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.
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Hi @DazC

I have the exact problem you outline above and am just wondering if the “hidden” feature solution is still working/relevant? I know that some new settings have been made available in Tax etc but I cannot work out which will not break the Google Feed/Price Mismatch situation.

I am about to embark on the hit and miss process of asking Shopify to do it at their end. I am sure it used to work (VAT removed if location was not UK etc). For some reason it stopped at some point.

Thanks,

C.