TaxDebug for WooCommerce

Description

Are your WooCommerce taxes actually correct?

If you’re using WooCommerce Tax, TaxJar, or Avalara to calculate sales tax automatically, you’re trusting a black box with your compliance. But what happens when it gets it wrong?

• A customer in Ohio gets charged $0 tax — and you don’t find out until quarter-end
• WooCommerce Tax under-collects county-level tax on 200 orders before you notice
• Your effective rate suddenly drops and you have no idea why
• Your accountant asks “how was this tax calculated?” and you have no answer

TaxDebug for WooCommerce is your tax safety net. It watches every order, detects problems automatically, and gives you the audit trail your accountant needs.

What TaxDebug Does For You

1. Catches Tax Mistakes Automatically
Our Issue Detection Engine scans every order and flags:
* Zero tax collected where tax was expected
* Tax charged in non-taxable regions (customers complaining about overcharges)
* Rate mismatches vs. reference rates
* Missing local/county/city taxes
* Tax amount changes between cart and checkout
* Suspected API errors from your tax service

2. Shows You Exactly How Every Order Was Taxed
Stop guessing. For every order, TaxDebug shows you:
* Which tax service calculated the rates (WooCommerce Core, WooCommerce Tax, TaxJar, Avalara)
* The exact tax rates applied at line-item level
* Full calculation breakdowns so you can verify accuracy
* Which jurisdiction triggered each tax amount

3. Gives Your Accountant What They Need
Export audit-ready reports in seconds:
* Summary reports by country and state
* Detailed order-level tax breakdowns (CSV, Excel-compatible)
* Issue reports for your review and resolution
* Filter by date range, country, state, tax source, and more

4. Beautiful Dashboard at a Glance
* KPI cards: total tax collected, taxable sales, effective rates
* Interactive charts: tax by state, country, and over time
* One-click issue identification — see which orders need attention

5. 100% Safe — Never Touches Your Tax Calculations
TaxDebug only observes and reports. It does NOT modify how taxes are calculated, does NOT interfere with your existing tax setup, and works alongside any tax plugin.

Who Is TaxDebug For?

• Store owners who use automated tax services and want to trust but verify
• Accountants and bookkeepers who need detailed tax breakdowns for filings
• Agency managers who manage multiple WooCommerce stores and need tax oversight
• Anyone who has been burned by a tax calculation error and doesn’t want it to happen again

Compatibility

TaxDebug works with any WooCommerce tax setup:
* WooCommerce Core tax rates (manual rates)
* WooCommerce Tax (automated taxes via TaxJar)
* TaxJar plugin
* Avalara AvaTax
* Any other tax plugin or custom calculation

Requirements

• WordPress 5.8 or higher
• WooCommerce 5.0 or higher
• PHP 7.4 or higher

Privacy

TaxDebug stores order tax data locally in your WordPress database. This includes:
* Order IDs and dates
* Customer billing/shipping addresses (country, state, city, postcode only)
* Order totals and tax amounts
* Tax calculation details

TaxDebug does NOT:
* Store payment information
* Store full customer names or personal details beyond address location

Data retention can be configured in Settings. You can also manually clear all logs at any time.

Feedback Collection

TaxDebug collects optional feedback to improve the plugin:

• In-app feedback: Report false positives, false negatives, feature requests, or success stories
• Usage analytics: Anonymous local tracking of which features are used
• Deactivation survey: Optional one-question survey when deactivating

Local Storage: All feedback is always stored locally in your WordPress database.

Optional Remote Sending: You can opt-in to send anonymous feedback to the developer to help improve TaxDebug. This is disabled by default and must be explicitly enabled in Settings.

What IS Sent (When Opted-In)

• Anonymous store UUID (random identifier, NOT your domain)
• Feedback type and message
• Your email (only if you voluntarily provide it)
• Store country and currency
• Active tax plugin (e.g., TaxJar, Avalara)
• Plugin, WordPress, and WooCommerce versions
• Daily aggregated counts: orders logged, issues detected, features used

What is NEVER Sent

• Your site URL or domain name
• Customer names, emails, or addresses
• Order details, totals, or line items
• Tax amounts or financial data
• Any personally identifiable information (PII)

How to Disable Remote Sending

Go to WooCommerce → TaxDebug → Settings and turn off “Send Anonymous Feedback”. You can do this at any time. Local feedback storage will continue to work.

Developer Notes

Hooks & Filters

TaxDebug provides several hooks for extensibility:

Actions:
* taxdebug_loaded – Fired when TaxDebug is fully loaded
* taxdebug_order_logged – Fired when an order is logged (params: log_id, order_id, payload)
* taxdebug_installed – Fired on plugin installation
* taxdebug_logs_cleaned_up – Fired when old logs are cleaned up

Filters:
* taxdebug_order_payload – Filter the order payload before logging
* taxdebug_detected_issues – Add custom issue detection rules

REST API Endpoints

TaxDebug provides a REST API under the taxdebug/v1 namespace:

• GET /logs – Get tax logs with filtering
• GET /logs/{id} – Get single log
• GET /logs/order/{order_id} – Get log by order ID
• POST /logs/reanalyze/{order_id} – Re-analyze an order
• GET /issues – Get detected issues
• GET /stats/dashboard – Get dashboard statistics
• GET /stats/chart/time – Get time series chart data
• GET /stats/chart/state – Get tax by state data
• GET /stats/chart/country – Get tax by country data
• GET /export/summary – Export summary CSV
• GET /export/detailed – Export detailed CSV
• GET /export/issues – Export issues CSV

All endpoints require manage_woocommerce capability.

Database Tables

TaxDebug creates custom tables:

• {prefix}taxdebug_logs – Stores order tax log data
• {prefix}taxdebug_issues – Stores detected issues
• {prefix}taxdebug_feedback – Stores user feedback submissions
• {prefix}taxdebug_analytics – Stores usage analytics
• {prefix}taxdebug_error_logs – Stores internal error logs

WP-CLI Commands

(Coming in future versions)