Shipping and tax laws for eCommerce websites

Alright, you’ve got an awesome product and you are selling it online! All the online marketing, seo, linking, blogging is in place. But what about the really fun stuff pertaining to selling a product online: TAXES. Ugh, no one is a fan of that word.

Each state has different laws pertaining to how you are responsible for taxing the product you are selling online. The congruent part of the law is that you tax if you are shipping the merchandise to a state you are conducting business in.

For example, if you have a location in Florida and Tennessee, you are shipping a product to Michigan, you do not need to charge tax on that order. However, if you are shipping to an address in Florida, you do need to charge tax on that order.

A list of the different sales tax by state: http://www.salestaxinstitute.com/resources/rates or visit this link for further details by statehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_States#By_jurisdi…

SHIPPING

Some states require that you collect tax on shipping as well. Currently, the states that require tax on shipping include:

Arkansas
Connecticut

Florida
Georgia

Illinois
Indiana

Kansas
Michigan

Minnesota
Mississippi

Missouri
New Mexico

New York
Ohio

Texas
Washington

West Virginia
Wisconsin

NOTE: Taxes and the laws associated with them are always changing. It’s best to investigate the laws of your state(s) to ensure you are taxing according to the law that applies to you and your eCommerce website.

The links in this post may be outdated or will probably quickly become outdated. This information is a general resource and should not be used as your final answer when determining how to apply tax to your eCommerce website.

Some additional links found while putting this post together:

Amazon.com does a great job explaining their complicated tax requirements: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=468512

Let me know if I am missing anything, or if you have found a better link relative to a specific state. I will gladly update this post.

Image credit: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Post by KEYSTONE CLICK.