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Cannot charge proper sales tax in Canada - Warning for Canadians

Design help Ecommerce
#1

Hi all,

Opening this thread here for any possible solutions, and also to warn other Canadians using Webflow Ecommerce. The current limitations of TaxJar (the service Webflow uses for tax calculation) and Webflow Ecommerce mean we cannot charge the correct tax rates for some items in some provinces.

I have confirmed this with Webflow Support and received the following reply after going back and forth:

Currently, the product tax class settings only apply for states in the US and some EU countries.
All products will have a 12% tax applied. 5% for GST and 7% for PST.

This is specific to BC - but the same applies to other provinces multiple types of sales tax. There is currently no option to only apply 5% GST. This means Canadians selling clothing or food (and some other categories) in certain provinces like BC cannot use Webflow Ecommerce.

Webflow Support says adding custom tax rates (when automatic is disabled) is on the roadmap for Q2 2020… but not guaranteed.

This is very disappointing - custom tax rates seems like a basic feature – I wonder why they chose to have TaxJar be the only option. I wish they were more clear about this when I first inquired, before setting up my client’s store using Webflow Ecommerce.

#2

To clarify, our only option right now is to advertise all products as “tax included”, then do the manual bookkeeping after sales are processed to extract the correct tax based on what category the item’s in.

#3

Really? It works for me. I’m from Alberta and my tests have calculated only 5%. Just ran a test for Toronto and it calculated the proper 13% (5% GST and 8% PST). But I agree, we should have been able to input custom tax rates from the get-go.

#5

@Mercs Great observation… let me clarify:

Alberta and Ontario both only have one single tax rate. Alberta has only 5% and Ontario has only 13%. (Ontario used to be PST/GST, but no longer).

The problems arise in provinces like BC where there’s two different sales tax rates: PST and GST, and some products like clothing and food are GST only. There’s no way to do GST only in BC.

Even if your business is based in Ontario, and you need to collect 5% GST from your BC customers – you cannot do this. So this affects all Canadian businesses that are required to collect tax across the country.

#6

True about Toronto having HST, but what I was looking for was proper calculation, and it calculated 13% total. I just tested Vancouver, and it calculated 5% GST and 7% PST.

#7

@Mercs You’re correct. Perhaps I’m not explaining this correctly. Ontario is no problem… Alberta is no problem…

But if you have a customer in BC and you’re selling them an item where only GST is to be collected (Books, Clothing, Food, as just a few examples), there’s no way to charge just 5% GST. Webflow forces you to collect both GST and PST on all transaction (or none at all).

As per my original warning:

Canadians selling clothing or food (and some other categories) in certain provinces like BC cannot use Webflow Ecommerce.

#8

Oh ok, I get it now.

1 Like
#9

Eric,

Did you find a workaround to this? I have customers who are noticing the GST and PST and I would like the tax to just say HST when they are ordering. Or is there a way to have it just say “taxes”?

Janine

#10

Anyone? From Norway and at the moment the feature is useless :confused:

#11

No fix yet. The tax options in Webflow Ecommerce are just so awful. TaxJar is not a good solution and I’m shocked they actually have the pay for it. I was told a fix is coming in Q2, but that never happened.

We need the exact same setup as custom shipping options (by location) but for tax rates based on location. + subregions (like provinces and states) within countries.

#12

Update: Feb 2021 - still no fix for this. Major limitation in Webflow Ecommerce.