Review tax changes before they go live

A tax change moves what every customer in a country pays at checkout. The Review tax changes window, in Settings → Tax, shows that effect first, with real numbers, and lets you decide. Nothing changes until you approve it.

Brainerce never changes your tax rates behind your back. A review you did not approve changes nothing. A review nobody approved is never applied, not by the AI assistant, not by a connected AI tool and not by an API key.

Brainerce does not decide what tax you owe. It does not register you for VAT, GST or sales tax, and it does not file returns. A review only does what you asked for: the rates, presets and switches you chose.

What a review can change

A review (also called a setup plan) is a list of changes prepared together:

• a country preset (Israel VAT 18%, the ten Canadian rates, or the US state base rates without local taxes), from Review and set up in Quick setup,
• tax rates that are added, edited or deleted, including a rate that changes from a future date,
• the Tax Collection switch (tax on or off for the whole store),
• the Prices include tax switch.

One review holds at most 50 changes. A bigger job is split into several reviews.

You can start a review from Settings → Tax, or ask the AI assistant ("set up Canadian taxes for my store", "move the VAT rate to 19% from 1 January") and it prepares one for you. Preparing a review only saves a draft. It does not touch your store.

What the test results mean

The window shows What your customers would pay: example orders, each run through the same tax calculation checkout uses, once with your rates Today and once After this change. For each example order you see the tax and the total the customer pays in both cases, and whether customers pay more, pay less or see no difference.

• If you did not choose example orders, Brainerce works out one order of 100 for every country the review touches. For a country with provincial rates, such as Canada, it also works out one order per province, up to 12 example orders. A Quebec order shows GST and QST as two lines that add up to 14.975% of the amount.
• The numbers are not an estimate from a table. They come from the same calculation that charges customers, run on a copy of your rates, so nothing is written to produce them.
• When you apply the review, Brainerce works the example orders out again on the real result, before saving, and only saves if the numbers match what you approved. If they do not match, nothing is applied.

An example order covers the product and the region it names. A customer with a different address, a product with its own tax class, or a region with its own prices-include-tax setting can still pay a different amount, so ask for an example order for any case you care about.

Needs your attention: warnings

Under the example orders, Needs your attention lists anything worth a second look before you approve:

• Prices include tax is changing. Your listed prices stay the same, but tax is added on top or taken out of them, so customers pay a different total. The warning shows the difference for one of the example orders.
• A region name is not recognised. A rate for "Qubec" never matches a customer in Quebec. The warning suggests the right region code when there is a close match.
• A country you ship to would be left without a rate. Customers there would pay no tax.
• A rate will stop being charged, because the review deletes it or gives it an end date.
• A country already has rates in other tax classes. A class rate replaces the Standard rate for products in that class, so a new Standard rate does not reach them.

A warning does not block the review. It tells you what to check.

When a review cannot be prepared

Some reviews are refused when they are prepared, before anything is saved:

• A country preset for a country that already has tax rates. Delete those rates first if you want to start over.
• A rate that would duplicate another one on the same country, region, postal code, tax class and priority.
• A rate that does not exist in your store.
• More than 50 changes, or a request that changes nothing.

Why a plan expires

A review lasts 30 minutes, and only while your tax setup stays exactly as it was when the review was prepared. The window shows how long is left.

• After 30 minutes, the review expires. You cannot approve or apply it.
• If anything about your tax setup changes in the meantime (a rate edited or added by you or a teammate, a switch changed, a region's prices-include-tax setting changed, the default tax class changed), the review expires early, because the example orders no longer describe your store.

An expired review shows This review expired, prepare it again, and nothing was changed. It is never revived: press Prepare again and look at the current numbers. That is deliberate, because a change to your setup is a new decision.

Approve and apply

1. Open the Review tax changes window, from Review and set up or from the Setup plans list, under the Activity tab of Settings → Tax.
2. Read What will change, the example orders and Needs your attention.
3. Press Approve and apply. Only a person signed in to the dashboard can approve. The AI assistant, a connected AI tool and an API key cannot approve for you. A review that is already Approved but was not applied (for example you approved it and the window closed before it finished) shows Apply changes on that button instead.
4. All the changes are made together in one step. If any part fails, none of it is applied: the review shows These changes could not be applied with the reason, and Prepare again starts over. Applying a review that was already applied does nothing more.

Press Cancel review if you no longer want it. A cancelled review changes nothing.

Each rate the review adds, edits or deletes appears in Activity like any other change, and the review is named in the description, so you can see exactly what it did afterwards. The Setup plans list shows every earlier review with its status: Ready to review, Approved, Applied, Expired, Cancelled or Failed, and who prepared it (a team member, the assistant or a connected agent).

There is no undo button for an applied review. To go back, change the rates yourself or prepare a new review.

Applying from the AI assistant

When the assistant prepared the review, it shows you the changes and the example orders in the chat and then asks you to approve applying it on its own approval card. Your click on that card is your approval, and it applies only a review the assistant prepared itself in your store. It asks again every time and never applies a review on a schedule.

Applying from a connected AI tool

A connected AI tool (MCP) can prepare a review and work out example orders, but it can only apply a review you already approved in the dashboard. For a review you have not approved, it applies nothing and gives you a link to open it in the dashboard. Approving in the dashboard is the only approval that counts.

What review does not do

• It does not decide what tax you must collect. The rates are the ones you or a preset provide. Preset rates were correct on the date shown in the preset and can change, so check them.
• It does not register you for tax or file anything.
• It does not update rates by itself when a country changes its tax. A review only applies changes you put in it.
• It does not change orders that already exist. Past orders keep the tax they were charged. A review changes tax from the next checkout on.
• It does not mark a country as "not collected" to fix a missing rate. That note is your decision, made separately in the Tax Center.
• It does not cover tax registrations or product tax classes. Record registrations under Tax registrations and set product classes in Tax classes and products.

Related: Tax Center, Set up taxes.