Outsourced ControllerSales tax when you sell into more than one state
You're looking for an answer to whether you must collect sales tax in states where you have no office. The honest answer is that it depends on how much you sell there. Tax CFO Steven Palmieri leads this work, and Steven and his team treat it as a watching job, tracking sales by state and telling you when one needs attention.
Check where I sell
What changed in 2018
For many years, a seller generally had to have a physical presence in a state before that state could ask it to collect tax. In 2018, the Supreme Court decided South Dakota v. Wayfair and allowed states to require remote sellers to collect once their sales into the state pass a level the state sets.
That decision is why an online shop, a service business or a manufacturer shipping across the country can owe sales tax in places it has never visited.
Every state sets its own rules
There is no single national threshold. Each state chooses its own level of sales or transactions, its own registration steps and its own filing schedule. Some states have no statewide sales tax at all. Some tax services as well as goods. Some count only certain sales toward the threshold.
Because of that variety, we build the list for your company, with only the states and rows that apply to you.
Marketplaces help, but the records stay with you
If you sell through a large online marketplace, the marketplace often collects the tax for those sales. That helps. You still keep the records of the sales, and sales made through other channels may still count toward a state's threshold. We separate the two so the numbers are right.
What the controller's job is here
Tracking is the job. We look at your sales by state, month by month, and compare them with each state's level. When a state comes close, we tell you ahead of time. When one is crossed, we tell you that too and explain what registering involves. Nothing gets handed to you as a surprise, and you decide what to do next.
What we do today is watch the thresholds and tell you when a state needs attention. Whether we also handle a registration or a filing in a particular state is something we settle with you on the call, because it depends on the state and on how much you sell there.
What to have ready
A report of your sales by shipping state for the past year is the most useful thing. Your platform or your bookkeeping software can usually produce one. It lets us see where the volume is and which states are worth watching.
How this connects to the year
Sales tax returns have their own dates in each state. They're part of the calendar we write out for you, alongside the federal dates on the filing calendar. Getting registered early is generally easier than being told you should have been earlier, and the records a lender or buyer will ask for include this file.
On the calendar. The one recurring check this page adds is a monthly comparison of sales by state against each state's level, noted in the same file as the other calendar items.
A state that is getting close to its level is written on the calendar before anyone files a return there.