Despite what some people believe, any business that sells taxable products needs to collect sales tax in the jurisdictions where they have nexus. What is nexus? It is where your business has a significant presence (offices, employees, sales reps, and property (including inventory)). It doesn’t matter whether the business is online or brick and mortar. And it doesn’t matter if other people are following the rules or not.
A big challenge for an ecommerce business owner is managing sales tax compliance. Understanding collection requirements, configuring your shopping cart or marketplace, managing the sales tax collected, and filing the returns is a complex and time consuming process.
To make matters worse, for Amazon FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) Sellers, Amazon’s FBA service creates sales tax nexus for your business in the 15 states where Amazon has warehouses. If you are an Amazon FBA Seller and you’re making sales to customers in any of those locations, you should be collecting and remitting sales tax as well as filing sales tax returns in each of those jurisdictions. That can be a pretty big compliance headache for a small ecommerce seller.
And what do you do if you haven’t been collecting properly? You know that you not only have to file but you might also have to pay back sales tax in multiple states and it’s too late to collect from your customers. You worry that this money will be coming out of your cash flow. We can help you understand your liability and put together a process to get compliant while minimizing penalties and interest.