Can ShipperHQ Calculate and Apply Sales Tax for Orders?
Table of Contents
ShipperHQ calculates and returns shipping rates at checkout — live carrier rates and custom table rates based on the items in an order. Sales tax on product value is outside ShipperHQ's scope. Your eCommerce platform or a dedicated tax app handles that based on your store's region, products, and tax settings.
Most platforms handle this natively or through an integration:
- Shopify calculates sales tax automatically based on your store's tax settings and customer address
- BigCommerce includes built-in tax rules and integrates with services like Avalara and TaxJar
- Magento / Adobe Commerce supports tax through its native tax rules engine and third-party modules
- WooCommerce handles tax through its built-in settings or plugins like WooCommerce Tax
For configuration help, refer to your platform's tax documentation directly.
Related Tax Features in ShipperHQ
ShipperHQ does not calculate sales tax on order value, but it includes several features that intersect with tax and pricing:
Duties & Taxes for International Shipments The Duties & Taxes add-on calculates real-time international duties and taxes for cross-border orders, powered by DHL eCommerce Americas. Charges can be shown at checkout as either Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) or Delivered Duty Unpaid (DDU). See Duties & Taxes for setup details.
Tax-Inclusive Pricing for Shipping Rules On some platforms, ShipperHQ can use tax-inclusive product prices when evaluating shipping rules — for example, when a rule filters by cart subtotal. This doesn't calculate or apply tax; it uses the price your platform provides, tax included, when determining which rates to return. See Using Discounted & Tax-Inclusive Pricing for details.
VAT on Shipping Rates (DHL Express) DHL Express carriers can return shipping prices that include VAT. This is a display option specific to DHL Express — it affects how the shipping cost appears, not how sales tax is applied to the order. See DHL Express Carrier Setup for configuration details.
FAQ
I'm shipping internationally. Can ShipperHQ help with duties and taxes?
Yes — ShipperHQ's Duties & Taxes add-on calculates real-time duties and taxes at checkout for cross-border shipments. This is separate from domestic sales tax. See Duties & Taxes for more information.
Where do I configure sales tax for my store?
In your eCommerce platform's tax settings. Each platform handles this differently — refer to your platform's documentation or support resources for guidance.