The short answer
Start charging sales tax in a state as soon as your registration is effective. You can view the effective date of each registration under the Registrations section of your Zamp Account.
Why not start before you’re registered?
Most states don’t allow businesses to collect sales tax without a permit. Tax collected before you’re registered can’t be reported properly and will have to be refunded to your customers.
Why not wait?
Once you’re registered, you owe tax on taxable sales starting from your registration’s effective date, whether or not you collected tax. Any sales made without collecting tax after that effective date will have to be paid out of pocket.
What’s an effective date?
It’s the date the state considers you responsible for collecting tax. It can be earlier than the date your registration is submitted. If there’s a gap between your effective date and when you turned on tax collection, reach out to [email protected] and we can help determine how much tax is owed out of pocket.
What effective date should be used?
You will want to register as soon as you have physical or economic nexus in a state.
What to do once you’re registered?
Zamp will email you the day before your registration takes effect to remind you to turn on sales tax collection in the state.
Turn on tax collection for that state in your sales platform the day the registration takes effect.
Check a transaction that comes in for that state after you enabled tax collection to ensure tax is being applied.
That’s it. Zamp handles filing from there.
Selling on marketplaces?
Marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, and Walmart collect and remit tax on sales made through their platforms. You don’t need to turn anything on for those platforms.
Questions? Contact us at [email protected] or 866-438-9267.