If your business has offices, warehouses and employees in a state, you likely have physical nexus, which means you’ll need to collect and file sales tax in that state. For more information on nexus, this blog post can assist. If you sell products to states where you do not have a physical presence, you may still have sales tax liability there – and therefore need to collect and remit taxes in that state. Every state has different sales and transaction thresholds that trigger tax obligations for your business – take a look at this article to find out what those thresholds are for the states you sell to.

If your company is doing business with a buyer claiming a sales tax exemption, you may have to deal with documentation involving customer exemption certificates. To make matters more complicated, many states have their own requirements for documentation regarding these sales tax exemptions. To ease the pain, we’ve created an article that lists each state’s requirements, which you can find here.

You should not collect sales tax from retail sales in a state before you have registered for a sales tax permit. (If you’re looking for sales tax rates in every state, we’ve provided them here.) In general, the steps you should take to register with a state to collect sales tax are as follows: gather your EIN or other business identifying information, visit your state’s department of revenue website, click on the “Sales and Use Tax” section of the site, and register your business. We’ve created a handy guide to lead you through the steps to register for every state right here.