Set tax and shipping settings

  • All products require shipping information, which can be configured account-wide or per-product through Merchant Center or the Content API.

  • US merchants must set up tax settings in Merchant Center or via the Content API before products can be served in the US.

  • Account-wide tax settings only apply to products targeting the United States; other countries have separate tax configuration processes.

  • Shipping and tax settings can be managed manually through the Merchant Center or programmatically using the Content API for Shopping.

Summary

All products must have shipping information. You can set up general shipping rules on an account-wide basis in the Merchant Center or through the Content API for Shopping. You can also set this information or override the account-wide settings on a per-product basis by adding shipping information in the uploaded product attributes.

If your Merchant Center account serves products for the United States, you must set up tax settings before they can serve. Otherwise, attempting to upload products for the US fails with a reminder to set up tax settings.

The account-wide tax settings are only for products that target the United States. If you're serving products for other countries, please see About tax settings to learn how to provide tax information for your target countries.

Manual steps

  1. (US only) Set up tax settings in the Merchant Center.
  2. Set up shipping settings on an account-wide or per-product basis.

Automatic steps

Here are the steps to use the Content API for Shopping.

  1. (US only) Set up tax settings with the accounttax service.
  2. Set up account-wide or per-product shipping settings: