> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vortexiq.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Tax Collected Over Time, Adobe Commerce > Tax Collected Over Time for Adobe Commerce stores. Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre. How to read it, why it matters, and how to act on it. **Metrics type:** [Supporting Metrics](/nerve-centre/overview#metrics-types-explained) • **Category:** [Ecommerce Platform](/nerve-centre/connectors#connectors-by-type) ## At a glance > Day-by-day tax collected over the last 90 days, plotted as a time series. Useful for Finance teams reconciling monthly VAT/sales-tax returns, spotting a tax-engine outage that suddenly switched to local fallback (lower rate), and validating that recently-changed tax rules are applying correctly. | | | | ----------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | **What it counts** | For each day in the 90-day window: `SUM(tax_amount)` over orders created in that day. Daily granularity; 7-day moving average overlay. | | **API field** | `tax_amount`, `created_at` from the orders index. Adobe Commerce REST: `GET /rest/V1/orders`. | | **VAT / tax treatment** | The card IS the time-series tax view. Tax engine source (native vs Avalara vs Vertex) toggleable per series. | | **Shipping** | Default: total `tax_amount` includes both product and shipping tax. Toggle to product-only via `tax_amount - shipping_tax_amount`. | | **Discounts** | Tax computed post-discount per Magento default (or per merchant config). | | **Cancelled orders** | Excluded by default. | | **Refunds** | Not subtracted, the card is creation-time. For net-of-refund tax, subtract Credit Memo tax from [Refunds Over Time](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adobe-commerce/refunds-over-time). | | **Currency** | Mixed-currency display by default. `base_tax_amount` for FX-neutral / VAT-return-relevant. | | **Multi-store scope** | All Store Views by default. Per-Store-View slicing essential for jurisdiction-specific reconciliation. | | **Time window** | `90D` rolling. Quarterly windowing useful for tax filing. | | **Alert trigger** | None on this card directly. Pair with [Total Tax](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adobe-commerce/total-tax-collected) for aggregate alerts. | | **Roles** | owner | ## Calculation Calculated automatically from your Adobe Commerce data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading. ## Worked example A B2B+DTC merchant on Adobe Commerce 2.4.7 with US (Avalara) + UK (native) Store Views. Snapshot 13 May 26, 90-day rolling. **Aggregate stats:** | Metric | UK | US | Combined | | --------------------------------- | ---------------- | --------- | -------- | | Days | 90 | 90 | 90 | | `SUM(tax_amount)` | £405,200 | \$271,500 | mixed | | Mean per day (£/\$ home currency) | £4,500 / \$3,017 | | | | Standard deviation | £1,640 | \$720 | | | Min day (Sun, low traffic) | £620 | \$410 | | | Max day (Mon post-Easter spike) | £8,940 | \$5,800 | | **Notable events on the chart:** | Date | Event | Tax impact | | ------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 12 Mar 26 | UK Reduced VAT rate added (5% on children's clothing range) | UK Reduced series jumps from £0 to \~£280/day; UK Standard series drops slightly as products reclassified | | 14 Apr 26 | Post-Easter Monday surge | Combined tax peaks at \~£12,000/day | | 22 Apr 26 12:00 GMT | Avalara API outage (90 minutes) | US tax briefly drops to \~50% of normal; orders captured locally with native Magento fallback rates | | 28 Apr 26 onwards | Sustained dip during supplier-sizing PR crisis | Combined tax drops with revenue \~15% | **Insight pattern:** 1. **The 12 Mar reclassification of children's clothing** is visible as a step change. Products previously taxed at 20% are now at 5%; combined tax-per-revenue ratio dropped from \~17.5% to \~16.8%. Confirms the rule was activated correctly. 2. **The 22 Apr Avalara outage is a critical learning.** During the 90-min outage, orders went through Magento's local fallback rates which were last-synced from Avalara on 1 Apr. Some county rates had changed since; the fallback under-collected by \~\$420 across 18 affected orders. Finance had to issue catch-up invoices. **Action:** sync Magento fallback rates from Avalara monthly (currently set to "On API call" only). 3. **Day-of-week pattern.** Sundays show the lowest tax (because lowest order volume). UK Reduced VAT (children's clothing) shows a different DOW pattern, more weekend-heavy because it's DTC parent-buyer traffic. 4. **Cross-link with [Tax Analysis](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adobe-commerce/tax-analysis):** the per-rate breakdown for the 14 Apr peak day showed UK Standard at £6,800 + UK Reduced at £490 + UK Zero at £0 + US (across all states) at $5,800. Sum to combined £6,800 + £490 + ($5,800 \~= £4,640 at then-FX) ≈ £11,930. 5. **Quarterly view for VAT filing.** Toggle the chart to 91-day cumulative; UK Standard 20% column should match exactly the figure submitted on the next VAT return (after subtracting refunded VAT from Credit Memos). 6. **Net-of-refund version.** Subtract the daily Credit Memo `tax_amount` from this card to get net-tax-per-day, the actual figure that would land on the VAT return. The card's "net" toggle does this automatically when [Refunds Over Time](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adobe-commerce/refunds-over-time) is on the same dashboard. ## Sibling cards merchants should reference together | Card | Why pair it with Tax Collected Over Time | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | [Total Tax](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adobe-commerce/total-tax-collected) | Aggregate. | | [Tax Analysis](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adobe-commerce/tax-analysis) | Per-jurisdiction breakdown for any given day. | | [Total Revenue](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adobe-commerce/total-revenue) | Denominator-of-context; verify rate consistency over time. | | [Refunds Over Time](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adobe-commerce/refunds-over-time) | Refunded tax to subtract for net VAT. | | [Revenue Over Time](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adobe-commerce/revenue-over-time) | Revenue and tax should track proportionally; divergence flags rate misapplications. | | [`avalara.tax_liability_over_time`](/nerve-centre/avalara/tax_liability_over_time) | Avalara's daily series; should match this card's US-side. | | [`shopify.tax_over_time`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/tax-collected-over-time) | Cross-platform reference. | ## Reconciling against the vendor's own dashboard **Where to look in Adobe Commerce Admin:** > **Reports > Sales > Tax** with "Show By" set to "Day" and date range matching the card. Daily column should match this card's daily values. For Avalara users: > Avalara Admin Portal > Reports > Liability Worksheet, set the period and Avalara renders the same day-by-day shape. **Why our number may legitimately differ from Adobe Commerce Admin:** | Reason | Direction of divergence | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------- | | **Currency**. Reports default to base; this card defaults to mixed display. | Material for multi-currency stores | | **Reports indexer lag**. Daily aggregations refresh nightly; today's value lags by up to 24h in Reports. This card refreshes every 5-15 min. | Vortex IQ ahead on trailing day | | **Avalara commit failures**. Failed commits leave Adobe with locally-computed tax; Avalara never sees the order. Daily totals diverge by the failed-commit value. | Sum of failures | | **Time-zone**. UTC vs Store View locale; bucket shifts at day boundary. | ±1 day at edges | | **Cancelled inclusion**. Card excludes cancelled. | Standard | **Cross-connector reconciliation (when these connectors are connected for this merchant):** | Card | Expected relationship | What divergence tells you | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------ | | [`avalara.tax_liability_over_time`](/nerve-centre/avalara/tax_liability_over_time) | Daily Avalara liability ≈ this card's US-side daily | Daily gaps point to commit failures on specific days; investigate. | | [`vertex.tax_over_time`](/nerve-centre/vertex/tax_over_time) | Same logic for Vertex users | Same diagnostic. | ***
Documentation cross-reference (for agencies running multiple platforms) * [`shopify.tax_over_time`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/tax-collected-over-time) * [`bigcommerce.tax_over_time`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/tax-collected-over-time)
## Known limitations / merchant FAQs **Why does my chart show a sharp drop on a specific day, but revenue looks normal?** Tax-engine outage is the most common cause. Avalara API blips, certificate expiries, and rate-table sync issues can cause Magento to fall back to local rates which may be lower or zero. Cross-check the day with the AvaTax log: **System > Configuration > Sales > Tax > AvaTax > Logging**. **Why does today's value look low?** Either today is incomplete (in-progress) or there's a tax-engine issue. Compare to same-DOW prior weeks; if today's per-revenue ratio is materially below historical, investigate. **My Reports > Sales > Tax shows a different daily total than this card.** Currency is the usual culprit (Reports uses base; card uses mixed). Indexer lag is the next (today's day in Reports may be 24h stale). Reconcile via base-currency mode and previous-day data points. **Can I see this for a custom tax filing window?** Yes. The card supports custom date ranges. Most merchants build a "Tax Filing" dashboard with this card set to the quarterly window, plus the per-jurisdiction breakdown from [Tax Analysis](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adobe-commerce/tax-analysis). **Why does the chart show a sudden mid-period change in the rate?** Most often a config change. **Stores > Configuration > Sales > Tax** rules and rates can change at any time; the change applies prospectively. If the merchant added a new rule, increased a rate, or reclassified products mid-period, the chart shape will shift on that date. **Refunded VAT isn't subtracted, why?** Because the card answers "what tax was collected at sale". Refund-tax reversal is a separate concept. For "what tax we owe net" use the dashboard's Net Tax view which combines this card with [Refunds Over Time](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adobe-commerce/refunds-over-time). **My multi-store has one Avalara and one native engine. The chart is mixed; can I separate?** Yes via the engine-source toggle. Each tax-engine source becomes its own line series. **A sustained period of zero tax appears, what happened?** Two possibilities: (1) the merchant temporarily disabled tax (common during a storefront migration); (2) the customer base shifted to all tax-exempt (e.g. all B2B traffic for that period). Cross-check **Stores > Configuration > Sales > Tax** for any "Disabled" toggles, and the [Tax Analysis](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adobe-commerce/tax-analysis) per-jurisdiction view for that period. **Day-of-week pattern is more pronounced than for revenue, why?** Because tax % varies by jurisdiction-mix. Weekend orders skew DTC-residential (with full tax); weekday orders include more B2B (often tax-exempt). The DOW pattern of tax is steeper than DOW pattern of revenue. **Does Avalara handle product-tax-class changes retroactively?** No. Avalara taxes the order at the time of capture using the product's then-classification. If you reclassify a product later, historical orders keep their original rate; only new orders get the new rate. The chart preserves history accurately. *** ### Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre *Tax Collected Over Time* is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Adobe Commerce and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. [Start for free](https://app.vortexiq.ai/login) or [book a demo](https://www.vortexiq.ai/contact-us) to see this metric running on your own data.