{"id":4001,"date":"2019-12-18T16:47:13","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T16:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sarahf10.sg-host.com\/?p=4001"},"modified":"2022-01-03T19:46:29","modified_gmt":"2022-01-03T19:46:29","slug":"shopify-is-not-a-marketplace-so-what-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/shopify-is-not-a-marketplace-so-what-is-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Shopify is not a marketplace: So, what is it?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"744\" height=\"400\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\" data-src=\"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Shopify-1-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4007 lazyload\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Shopify-1-1.png 744w, https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Shopify-1-1-480x258.png 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) 744px, 100vw\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"744\" height=\"400\" src=\"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Shopify-1-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4007 lazyload\" srcset=\"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Shopify-1-1.png 744w, https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Shopify-1-1-480x258.png 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) 744px, 100vw\" \/><\/noscript><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By <a href=\"https:\/\/taxops.com\/team\/judith-vorndran\/\">Judy Vorndran<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Shopify is not a marketplace. It is a platform to help retailers and marketplaces manage their product marketing information, online stores, ecommerce and multichannel retail information. It is typically good for the following industries: beauty, cosmetics, electronics, fashion, food and beverages and home furnishings. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s break it down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Marketplace Aggregator<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Selling your products on online marketplaces lets you access an audience of customers searching on Amazon, eBay, Etsy and other sales channels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Shopify, by comparison, rounds up marketplaces you can sell on, offering access to these sales channels for shoppers to view various marketplace products in one place. It can also serve as your unique cart, inventory management tracking system and sales order delivery system for products listed on your own website. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Shopify, sellers select the marketplaces,\nor sales channels, where they want their products sold. Not all marketplaces\nare a good fit for a vendor. Each marketplace varies in who they serve, how and\npricing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Etsy attracts the creative industries. U.S. merchants with one or two unique\nproducts but without the inventory management system may prefer to use Fulfillment\nby Amazon services or sell exclusively through Amazon&#8217;s marketplace but ship\nfrom their own warehouses. eBay is an online auction house. Pinterest, Houzz,\nBuzzfeed, Kik and more are alternative marketplaces, all with their own fee\nstructure and audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Shopify shortcomings<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While Shopify collects sales tax,\nfunctionality is limited unless layering on applications from TaxJar with\nShopify or Avalara with Shopify+. In both instances, however, vendors need to\nmanage their collections and remittances.\nShopify is not the vendor record; they are the assimilator of data, a software\nplatform, but not a marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Vendors toggle sales tax\ncollection, tell Shopify where to collect from, and file tax returns on their\nown. Or, the marketplaces they partner with, where states require it, will\ncollect on sales through their own marketplaces. The data will run through Shopify\nso you know your sales and whether it was through a&nbsp; separate marketplace or your own website. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unfortunately, Shopify doesn&#8217;t\ngenerate the reports necessary to accurately file tax returns for all the state\nand local rates. Nor does it have good tax rules to properly tax items across\nthe nation. There are probably 44,000 unique tax rules across America for food,\nclothyikng, software, services and other sales. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">TaxJar offers a plugin to help\nvendors navigate linked accounts and autofile but it&#8217;s tax decision\nfunctionality is somewhat limited to specific industries and vendors. This\nplugin is available for a reasonable fee through a basic Shopify set up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Shopify+ is more expensive but\ncomes with an integration to Avalara, which has local rate information as well\nas 1000s more tax rules. Of course, in either instance, there still needs to be\nset up and proper maintenance by the end-user, which is not provided by Avalara\nor Shopify. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The truth is being a retailer, whether through your own stores, cart or through a marketplace, is not easy, because sales tax is not easy. You need a level of expertise to understand the crazy web of tax rules that exist throughout our country. Understand by reading more at <a href=\"https:\/\/taxops.com\/who-you-are-where-you-are-and-how-you-and-your-clients-can-comply\/\">Who you are, where you are and how you can comply<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unsure? Give your <a href=\"https:\/\/taxops.com\/prospects\/meet-our-team\/\">TaxOps advisor<\/a> a call to discuss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Lets talk tax<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/taxops.com\/team\/judy-vorndran\">Judy Vorndran<\/a>&nbsp;can be reached at jvorndran@taxops.com.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link\" href=\"mailto:knewkirk@sarahf14.sg-host.com\">Book some free time with us!<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>More Tax News<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-latest-posts__list wp-block-latest-posts\"><li><a class=\"wp-block-latest-posts__post-title\" href=\"https:\/\/taxops.com\/auditor-independence-in-the-age-of-private-equity\/\">Auditor Independence in the Age of Private Equity: What CFOs Need to Know<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"wp-block-latest-posts__post-title\" href=\"https:\/\/taxops.com\/r-d-credits-for-software-companies\/\">R&amp;D Credits for Software Companies: Scrum Teams, Qualifiers, and Section 174 After OBBBA<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"wp-block-latest-posts__post-title\" href=\"https:\/\/taxops.com\/section-174-decoupling-what-tax-pros-need-to-know-state-by-state\/\">Section 174 Decoupling: What Tax Pros Need To Know State By State<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"wp-block-latest-posts__post-title\" href=\"https:\/\/taxops.com\/sean-espy-new-partner\/\">TaxOps Welcomes Sean Espy as Partner, Tax Minimization<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"wp-block-latest-posts__post-title\" href=\"https:\/\/taxops.com\/state-nexus-demystified-navigating-tax-compliance-after-wayfair-episode-1-2\/\">Your Tax Footprint Is Probably Bigger Than You Think: What Finance Leaders Need to Know About State Nexus<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/taxops-llc\/\">Follow us on LinkedIn<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Judy Vorndran Shopify is not a marketplace. It is a platform to help retailers and marketplaces manage their product marketing information, online stores, ecommerce and multichannel retail information. It is typically good for the following industries: beauty, cosmetics, electronics, fashion, food and beverages and home furnishings. &nbsp; Let&#8217;s break it down. Marketplace Aggregator Selling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","spt_transcript":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[229,226,227],"tags":[864,394,103,867,444,445,862,860,454,231,522,870,869,235,872,18,19,577,858,578,863,866,861,865,859,871,631,868,236],"class_list":["post-4001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state-and-local","category-tax-news","category-white-papers","tag-accept-payments","tag-amazon","tag-avalara","tag-commerce-platform","tag-ebay","tag-ecommerce","tag-ecommerce-platform","tag-ecommerce-website","tag-etsy","tag-marketplace","tag-online","tag-payment-gateways","tag-payment-processor","tag-point-of-sale","tag-real-time","tag-sales-and-use-tax","tag-sales-tax","tag-seller","tag-shipify-plan","tag-shopify","tag-shopify-offers","tag-shopify-payments","tag-shopify-pos","tag-shopify-store","tag-shopify-support","tag-start-selling","tag-taxjar","tag-transaction-fees","tag-vendor"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Shopify-1-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4001"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9666,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4001\/revisions\/9666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}