Currently, Shopware 6 does not provide a native feature for automatically calculating variable fees such as customs duties, import taxes, or country-specific charges during checkout.
However, this functionality is increasingly important for international merchants to ensure a legally compliant and transparent order process.

Competing platforms (e.g., Shopify) already offer this functionality as a built-in feature. It enables automated calculation and display of additional fees (e.g., customs duties, import VAT, service fees) based on product value, shipping destination, product category, or customs tariff number (HS code).

In Shopware, this can currently only be achieved through manual configuration using the shipping method price matrix, which is not dynamic and cannot handle complex calculation logic (e.g., article-based or country-based variations). Additionally, surcharges added via the price matrix are included in the cart subtotal, leading to incorrect tax and duty calculations when these are applied again on top.

Use Cases:

• International Shipping: Merchants shipping outside the EU (e.g., to the US, UK, Canada, or Switzerland) need to automatically calculate and display customs and import duties.

• Legal Compliance & Transparency: Customers should be informed of all applicable fees during checkout to prevent unexpected costs or returns.

• Automation & Efficiency: Merchants want to automate fee calculation via integrations with external tax or logistics services (e.g., Avalara, Zonos, FedEx API, etc.) rather than maintaining manual tables.

• Competitive Edge: Competing eCommerce systems like Shopify or BigCommerce already include this capability, putting Shopware at a disadvantage, especially for international merchants.

Suggested Implementation:

• Introduce a dynamic fee calculation module within checkout, based on:

  • Shipping destination
  • Product item data (including tariff/HS code)
  • Total cart value
  • Potentially also carrier or fulfillment method

• Provide API endpoints and plugin interfaces for integrating external tax or customs calculation services.

• Add configurable admin settings to define:

  • Which fee types should be calculated (customs, taxes, service fees, etc.)
  • Whether the fees should be shown in the cart or added during checkout only.

• The technical foundation could be a core-level extensibility module that third-party providers can build upon.

Benefits:

• Increased legal compliance for international trade.

• Transparent cost display for customers.

• Reduced cart abandonment rates due to unexpected delivery charges.

• Improved competitiveness and attractiveness for global and enterprise merchants.