This article explains how duties and taxes (D&T) are handled when a customer exchanges an item from an international Global order.
This behaviour applies to Global stores on the Zero value or Same value (with or without discount) accounting type. It is not currently available for stores on the Exchange API — Global cannot yet identify separate fulfilments within a single Exchange API order.
When using Global, customers can exchange items from international orders if the relevant exchange setting is enabled for your store. For general information on Global Returns and how to set it up, see this guide.
This feature requires Exchange For Something Else (EFSE) exchanges to already be enabled for your store — turning on the Global D&T setting has no effect if EFSE itself is switched off.
Exchange for another variant (EFOV)
When an exchange is processed as an Exchange For Original Variant (EFOV), Swap treats the exchange as financially equal and does not validate price differences.
In this flow:
No refund is issued
No additional charge is created
Duties and taxes are not refunded
Duties and taxes are not charged again
Exchange for something else (EFSE)
When a customer exchanges for a different product under Exchange For Something Else (EFSE), and Global D&T is enabled for your store:
Duties and taxes on the returned item are refunded if eligible, according to your Global dashboard settings.
Duties and taxes on the new item are now calculated automatically. Swap calls Global's checkout API for the new item to get its duties and taxes, based on its fulfilment location — so split shipments and multi-address exchanges are each calculated correctly.
The total appears as two combined lines — total duties and total taxes — on the final step of the return, rather than broken down per item.
You only charge or refund the customer the difference between the returned item's duties and taxes and the new item's duties and taxes, not the full amount of either.
If your store uses multi-currency, Global's duty and tax figures are converted to your shop's currency before being applied.
Tax and duty messaging in the portal
Swap displays a message to customers in the portal explaining that taxes and duties are accounted for. The default wording is:
"Any applicable taxes and/or duties are reflected in the final return step."
You can remove this message entirely if you'd rather nothing displays.
Return of an exchange (RoE)
Customers can still return a Global exchange order. Duties and taxes are refunded according to your configured Global D&T rules, pulled from the Global API in the same way as any other Global return. Any additional duties or taxes are refunded via Stripe; non-additional amounts are refunded via Shopify, consistent with standard Global returns.
Important behaviour
For all Global exchanges:
The new order will be visible in the Global orders hub.
EFOV exchanges never recalculate duties and taxes — they're always treated as financially equal.
EFSE exchanges now calculate duties and taxes on the new item automatically, where Global D&T is enabled, rather than skipping duties and taxes on the exchange item entirely.
Any duty and tax refund on the returned item follows your existing Global configuration.
Shopify exchange orders are created as normal, with Global's duties and taxes reflected on the order — not Shopify's own duty and tax calculation.
The RMA displays duties and taxes in the standard return item breakdown, with a column identifying whether each row is a return or an exchange item.
This behaviour is available for Zero value and Same value (with or without discount) accounting types only. It is not currently available for stores on the Exchange API.