Tax issue Google Shopping and Shopify causing mismatched value (page crawl) [price]

Accounting & Taxes

Topic summary

Core Issue:
Shopify stores selling in the EU/UK face price mismatches in Google Merchant Center when using location-based VAT settings. Google’s crawlers see prices excluding VAT (often from non-EU IP addresses), while product feeds contain VAT-inclusive prices, triggering automatic price updates or product rejections.

Root Cause:
Shopify’s hidden geolocation feature displays different prices based on visitor location before checkout. When “Include or exclude tax based on customer’s country” is enabled, international visitors see ex-VAT prices immediately, which Google’s crawlers detect and flag as mismatches.

Attempted Solutions:

  • Disabling automatic updates in Google Merchant Center: Temporarily fixes price display but may cause product rejections
  • Resubmitting sitemaps: Helped some users after Google recrawled
  • Custom code workarounds: Calculating VAT-inclusive prices in theme code when cart.taxes_included is false
  • Tax overrides for crawled countries: Adding tax rates for countries Google crawls from (e.g., Andorra)

Most Effective Solution:
Shopify can disable the automatic geolocation-based price adjustment feature on request (confirmed working for Shopify Plus accounts). This ensures all visitors see consistent VAT-inclusive prices until entering shipping details at checkout.

Current Status:
Recent reports (2023-2024) indicate Shopify support is inconsistent about disabling this feature, particularly for non-Plus accounts. The issue remains unresolved for many merchants, with no user-accessible setting to control this behavior. Google Shopping requires landing page prices to match feed prices regardless of visitor location.

Summarized with AI on October 30. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
2

While I do not have a solution, I want to confirm with you that your findings are correct.

So when you submit a price to The Netherlands, then regardless of location, for example the US, the price must be what is submitted in Google Merchant Center. IE VAT inclusive.

The solution is to only exclude VAT, when the customer enters a delivery address or payment address outside the US. This means, you should not change the address prior to knowing where it is going.

Meaning in the checkout when the details are entered, not prior.