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#  Avalara AvaTax

This plugin connects your shop to **Avalara AvaTax**, the sales tax service US merchants rely on once their sales cross state lines. AvaTax gives the cart the exact sales tax of the customer's address, down to the county, the city and the special districts, with the right rule for each product and for shipping, and keeps each order as a sales invoice in your AvaTax account, ready for your returns.

Features

- Shows the sales tax of each jurisdiction in the cart, the checkout, the order, the invoice and the emails: "GEORGIA 4%", "FULTON 3%", "ATLANTA 1.5%"...
- Gives each shipping method offered its own tax, as the state of the address taxes shipping or not.
- Lets you give each product the AvaTax tax code of what it is (clothing, food, books...), found with a search in AvaTax's codes from the product form, so that the exemptions and reduced rates of each state apply. The others take the default code of the settings.
- Records each order in AvaTax as a sales invoice when it reaches an invoice status, committed for your returns, with the coupon as AvaTax's discount.
- Returns in AvaTax the products you remove from an order in your backend, returns the whole order when it is refunded, with the tax that was recorded, and voids it when the order is cancelled.
- Tells you in the order's history what AvaTax recorded, and when the tax of the order differs from AvaTax's.
- Exempts the customers of the user groups you choose (resellers, charities, schools...) with their entity use code, and the customers who have an exemption certificate number in a user field.
- Checks your origin address and, if you wish, your customers' shipping addresses with AvaTax's address validation, and suggests the corrected address at the checkout.
- Asks AvaTax only on the cart and checkout pages, and once for the same cart and address, so your AvaTax transactions stay few.
- Keeps HikaShop's own taxes for the countries you do not ask AvaTax for: your EU VAT stays as it is.
- Can calculate only, for a shop whose ERP records the sales in AvaTax.
- An AvaTax log writes every request and answer to the HikaShop log file, for setting up and for Avalara's support.

![The checkout of a cart shipped to Atlanta: the sales tax of Georgia, Fulton county, Atlanta and its special district, each on its line](/images/marketplace/avatax_checkout.png) How it works

- 1. The customer enters a US shipping address: the cart shows the tax AvaTax answers for it.
- 2. The shipping methods show their price with their tax.
- 3. The order is placed with these taxes.
- 4. When the order reaches an invoice status (confirmed, shipped...), it is recorded in AvaTax as a committed sales invoice, under its order number.
- 5. A refund, a cancellation or a product removed from the order later is sent to AvaTax as a return or a void.

![The history of an order in the backend: the return recorded in AvaTax when the order was refunded](/images/marketplace/avatax_order_history.png) Installation

- 1) Have an Avalara AvaTax account: a paid account, or Avalara's free developer trial (developer.avalara.com, 90 days). In the AvaTax console, set up your company and, under Settings, Where you collect tax, the states where you must collect sales tax: AvaTax answers no tax for the others.
- 2) In the AvaTax console, open Settings, License and API keys, note your Account ID and generate a licence key (generating a new one revokes the previous one).
- 3) Install this plugin and enable it in Extensions > Plugins (on WordPress: HikaShop > Plugins).
- 4) Fill in the account ID, the licence key and the environment, save, and click Test connection: it checks the keys and loads your companies. Choose your company.
- 5) Fill in the address your products ship from, save, and check it with Validate the origin address.
- 6) Give an AvaTax tax code to the products that are not general merchandise (clothing, food, digital goods...), in their product form.
- 7) Check in System > Configuration that your invoice statuses are the ones that should record the orders in AvaTax (confirmed and shipped by default).
- 8) To keep a log, set a log file in System > Configuration, Files, and turn the AvaTax log on.

![The settings of the plugin: switches, AvaTax account, company, origin address, tax codes, exemptions and log](/images/marketplace/avatax_settings.png) Configuration

- **AvaTax calculation**: asks AvaTax for the sales tax of the carts and orders shipped to the countries below. Off, HikaShop's own tax rules apply everywhere.
- **Record documents in AvaTax**: records the orders in AvaTax as sales invoices. Turn it off when another application, your ERP for instance, records your sales in AvaTax: the tax is then only calculated.
- **Commit the documents**: commits the sales invoices, ready for your returns (yes by default). No records them uncommitted, for you to commit them in AvaTax.
- **Document code prefix**: put before the order number to make the code of the document in AvaTax, when two shops record in the same AvaTax company. Empty, the code is the order number.
- **Account ID** and **Licence key**: from Settings, License and API keys in the AvaTax console.
- **Environment**: Production for your AvaTax account and Avalara's free trial (admin.avalara.com), Sandbox for a sandbox account Avalara gave you (sandbox.admin.avalara.com). The keys of one do not work on the other.
- **Test connection**: checks the account ID and licence key once saved, and loads your companies in the setting below.
- **Company**: the company of your AvaTax account the shop sells as.
- **Countries**: the two letter codes of the countries AvaTax is asked for, separated by commas: US by default. Elsewhere, HikaShop's own taxes apply.
- **Origin address**, **city**, **state**, **ZIP code** and **country**: the address your products ship from.
- **Validate the origin address**: shows how AvaTax reads the origin address once saved, or why it cannot find it.
- **Validate the customers' addresses**: at the checkout, shows US customers the corrected shipping address AvaTax suggests, or a warning when it cannot find it. Off by default.
- **Default product tax code**: the AvaTax tax code of the products without one, P0000000 (tangible personal property) by default.
- **Shipping tax code**: the tax code of the shipping charges, FR020100 (shipping by common carrier) by default.
- **Exempt user groups** and **Entity use code**: the customers of these groups (WordPress: roles) buy without sales tax, for the reason you choose (resale, charitable organisation...). Empty, nobody is exempt by group.
- **Exemption number field**: the column name of a HikaShop user custom field holding a customer's exemption certificate number: a customer with a number there buys without sales tax, the number recorded in AvaTax. Empty, not used.
- **Pages asking AvaTax**: the HikaShop pages where AvaTax is asked, checkout and cart by default; the other pages show what was already asked. Empty, every page asks.
- **AvaTax log**: writes every request to AvaTax and its answer to the HikaShop log file, without your licence key.

Troubleshooting

- "AvaTax refused the connection": the account ID or the licence key is wrong, or they belong to the other environment. Generate a new key if you are not sure of it.
- "The sales tax could not be calculated" at the checkout, with AvaTax's reason: no tax is added to the cart. The reason says what to fix: a company code that does not exist, an address whose ZIP code does not match its state...
- No tax for a US address: AvaTax only taxes the states where your company collects tax, as set in your AvaTax console, and an exempt customer.
- "AvaTax: the order could not be recorded" in an order's history: the reason follows. Change the order's status again once fixed to record it.
- "The order holds a tax of ..., AvaTax answered ..." in an order's history: the order's tax and AvaTax's differ, usually by a cent of rounding with a coupon; AvaTax recorded its own.
- To see what was sent to AvaTax and what it answered, turn the AvaTax log on and open the log file of System > Configuration, Files.

Use

- Compatible with all the editions of HikaShop
- Compatible with Joomla and WordPress
- Requires an Avalara AvaTax account (paid, or Avalara's free trial)
- Requires the PHP cURL extension
- No limit of time
- No limit of use

Changelog

1.0.0 on the 19th of October 2026

- First version.

€ 30,00     [![Avalara AvaTax](/media/com_hikashop/upload/thumbnails/300x300/logo_avatax.png "Avalara AvaTax")](/media/com_hikashop/upload/logo_avatax.png "Avalara AvaTax")

[Add to cart](/marketplace/integration/product/updatecart/add-1/cid-344)

The add to cart button will appear once you select the values above

Type Integration

Access to updates included for 4 years

A tax rate (between 17% and 27% based on your country) will be added if your address is in the European Union and that you don't provide a valid VAT number or if your address is in France as per the European Union law.

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