US sales tax · Tax
The sales tax you collected
was never yours.
Shopify counts the tax your buyers paid inside total sales. Profflow takes it out first — using the amount recorded on each order, not a rate you typed — so what is left is the money that was ever yours.
Measured, not estimated · EU-hosted · Read-only by default
- Sales tax$588as charged
- Taken$7,940July
- Your revenue$7,185after refunds and tax
- Net profit$2,521+2.5%
- Stayed$2,52131.8%
- Cost of goods$2,94437.1%
- Advertising$1,18014.9%
- Fees and fixed costs$5406.8%
- Refunds$1672.1%
- Sales tax collected$5887.4%
Sales tax is collected on behalf of a state and paid to it. Counted inside total sales it inflates every margin on every screen after it: the platform shows $7,940, and $588 of that was never revenue.
01 / The case for it
Shopify records the tax. Your reporting spends it.
Without it
Sales tax is collected on top of the price and held on someone else’s behalf, but it arrives inside the same order total as everything else. A revenue figure that still contains it counts money you are going to hand over.
What Profflow does
Taken out using what Shopify already recorded.
Not estimated from a rate table and not guessed from an address — the amount Shopify put on each order, removed before revenue is measured. Where an order carries no recorded tax, it says so rather than filling in a number.
02 / Worth understanding
The tax you collected was never revenue
Money in transit is not income
The tax a buyer pays at checkout belongs to a state from the moment it is collected. It sits in the same bank account as your revenue, which is exactly why it gets counted as revenue — and why a margin built on total sales is wrong by the tax rate.
The amount recorded, not a rate applied afterwards
Rates differ by state, county and sometimes city, and marketplace facilitator rules move the obligation around. Profflow uses the tax actually recorded on each order rather than applying an average rate to a total.
It is the same error as European VAT
The mechanics differ — added at checkout here, inside the price there — but the mistake is identical: treating somebody else’s money as your own and reporting a margin on it.
03 / What it lets you do
What follows from getting US sales tax right.
Measured, not a rate
US rates vary by state, county and city. Profflow uses the amount Shopify recorded on the order rather than asking for a percentage that would be wrong somewhere.
Revenue that is yours
Tax collected is money held for a state. It never counts as revenue, so margin is not flattered by it.
Refunds follow
A refunded or edited order carries a lower tax figure, and the model follows it on the date it changed.
Marketplace tax left alone
Amazon collects and remits marketplace tax itself, so it never lands in your proceeds and is never deducted twice.
Traceable to the order
Open the tax line and follow it to the dated orders it came from.
Both channels, one model
Shopify and Amazon read side by side in your own currency, each with the tax treatment that is actually theirs.
04 / What it is built from
US sales tax is assembled
from accounts you already run.
- 01Orders & refunds
- 02Sales tax collected
- 03Payment fees
- 04Cost of goods
- 05Ad spend
- 06Shipping & packaging
- Measured, not a rate
- Revenue that is yours
- Refunds follow
- Marketplace tax left alone
05 / How it is worked out
From the account
to the figure on the screen.
- 01ReadsThe tax recorded on every Shopify order, as charged.
- 02RemovesThat amount from revenue before anything is called profit.
- 03FollowsA refund or an edit down, on the date it happened.
- 04ReportsWhat was collected beside what you actually kept.
[ Asked of the figures ]
How much of last month’s $7,940 was actually mine?
$588 was sales tax collected for the states your buyers live in. After $167 of refunds that leaves $7,185 of revenue, and $2,521 of it survived goods, ads, fees and fixed costs.
How Profflow reasons06 / How the figure is kept honest
The same four rules,
on every screen.
- Read-only, on every plan
Profflow observes the accounts it is connected to. It does not write an order, a price, a campaign or a payout back to any of them.
- Measured stays measured
A charge read from an account is labelled measured. Anything modelled — a forecast, a projection, a filled gap — is labelled as such on the screen it appears on.
- Every figure opens
Follow any number to the dated rows underneath it. A figure nobody can check is a figure nobody acts on.
- You approve
The product prepares a decision and shows the evidence. Nothing consequential happens until you say so.
About
US sales tax.
Can’t find the answer to your question?
Contact us by clicking here.
No. It shows the tax that was actually collected on your orders and keeps it out of revenue. Registration, nexus and filing stay with you or your accountant.
No. Profflow does not decide where you have an obligation and does not file anything. It reports what Shopify recorded as charged.
Then the rate set in Profflow does the work, the same way it does in Europe. Where prices exclude tax — the usual US setup — the measured amount is used instead.
Under marketplace facilitator rules Amazon collects and remits the tax itself, so it is never in your proceeds. Profflow leaves it alone rather than subtracting it a second time.
See US sales tax on your own figures.
Shopify counts the tax your buyers paid inside total sales. Profflow takes it out first — using the amount recorded on each order, not a rate you typed — so what is left is the money that was ever yours.