Tax is not being removed for an exempt customer
Updated September 14, 2026
A customer ticks the exemption box but tax is still on the total. In almost every case this is one of the causes below, in roughly the order worth checking.
The tax class is not zero-rated
This is the most common cause by a wide margin. Open Tax Exemption › Settings › General and check Tax Class for Tax Exemption is set to Zero rate. If it is set to anything else, a red warning appears beneath it.
Then go to WooCommerce › Settings › Tax, open that tax class, and confirm it contains at least one rate row at 0.0000. A tax class with no rate rows at all will fall back to your standard rates, which looks exactly like the plugin doing nothing.
The customer is not approved
If Require Manual Approval is on, only customers with a status of Approved have tax removed. Check them on Tax Exemption › Exempt Customers — a status of Pending, Declined or Expired means tax is charged by design.
Their exemption has expired
With expiration enabled, a date in the past switches exemption off. Use the Expired filter on the Exempt Customers page to check. Once they renew with a future date their status returns to approved automatically.
A restriction is blocking them
Work through the Restrictions tab and check each enabled option against the customer in question: their user role, their billing or shipping country, their state or city, and whether they are logged in. Restrictions stack, so all of them must pass.
Pay particular attention to any Check Address option set to “Billing Address AND Shipping Address” — both must match, which is stricter than it first reads.
Nothing in the cart is an eligible product
If Specific products only is enabled, tax is removed solely from products you have ticked Tax Exempt Product on. Everything else in the cart is taxed normally, so a partial reduction rather than none is the expected result here.
Shipping tax is still charged
If the products are exempt but the total still includes tax, check Remove Tax on Shipping on the General tab, and that the Shipping column is ticked on your zero rate row in the WooCommerce tax settings.
The customer checked out as a guest with Stripe Tax
With the Stripe Tax integration, exemption is only available to logged in customers. Guests are shown a message asking them to log in or create an account.
It was an express checkout
Apple Pay, Google Pay and similar buttons never show the checkout fields. A logged in customer’s saved exemption is applied, but a guest with nothing on file pays tax in full.
Still stuck
Clear any page or object cache and retest in a private window. If a third-party checkout or payment plugin is involved, deactivate it briefly to see whether the exemption then holds.