Why Do You Describe Multi State Sales Tax Compliance as the Ticking Time Bomb for Companies?

Well the reason I do is because the issue has often been ignored. What happens in the course of a company, even in particularly large companies, is you get a group of executives together - you get a controller, you get a CFO, the whole financial team, etc. - and you're chugging along but nobody actively realizes what the consequences are and what the nexus activities are in other states. A company can go along and organically create nexus for itself by just a few simple activities in other states. A company moves into a different state, you get some sales people that go there, you go visit a client a couple times a year and suddenly you have engaged nexus creating activities in that state depending on the individual laws and the jurisdiction of that state. Now the problem is is that once you've created nexus, it's not like you can take it back. you're either pregnant or you're not pregnant. So when you have a nexus creating activity there, you've touched that state and so the big issue is

that because most companies don't realize this, because they've triggered nexus in some way shape or form either through a customer relationship or through an employee relationship or any another channel partner, they have created a liability for themselves. It created a liability as of the date that they have formed nexus in that particular state and so the big issue with that is the reason I call it a time bomb. It says time passes there, hidden liability continues to grow, and grow, and grow until one day, they realize it before they get into trouble or they realize how much trouble that they're in and then they have to clean it up. But the good news is as long as you're proactive about this, usually this thing is not that bad. There are ways to mitigate this stuff. There are ways to help reduce your liabilities and there are ways to come into compliance without putting into place an overcomplicated system. A nice thing about multi-state sales and use tax and multi-state income tax is there is software that you can utilize to help you get through these issues rather than waiting for the bomb to go off. 

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Sam Brotman, JD, LLM, MBA

Owner and Director of Legal
Brotman Law

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