Shopify Admin Tax Liability Summary

Purpose

Aggregates tax amounts collected across all orders in a period, broken down by tax jurisdiction (state/province, country) and tax rate. Produces a summary suitable for periodic tax filing prep. Read-only — no mutations.

Prerequisites

• Authenticated Shopify CLI session: shopify store auth --store <domain> --scopes read_orders
• API scopes: read_orders

Parameters

Safety

ℹ️ Read-only skill — no mutations are executed. Safe to run at any time. This report is for internal preparation purposes only — consult a tax professional for actual filing obligations.

Workflow Steps

1. OPERATION: orders — query Inputs: query: "financial_status:paid created_at:>='<NOW - days_back days>'", first: 250, select taxLines { title, rate, priceSet }, refunds { refundLineItems }, pagination cursor Expected output: All paid orders with tax lines; paginate until hasNextPage: false

2. If exclude_refunded: subtract tax amounts from fully refunded orders

3. Group by group_by (jurisdiction title or rate); sum taxLine.priceSet.shopMoney.amount

GraphQL Operations

# orders:query — validated against api_version 2025-01
query TaxLiabilityOrders($query: String!, $after: String) {
  orders(first: 250, after: $after, query: $query) {
    edges {
      node {
        id
        name
        createdAt
        displayFinancialStatus
        totalTaxSet {
          shopMoney {
            amount
            currencyCode
          }
        }
        taxLines {
          title
          rate
          priceSet {
            shopMoney {
              amount
              currencyCode
            }
          }
        }
        shippingAddress {
          countryCode
          provinceCode
        }
        refunds {
          totalRefundedSet {
            shopMoney {
              amount
              currencyCode
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
    pageInfo {
      hasNextPage
      endCursor
    }
  }
}

Session Tracking

Claude MUST emit the following output at each stage. This is mandatory.

On start, emit:

╔══════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  SKILL: Tax Liability Summary                ║
║  Store: <store domain>                       ║
║  Started: <YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM UTC>             ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════╝

After each step, emit:

[N/TOTAL] <QUERY|MUTATION>  <OperationName>
          → Params: <brief summary of key inputs>
          → Result: <count or outcome>

On completion, emit:

For format: human (default):

══════════════════════════════════════════════
TAX LIABILITY SUMMARY  (<days_back> days)
  Orders analyzed:   <n>
  Total tax collected: $<amount>

  By Jurisdiction:
    CA - California     $<amount>  (<n> orders)
    NY - New York       $<amount>  (<n> orders)
  Output: tax_liability_<date>.csv
══════════════════════════════════════════════

For format: json, emit:

{
  "skill": "tax-liability-summary",
  "store": "<domain>",
  "period_days": 90,
  "orders_analyzed": 0,
  "total_tax_collected": 0,
  "currency": "USD",
  "by_jurisdiction": [],
  "output_file": "tax_liability_<date>.csv"
}

Output Format

CSV file tax_liability_<YYYY-MM-DD>.csv with columns: jurisdiction, country_code, province_code, tax_rate, order_count, total_tax_collected, currency

Error Handling

Best Practices

• This report reflects tax collected from customers — it is not a substitute for Shopify Tax or a professional nexus analysis.
• Align days_back with your filing period (30 days for monthly filers, 90 for quarterly).
• For multi-state US merchants, check that Shopify Tax is configured correctly for each nexus state before relying on this output.
• The jurisdiction field in taxLines.title is set by Shopify Tax and typically includes state/province names — verify the format matches your filing system.