 'we’re looking into it¨. If anyone knows how to force it through everywhere, front-end and back please let me know.
Even on Shopify Plus, validating a VAT number upfront won’t automatically remove VAT from your product prices if your store is using tax-inclusive pricing. Shopify only stops adding VAT at checkout, ,it won’t peel out the VAT that’s already baked into the price, which is why everything still shows as VAT-included even though the number checks out. Draft orders make it even messier, since most apps don’t support draft-order tax logic, and Shopify’s draft system doesn’t always follow the same tax rules as the normal checkout.
Right now, the only reliable ways to force VAT removal everywhere are switching to tax-exclusive pricing, using a third-party VAT/tax-exemption app that fully supports Shopify Plus, or building a custom Shopify Function to override tax behavior. Draft orders may still need extra handling because Shopify’s native support is inconsistent. If you need VAT correctly removed on both the front end and back end, a Plus-level custom Function is usually the cleanest solution.
Hope this gives you some clarity😊
If we can set an attribute on cart when the VAT is validated, a discount can be configured to apply using Shopify function based apps like Dollarlabs.
It’s just one possible solution, but it might be the easiest like @Coding-with-Jan mentioned without having to update your entire catalogue to vat exclusive pricing.
Hopefully you’ve already arrived at a solution or are close to one already, seeing that it’s a month since the last reply.
Hey @TimOrchard,
This is a known limitation with tax-inclusive pricing on Shopify. The platform validates the VAT number fine, but when your prices already include VAT, marking a customer as exempt doesn’t actually reduce the price - it just stops Shopify from adding more tax on top.
Two reliable approaches that work across storefront, checkout, and draft orders:
Option 1 - Tax-exclusive pricing for B2B If you’re on Plus using native B2B, set up a separate price list that’s VAT-exclusive and assign it to company locations with validated VAT IDs. This works consistently everywhere including draft orders, because the exemption is built into the price list itself rather than relying on checkout-time calculations.
Option 2 - Enable dynamic tax display Go to Settings > Markets > Preferences and toggle on “Include or exclude tax based on your customer’s country”. This makes your pricing dynamic - Shopify will calculate the net price from your gross and adjust based on customer location/status. Then you’d modify your theme to show tax-exempt prices and use Shopify Scripts to apply the exemption at checkout.
For draft orders specifically - most apps and even Shopify’s native flow struggle here. The cleanest fix is ensuring the customer profile has tax exemption enabled before you create the draft, not just relying on checkout validation. Some merchants maintain dedicated B2B price lists exactly for this reason.
If neither of those works for your setup, there are apps like EUVAT.app or Exemptify that handle the gross-to-net calculation automatically for validated VAT customers.
Best,
Shubham | Untechnickle
This is a frustrating one, and you’re not alone — what you’re hitting is usually a tax-inclusive pricing limitation rather than a VAT validation problem.
A few key points that tend to explain the behavior:
-
VAT validation ≠ “strip VAT out of price”
On Shopify, validating a VAT number typically affects whether tax is charged, but if your product prices are VAT-inclusive, Shopify generally won’t “peel” VAT back out of the displayed/base price for B2B customers. It simply avoids charging VAT again (so you don’t get double-charged), which matches what you’re seeing. -
Shopify treats tax-inclusive prices as the source of truth
Once VAT is baked into the price, Shopify doesn’t reliably recalculate a net (ex-VAT) price per customer type across all flows. Showing gross to retail and net to validated B2B is where most setups break unless you implement separate pricing logic. -
Draft orders are genuinely inconsistent
Draft Orders often bypass parts of the normal checkout/tax pipeline, so many apps and even native behaviors don’t apply cleanly there. That’s why “works on storefront but not drafts” is a common complaint. -
What tends to work in practice (depending on your setup)
Merchants usually pick one of these approaches:
-
Maintain ex-VAT (net) pricing and let Shopify add VAT only where applicable
-
Use separate B2B pricing/catalogs (so B2B sees net pricing by design)
-
Avoid relying on “removing VAT from inclusive pricing” as a runtime adjustment — it’s hard to make consistent across storefront + drafts
- On apps/tools:
Just to be transparent: We are providing a solution for complete tax exemption validation and automation “TaxWisp”, but it’s focused on US sales tax exemption certificate workflows (resale / exempt entities), not EU VAT number handling.
That said, the pattern is similar: the real “fix” is usually treating exemption as a customer-level lifecycle (validated → approved → applied consistently), rather than trying to patch each order. The EU VAT equivalent needs to be handled with tooling/workflows similar to TaxWisp that specifically support VAT validation and tax-inclusive pricing behavior across all order types.
Thank you for the reply. Still no fix from Shopify. The issue with the Catalogs is that each region in EU will need a separate catalog as differing VAT rates for differing skus per country. Then within each country there are multiple catalogs depending on the type of customer. Is there an easy way to manage the catalogs?
Thank you for the reply. Still no fix from Shopify. The issue with the Catalogs is that each region in EU will need a separate catalog as differing VAT rates for differing skus per country. Then within each country there are multiple catalogs depending on the type of customer. Is there an easy way to manage the catalogs?
A few months ago we launched a new app that solves this issue using an automated discount ensuring the VAT is removed. Maybe it can help, the app is called Taxify, but we only support 1 VAT rate per country, not different VAT rates per product.