I've Registered for Sales Tax or I've Registered for a Sellers Permit in a Particular State.

Do I have a state income tax filing requirement in that state? The answer to this question is probably. By purposely availing yourself to a state, by registering yourself for a seller's permit and/or registering as a foreign entity and qualifying to do business in a state, more than likely you're going to subject yourself to state income tax jurisdiction. Now does that mean if you're registered for seller's permits in thirty five or forty states that you should just go around and file 35 or 40 state income tax returns? No, the idea with compliance is understanding what your exposure is in different states and then registering or filing returns appropriately in order to meet the needs of your business. So there's a balance between putting yourself in compliance and then making sure you're doing the right thing for your business. So the important thing to do is sit down, look at the operations of your company, look at where you're making sales and craft a multi-state tax strategy and a filing strategy that's appropriate to that. When we've done this for different businesses that we've worked with and when we deal with clients on the subject, a lot of times the liability that they have, the filing requirements that they have and what they end up doing is a lot less in scope than they initially thought so it's important to have a plan in place. It's important to know that registering in one jurisdiction for a sales tax perspective is probably going to create a filing requirement in that jurisdiction and require managing and mitigating that situation appropriately.

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Sam Brotman, JD, LLM, MBA

Owner and Director of Legal
Brotman Law

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