WooCommerce Tax Not Working – How to Fix this Error
If WooCommerce tax is not working on your website, it could lead to loss of revenue for your online store.
Including sales tax in your pricing is necessary for many products and services, and required in most business types and regions. Fortunately, WooCommerce makes it easy to set up tax rates in line with your region.
Sometimes, during WooCommerce checkout, the prices of the products are added excluding tax rates. When this happens, the customer may end up paying a lesser price for the product. This will reduce your store’s earnings.
If this is your case, do not worry. This article will explain the possible reasons why this happens and also show you how to fix them.
Contents:
The Reasons for WooCommerce Tax Rates not Working and Ways to Fix Them
Before we go further, it is important that you backup your WordPress site. This ensures you do not lose your site files if anything goes wrong.
With that out of the way, let’s begin.
Outdated WordPress and WooCommerce Version
The importance of updating your WordPress site and WooCommerce software cannot be overemphasized. We understand it can be a hassle.
However, that ‘hassle’ saves your website from risks and potential issues like the WooCommerce tax rates not working issue.
If you have a WooCommerce store, it is crucial to keep the software up to date. Not doing so increases the chances of conflicts arising. This is because the old version may not support some features in your WordPress installation.
So, update your WordPress core and the WooCommerce plugin before trying any other step. To do so, head on to Dashboard >> Updates from your WordPress admin panel. Here, click the button to install the latest version of WordPress on your website.
After that, scroll to the “Plugins” section. If there is any update available for your WooCommerce plugin, you will see the option to update it here.
While at it, you can update all plugins as well. To update your plugins, tick the “Select All” checkbox and then click on Update Plugins.
Check your site to see if tax rates are working. If they are not working, read on for other fixes for this error.
Incomplete WooCommerce Tax Configuration
Not working tax issues can occur if some of the fields in your WooCommerce tax settings page were not filled properly.
So, ensure you fill them out to avoid any error during checkout. For this, go to WooCommerce >> Settings to open the plugin’s Settings page.
On the “General” tab, scroll down to the “General Options” section.
Once there, ensure you tick the “Enable tax rate…” box. This action lets you configure WooCommerce tax rates by activating the tax options menu.
Once done, scroll down and click on the Save Changes button.
Now switch to the “Tax” tab, and ensure you configure it properly. For example, if you choose the option to display prices exclusive of tax, then the “display prices during cart and checkout” box should include the tax rates.
Next, configure other tax options like the Additional tax classes, shipping tax class, etc. You can refer to the official WooCommerce documentation for a complete tutorial on how to set up taxes on your eCommerce website.
After inputting the correct tax settings, click the Save Changes button and check if your tax options are working.
If filling all the criteria still does not solve the issue, then your WooCommerce tax not working issue could be plugin-related.
Extension Compatibility As a Reason for WooCommerce Tax not Working
Before installing/updating any WooCommerce extensions to your site, ensure it has been tested with the latest WordPress version. If this isn’t done and the extension is on your site, it may result in the WooCommerce tax rates malfunctioning.
To fix this, go to Plugins >> Installed Plugins and locate all plugins with WooCommerce in their names. Tick each one, and then select Bulk Actions >> Deactivate at the top, and click Apply.
With your extensions deactivated, try checking out with a product to see if taxes work. If they do, one of your extensions was the issue.
To narrow down and find the one, activate each extension one by one. After activating each one, run a check to see if taxes are still working. The one you activated just before taxes stopped working is the culprit. You would need to uninstall it and find a replacement, or contact WooCommerce.
Plugin Conflicts
A plugin conflict could also be the cause of your WooCommerce tax rates not working. Conflicts may occur if you are using an outdated plugin.
Also, if an update on one of your plugins is not compatible with your WooCommerce extension, you may encounter errors. You can check out our guide on how to avoid plugin conflicts.
To identify the problematic plugin, you need to deactivate all plugins on your site (except WooCommerce). This is essentially a continuation of the WooCommerce extension process.
For this, login to your WordPress dashboard, then navigate to Plugins >> Installed Plugins. Next, click the checkbox next to ‘Plugins’. This action selects all plugins on your site.
Now look for WooCommerce and untick it.
Click the Bulk Actions to reveal the drop-down menu. Select Deactivate. After that, click the Apply button next to it to deactivate all plugins.
Now visit your store and check if taxes are working. If it is working, then one of your plugins is faulty. To find the faulty plugin, you need to manually troubleshoot the plugins.
For this, reactivate your plugins one by one to determine the one causing the tax rate issue. Each time, check to see if the taxes are being calculated.
The plugin you activated before the issue starts showing again is the culprit. You can either delete it and look for an alternative plugin or submit a report to its developers.
Check WooCommerce Tax Database Table
If all else fails and taxes are still not working, then you may need to take a look at your WooCommerce database tables. Firstly, browse through the WooCommerce documentation and check what tables should be installed during setup. Afterward, login to your website’s cPanel and crosscheck if all the tables were listed.
There is a possibility that the “WooCommerce_tax_rate_locations” is missing in the tax tables. Hence, the command could not be executed.
You may have to create the database table. An easy way to add this table is to deactivate and reactivate your WooCommerce plugin. This would restore all the default WooCommerce tables on your database.
However, if that does not work for you, you may need to manually create the table. This requires some advanced knowledge of WordPress and database management. If you are not comfortable working with databases, you can hire a professional to assist you with this.
You can create this table by manually adding SQL code to your database. Before proceeding, however, we recommend you backup your database.
To create this table, login to cPanel of your WordPress hosting account. Next, scroll down to the “Databases” section and click on phpMyAdmin.
From phpMyAdmin, select your WordPress sites’ database. Then, click on the SQL tab.
On the editor, paste this code below:
CREATE TABLE wp_woocommerce_tax_rate_locations ( |
After pasting the code, click on the Go button to register your changes. Now head back to your WordPress dashboard and go to WooCommerce >> Settings.
Here, scroll down and click on the Save Changes button. This would populate the new table with the necessary details.
After this, check your website to confirm if your WooCommerce tax rate is working as it should.
Conclusion
WooCommerce is pretty easy and straightforward to set up. Although it provides store owners a great experience, you may face issues sometimes. This is why our team at Fixrunner always provides you with solutions to fix common WooCommerce errors.
In this guide, we have shown you how to solve the WooCommerce tax not working issue. You can start with simple solutions like updating your WooCommerce and WordPress software, and then work your way to the more complex ones if the issue persists.
You can also reach out to our team of WordPress experts for further guidance.
