Resolving Data Quality Suspension for Inaccurate Sales Tax Information
This 'How To' provides a solution for fixing the Inaccurate tax information suspension of your product feed in Google Merchant Center.
Problem
You may receive an email from Google Merchant Center that says:
Subject: Data Quality Suspension Warning Of Your Merchant Center Account
We've found product data that doesn't meet the Shopping Ads requirements in your Merchant Center account. You have until the deadline below to update your account and products so that they meet Shopping Ads requirements. If the issues aren't resolved by the deadline, your Merchant Center account will be suspended and your Shopping ads will no longer appear on Google.
Deadline: Jan 1, 2021
Your Merchant Center account presently does not meet the following Shopping Ads Product Data Specification requirements:
Inaccurate tax information
For many of your items, the tax information in your product data doesn't match the tax information on the product pages.
If you can't provide accurate tax information, you may provide data that matches or overestimates the average tax rate users visiting your site from Google would pay. Keep in mind that no matter what tax amount you provide for Shopping ads, you're still responsible for collecting the appropriate amount of tax from your customers.
Using the correct product data will help optimize your ads' performance. Update your product data to meet the specifications on tax.
Resolution
The product feed itself typically does not contain any tax information (i.e. the tax attribute is left blank). Instead, the tax settings are configured at the account level here:
Tax Settings - Google Merchant Center
If you recently started collecting sales tax for certain states, please update your tax settings there. Remember to also carefully check or uncheck the box for charging tax on shipping. It has to match your store exactly.
The email from Google will have some sample zip codes where they detected incorrect tax.
To determine the state of any zip code, simply search for 12345 zip code in any search engine.
If you are unable to locate the email from Google with the sample zip codes, go to Message Archive - Google Merchant Center to find all recent notifications from Google.
After verifying that the tax settings are correct, click the Request Review link in your Google Merchant Center Account under Products > Diagnostics > Account Issues.
Be sure to check carefully, because Google sometimes limits reviews to one every seven days. If you are at or past the deadline, and the review fails, your campaigns will be offline for at least seven days before becoming eligible for another review.
If you do not see a Request Review link, then use this form to contact Google: