Shopify There are 5 Physical Locations listed on the site. None of 5 sites indicates which was directly responsible to contact about the particular problem I am reporting about: Ottawa Canada 150 Elgin Street, 8th Floor Ottawa, ON, Canada K2P 1L4 Toronto Canada 80 Spadina Avenue, 4th Floor Toronto, ON, Canada M5V 2J4 Montreal Canada 490, rue De La Gauchetière Ouest Montréal, QC, Canada H2Z 0B3 Waterloo Canada 57 Erb Street West Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 6C2 Shopify (USA) Inc. 33 New Montgomery St. Ste 750 San Francisco, CA, USA 94105n Francisco California Taxes were charged that did not apply to the items I was purchasing Internet
The retailer I was buying from was based in Arizona. I made the purchase over the internet. The vendor was using Shopify as its retail platform. I was making the purchase in Illinois. The vendor did not have a physical presence in Illinois, yet I was charged Illinois State Tax on the item I was purchasing.
I was then charged County Tax. County Tax does not apply either. They added insult to injury by charging me Cook County Taxes. I live in Lake County.
All bad things come in threes. The third tax I was charged was Chicago Municipal Tax. I do not live in the City of Chicago. I live in the suburbs. I do not use Chicago Municipal Services at all, yet Shopify entered a charge for Chicago Municipal taxes.
Damage looks like this:
Illinois State Tax: $19.63
Cook County Tax: $8.64
Chicago Municipal Tax: $3.93
The vendor I purchased the item from (not Shopify) informed me that if I return the item I purchased, I will have to pay a 15% restocking fee. The charge, in this particular case, will be $15.35. I have 5 days to get send it to them or YHWH knows what happens after the 5th day.
The vendor said that they would try to get the taxes removed from the bill, contacted me later and said that they were not suceessful in getting the taxes removed but would allow me the amount in taxes as credit for more merchandise.
I did not find anything I needed in their inventory. I politely refused their generous offer. I am going to return the item, take the refund, and accept the restocking fee as a lesson learned.
I just wanted to inform everyone that Shopify had charged me taxes that did not apply to the purchase and for everyone to tread carefully when dealing with them.
I might hear from them or the vendor later. I attempted to e-mail Shopify. I don't know if I was successful. They have an eccentric communication system, where they provide you fields to fill in but no e-mail address, persons who you are writing to, or exact physical location. They have not contacted me personally. Presumably the vendor got though to them (as I explained earlier in the explanation.
I wrote the State of Illinois and informed them about the taxes. Anyone familiar with how extravagantly this state spends our taxes would probably conclude that they aren't too concerned that extra taxes are being collected.
This is all I know at the time of this writing: 2/19@11:25PM CST