Turn on automatic sales tax and your checkout adds the right tax to each order, worked out from the shopper’s shipping address, down to the city and district rate. Tax is shown as its own line in the order summary before the shopper pays, recorded on the order, and reported to your Stripe account for filing. Nothing changes for your shoppers until you turn it on. Sales tax comes from the PlatformDTC Tax app. A store without it charges no tax. Install it from the App Store (platformdtc.com/apps/platformdtc-tax), then set it up in Settings → Taxes and duties (platformdtc.com/setting/taxes), which appears once the app is installed.

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How it works

  • You are the seller, so the tax is yours. Tax is calculated and recorded on your own Stripe account (the one your PlatformDTC Payments run on), and your tax reports are in your Stripe Dashboard under Tax.
  • Tax is only charged where you’re registered. You tell us where you hold a sales tax, VAT or GST registration. Shoppers shipping anywhere else pay no tax. You decide where you collect; we never register you anywhere.
  • Tax is added on top of your prices, the way US and Canadian shoppers expect. Discounts are taken off before tax is worked out.
  • Refunds reverse the tax automatically. A full or partial refund from the order page, the API or your Stripe Dashboard records the matching tax reversal.

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Set it up

  1. Install the Tax app on the store from the App Store. Installing it does not charge any tax yet: tax stays off until you finish the steps below and switch it on.
  2. Business address and product category. Stripe needs the address your business operates from and the category that best describes what you sell (for example General - Tangible Goods, Clothing and footwear, or a food or supplement category). The category decides which rate applies. Some states tax clothing or groceries differently.
  3. Add your registrations. For each place you’re registered: in the US choose the state; in Canada choose GST/HST or a province; in the EU choose your OSS or IOSS scheme or a domestic registration; elsewhere choose the country. Tax starts in that place right away. To stop, choose Stop collecting: the registration ends now and its history stays in your reports.
  4. Turn on “Collect sales tax at checkout”. You can only do this once Stripe shows your setup as complete.
  5. Charge tax on shipping rates is on by default. Where a state or country taxes shipping, the shipping charge is taxed too. Turn it off to never tax shipping.

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Uninstalling the Tax app

Uninstalling the app from Apps switches tax off at checkout for that store immediately and removes Settings → Taxes and duties. Your business address, product category, registrations and shipping choice are kept. If you reinstall, they come back with tax switched off until you turn it on again, so a reinstall never starts charging shoppers tax by itself.

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What shoppers see

The order summary shows Tax: Enter shipping address until the shopper enters their address, then the tax amount. The total they see is what they’re charged. Apple Pay and Google Pay ask for the shipping address in the wallet sheet and show the tax there before the shopper confirms.

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What it covers

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Orders in another currency (Markets)

When a shopper pays in a market currency, Stripe Tax works out the tax in that currency, on the prices the shopper sees. The order summary, the wallet sheet and the receipt show that tax in their currency, and it is exactly what they’re charged. Your order records the same tax in your store currency, at the market’s exchange rate, so reports stay in one currency. The tax transaction on your Stripe account is in the currency the shopper paid, and a refund reverses its share of the tax automatically. Tax is only charged where you’re registered, as for any other order. The order page shows the tax under Taxes. The Taxes total on your analytics dashboard adds up the tax you collected.

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For agents

Your connected agent can read and change these settings with dtc_get_tax_settings, dtc_update_tax_settings, dtc_add_tax_registration and dtc_expire_tax_registration (store:read / store:write). An agent turns tax on or adds a registration only when you ask. Installing the Tax app also gives your AI assistant a tax skill. For a store without the Tax app these tools answer 403 TAX_APP_NOT_INSTALLED.