Can you use Basic Tax instead of Shopify Tax?

Where can you still choose Basic Tax?

It depends on the market your tax region sits in. Shopify's Choose a tax service page and the Basic Tax guide give these rules:

Shopify Help Center, Choose a tax service and Basic Tax, read October 17, 2026.

A store that already uses Basic Tax in Canada, the UK or the EU can keep using it without interruption. If you run different services in different regions, the Choose a tax service page cautions: “Try to keep your tax services consistent.”

In the US, stores can't newly enroll in Basic Tax as of July 14, 2025, and Shopify's US feature table compares only Shopify Tax and Manual Tax. What Shopify Tax gives a US store instead is covered in our US sales tax guide.

Does your business location or the tax region decide?

Both, at two levels. The Taxes overview says the services you can use “depend on the location of your business”, and for countries outside Norway, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore it lists Manual Tax.

The Choose a tax service page is more specific for Canada, the EU and the UK: a store located there can select Shopify Tax, Basic Tax, Manual Tax or a third-party tax service “depending on which tax services are available to your store”, region by region.

For other markets the two pages don't line up: Choose a tax service says Basic Tax “remains available to new and existing stores in all other supported regions”, while the overview, as quoted above, names Manual Tax there. What applies is the service shown next to each region in your admin.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Settings
2. Taxes and duties

Zoom

Whether your store's country or the order's destination decides where Shopify Tax itself calculates is a separate question.

What do you give up with Basic Tax?

Basic Tax needs you to enter a tax registration number to calculate your taxes, and you get that number from your local tax authority, according to Shopify's Basic Tax guide for stores in Norway, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. Manual Tax, by contrast, is where you set and manage tax rates yourself, per the Taxes overview.

Shopify's feature tables, read October 17, 2026, mark these as not supported by Basic Tax:

• EU and UK: product-category rates, proportional shipping tax, liability insights and VAT invoices.
• Canada: product-category rates, advanced tax reports and liability insights.
• Countries outside the US, Canada, the EU and the UK: product-category rates and liability insights. That table has no Shopify Tax column; it compares only Basic Tax and Manual Tax.

On Basic Tax, tax is your responsibility, filing and paying included, and moving to Shopify Tax doesn't hand that to Shopify: as of October 2026, its US automated filing is closed to new enrollment and ending, filing returns for sales through December 31, 2026, plus New York's December 2026–February 2027 quarterly return. Who files and remits in each case has its own answer.

Can you switch from Shopify Tax to Basic Tax and back?

Where the region still offers Basic Tax (see the table above), you can switch to it, one region at a time. For the US, Canada, the EU and the UK, the Choose a tax service page puts the change in the region's Tax service section: click the horizontal menu icon, then the option in the dialog box labeled Upgrade service, Switch service or Downgrade service, depending on your current tax service.

In those four markets, changing your tax service can be permanent. Shopify's caution says when:

So watch the Manual Tax condition: Basic Tax isn't available to a Canadian, UK or EU region that uses Manual Tax, so if you save Manual Tax for a region now on Basic Tax, you can't switch back.

In the five guide countries, Shopify says the switch to Basic Tax for an existing store “doesn't affect how tax is charged on your products,” though the same page says you might notice small variances in total tax amounts after you update your tax settings.