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Tax management is critical in eCommerce to ensure legal compliance, avoid costly penalties, and provide accurate pricing for customers across different regions. Spree gives you a clear and customizable way to set up and manage taxes for any region, product type, or pricing style, whether you include tax in your prices (like VAT) or apply it at checkout (like U.S. sales tax). To manage tax configurations, navigate to Settings → Tax in the admin dashboard. The Tax tab in the Spree admin Settings menu You’ll see two subtabs here — Tax Rates and Tax Categories — for managing each. The Tax Rates and Tax Categories subtabs on the Tax settings page Let’s look at each in more detail:

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Tax Rates

The Tax Rates overview page listing all configured tax rates The Tax Rates overview displays all existing tax rates with key information such as:
  • Name: A label for storefront and internal display
  • Tax Category: Which group of products this rate applies to
  • Zone: Where the tax applies (configured separately in the Zones section)
  • Amount: The tax percentage (e.g., 20%)
  • Included in Price: Whether this tax is part of the listed price
  • Show Rate in Label: Whether this tax rate appears as part of the price label on the storefront
From here, you can add new tax rates or edit existing ones.
Tax rates in Spree rely on the Zones feature to determine where each rate applies. Zones define geographic regions (like countries or states), allowing you to target specific tax rules based on a customer’s shipping address. See Settings → Zones for more.

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Add a New Tax Rate

To add a new tax rate, click New Tax Rate in the top-right corner. You’ll be taken to the tax rate creation form. The New Tax Rate creation form Fill in the form with the relevant information:
  • Name — A label for this tax rate, shown internally and, if enabled, on the storefront.
  • Zone — The geographic region this rate applies to, selected from your existing zones.
  • Tax Category — The group of products this rate applies to, selected from your existing tax categories.
  • Calculator — Determines how tax is calculated for this rate — see Calculators below.
  • Amount — The tax rate as a decimal (e.g., enter 0.05 for 5%).
  • Included in Price — Whether this tax is already built into the listed price (Yes) or added at checkout (No).
  • Show Rate in Label — Whether this rate’s percentage appears alongside the price on the storefront.
Once the data has been entered, click Create to save the new tax rate. This tax rate can now be applied to products with the matching category and shipping to the selected zone.

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Calculators

Spree offers three calculators for determining how tax is calculated on a tax rate:
  • Default Tax Calculator — A simple calculator that applies the tax rate’s Amount directly to any product assigned to the associated tax category.
  • Stripe Tax Calculator — Automatically calculates tax at checkout based on the customer’s shipping address. Only works if you’re using Stripe as your payment gateway, and requires tax nexus to be set up in your Stripe dashboard. See the Stripe integration guide for setup details.
  • AvaTax Transaction Calculator — Automatically calculates tax at checkout based on the customer’s shipping address. Requires an Avalara account, with the AvaTax integration installed and configured in Spree. See the Avalara AvaTax integration guide for setup details.
If you’re using the AvaTax Transaction Calculator, you don’t need to manually create tax rates here — it’s enough to set up your tax categories and assign them to products. Spree creates the matching tax rates automatically as orders are placed.

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Edit a Tax Rate

To edit a tax rate, click its row in the Tax Rates overview. The Edit Tax Rate form, pre-filled with an existing rate's data The edit form looks the same as the New Tax Rate form, but pre-filled with the existing data, and with an Update button instead of Create. Update the fields as needed, then click Update to save your changes.
Changing a tax rate will affect all future orders using that rate, but not past orders.

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Delete a Tax Rate

To delete a tax rate, open its edit form and click Delete in the lower-right corner.

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Tax Categories

The Tax Categories overview page listing all configured tax categories Tax categories organize your products based on how they’re taxed. For example, if you sell both clothing and electronics, you might create a Clothing category taxed at a reduced or exempt rate (common in regions where apparel gets special tax treatment) and a Standard category for electronics taxed at the full rate — each product is then assigned to whichever category matches how it should be taxed.
A product variant can only be assigned one tax category at a time.
The Tax Categories overview displays all existing tax categories with key information such as:
  • Name: e.g., Standard, Reduced, Exempt
  • Tax Code: Optional code for integrations or accounting
  • Description: Internal notes on what this category covers
  • Default: Whether this is the default category for new products
From here, you can add new tax categories or edit existing ones.

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Add a New Tax Category

To add a new tax category, click New Tax Category in the top-right corner. You’ll be taken to the tax category creation form. The New Tax Category creation form Fill in the form with the relevant information:
  • Name — A label for this tax category, e.g., Standard, Reduced, or Exempt.
  • Tax Code — An optional code used by integrations or your accounting system to classify this category.
  • Description — Optional internal notes on what this category covers.
  • Default — Whether new products should automatically be assigned this tax category.
Once the data has been entered, click Create to save the new tax category. This category will now be available for assignment to products and tax rates.

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Edit a Tax Category

To edit a tax category, click its row in the Tax Categories overview, update the fields as needed, then click Update to save your changes.
You can switch the default tax category if needed, but only one can be default at a time.

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Delete a Tax Category

To delete a tax category, open its edit form and click Delete in the lower-right corner.

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Other Tax Integrations

In addition to the Stripe Tax and AvaTax calculators covered above, Spree’s tax system is extensible — developers can build custom calculators to connect with other tax services (such as TaxJar) or implement custom tax logic specific to your business. Get in touch with us if you’d like help implementing a custom tax integration.