I signed up for the Advocado App which does campaigns/coupons. The coupons are applied BEFORE shipping costs. The developer and I ran some tests and it totally worked. However it's a campaign so it does work a bit differently than the Shopify coupons. Point is, that someone has figured out how to do it. I've spoken to the developer and fingers crossed maybe there will be an app if there is enough interest and Shopify doesn't find the work around that Advocado did.