Hi - I’m having trouble finding an answer to this question specifically…
I’m based in the UK but I’m selling print-on-demand products to the US that are fulfilled in the US. I just had an order where Shopify charged a US customer Duties even though their entire order is being made and fulfilled in the US.
When I used the chatbot, it said it’s because my store is based in the UK and “When you ship products from the UK to the US, the US government requires these fees to be paid on imported goods.”
But I’m not shipping from the UK to the US…it’s US to US. Is this normal to charge Duties on a situation like this or do I need to do something to correct my tax collection settings?
Thank you in advance for any help!
Thank you so much! I’ve fixed all my settings now. Now I’ll need to figure out how to refund this customer the duties they paid.
This happens because Shopify calculates duties from your store’s default ship-from origin, not from where the order physically ships. With your business registered in the UK and no US fulfillment location configured, checkout treats the order as UK-to-US and quotes import duties — even though your POD partner fulfills domestically inside the US.
The fix is in your locations and markets setup: 1) Settings → Locations — make sure there’s a US location representing your fulfillment partner (apps usually create one; check it has a US address). 2) Settings → Shipping and delivery — confirm the shipping profile for your POD products uses that US location as its origin for US rates. 3) Settings → Markets → United States — under duties and import taxes, turn OFF duty collection for the US market. Since your goods are made and shipped domestically, there are no import duties to collect, and collecting them anyway is money you’ll have to refund manually (Shopify won’t remit it anywhere on a domestic shipment).
Worth doing for the order that already happened: refund the duty portion to that customer proactively with a one-line explanation — cheaper than a chargeback and reads as competence.
We ship cross-border into the US daily on the production side, so I’ve watched a lot of stores hit exactly this config trap — it’s almost always the market-level duties toggle plus a missing US location.