% Total Taxes
How much of your revenue line is tax you collected and owe onward.
What it means
% Total Taxes is the share of Total Sales taken by tax charged at checkout — VAT, sales tax, whatever the destination applies. Total Sales carries that tax inside it, so this column is telling you what proportion of the revenue line was never yours to keep. Collect €19,000 of tax on €110,000 of Total Sales and it reads 17.3%.
It is a pass-through, not a cost you control. What you do control is where you sell, and this column reports that faithfully.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
Total Taxes is the tax charged across every order in the period. The rate isn't yours to set — it follows the destination and the product category.
Total Sales is Gross Sales + Shipping + Tax − Discounts − Refunds, so the tax sits in the bottom of this fraction as well as the top.
Worked example. March: €100,000 of Gross Sales, €10,000 of discounts, €5,000 of shipping charged, €19,000 of tax and €4,000 refunded. Total Sales = 100,000 − 10,000 + 5,000 + 19,000 − 4,000 = €110,000. % Total Taxes = 19,000 ÷ 110,000 = 17.3%.
Note what it did not read. Charging 20% VAT on everything gives 20 of tax on every 100 of goods — but the tax is inside the denominator too, so the column lands near 17%, not 20%. It can never reach the headline rate you charge.
Now hold every other line and send more of those same goods to higher-rate destinations. Tax becomes €22,000, Total Sales becomes €113,000, and the column reads 22,000 ÷ 113,000 = 19.5%. Your prices didn't move. The map did.
It answers the question
How much of what landed in the account is already promised to someone else? It's the first slice out of the revenue line, taken before any cost you have a say in.
Why it matters
Every margin on this page is measured against Total Sales, and Total Sales has tax in it. Two shops with identical products and different destination mixes will show different margins for no operating reason at all. This column is how much of that difference is tax.
It's also the earliest warning that your country mix moved. A step change here with your prices untouched means you sold into different places — and destination mix brings shipping cost, delivery times, return rates and registration thresholds along with it.
A fall with the mix unchanged is the reading to chase. Tax that quietly stops being charged somewhere looks like a better month right up until you file.
What good looks like
There's no target and nothing to optimise — the only useful property is stability. Expect it to sit a little below the blended headline rate of the markets you sell into, because tax is in both halves of the ratio, and expect it to move only when your destination mix does.
Judge it against your own history and against your Region split. Steady mix and a steady column is right. Steady mix and a column that steps up or down is a settings fault, and it's worth finding before a filing does it for you.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Reconcile the period against your filings | Compare the tax total behind this share with what your accounts actually submitted | Any gap surfaces in one pass | 1 week | Finance time every period, and a discrepancy you find may mean amending a return that was already accepted. |
| Fast Check how shipping and duties are taxed | Confirm the shipping line follows each destination's rule, since it sits in the denominator either way | The share stops drifting for reasons nobody can explain | 1–2 weeks | Charging tax on shipping raises the checkout total, which costs a little conversion on price-sensitive orders. |
| Slow Plan the destination mix before it moves the ratio | Track sales by country on Region and prepare for registration thresholds before you cross them | No surprise liabilities and no unexplained steps in this column | Ongoing | Limiting where you ship keeps filing simple and caps growth — the markets that complicate your tax are usually the ones growing fastest. |
Nothing here makes this number smaller — it isn't yours to reduce. These make it true, and make sure it isn't quietly distorting the margins beside it.
Read it with
The share and the sales it was taken from move for different reasons. Reading them together is what separates a bigger month from a more expensive map.
Growth with tax attached
You grew into higher-rate destinations. The month is genuinely bigger, but a larger share of it leaves again, so margins measured against sales will read thinner.
Keeping more per euro
Sales grew and the tax share on them fell, so more of every euro stays. Worth verifying — tax silently switching off somewhere produces exactly this shape.
Smaller and more expensive
A shrinking month handing over a bigger slice of each euro. Either the mix swung hard toward high-rate markets, or a rule now applies where it shouldn't.
Both easing
Sales fell and the mix moved to cheaper destinations with them. Nothing here is a tax problem; the answer is upstream in demand.
Contribution Margin divides by Total Sales, the same denominator this column uses, and takes Total Taxes off the top before anything else. So a swing toward higher-tax destinations thins Contribution Margin with no cost having changed. Read this column first, and you know how much of a margin drop to stop investigating.
The share against the euro total that produced it. Total flat with the share rising means sales fell underneath a steady tax bill. Total rising with the share flat means you sold more into the same countries. Only one of those needs looking into.
Common misreads
Nothing is. Tax sits in the denominator as well as the numerator, so a 20% rate lands near 17% of a tax-inclusive total. Shipping and refunds move it a little further.
Check whether this column rose in the same period. Every margin here divides by Total Sales, so a shift toward higher-tax destinations compresses margins on its own, and cutting a cost won't fix it.
It isn't yours and it isn't spend. You collect it and hand it on. The only thing to get right is charging the correct amount in the correct place.
Also called
Effective tax share · tax as a percentage of sales · tax share of revenue
See yoursYour tax share for the period, next to the euro total behind it and the margins measured against the same Total Sales.
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