Selling on Shopify? How to Set Up Sales Tax in 5 Easy Steps

Fran:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's webinar. We're so grateful you've joined us today and we are going to have a good time today. So, while we give everyone some time to trickle in today's call, go ahead and chat with us by introducing yourself and telling us about your business. The team and I thought about what kind of tax joke to share with you all and we realize there really isn't one cause tax is not that fun. <Laugh> Anyhow, if you have a great tax joke you wanna share, please share them in the chat. Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Fran and I lead the Customer Success team here at ComplYant. So, my stellar team and I act as first contact from signing up for a subscription to sending over a service request or questions and so much more. I love having the opportunity to connect with our customers and learn about your experience with our software. It's also so rewarding when I go to events such as SBE, which the team and I happen to attend in New York. And so hopefully if you were in attendance of that, chat us up, let us know you were there. And it was just great to meet you if you did stop by the booth. Let us know if you were there or even if you're gonna be attending to the next one that will be at, which is in LA. 

So definitely drop that in the chat, if you're gonna be in attendance there. And that's also in September and we'd love it if you do attend to stop by our booth. That'd be great. So if you haven't heard of ComplYant yet, go check us out at complyant.co, that's C O M P L Y A N T.co and sign up to start managing your business' tax filings, payment deadlines, budget planning for future tax build, and more. To sign up for our user-friendly dashboard and see more of our educational content such as helpful blogs and webinars like today's call you can find out more by going onto complyant.co's website. If you are a Shopify seller, then today's topic will help you set up your sales tax in five easy steps. Yes, that easy. Leading today's discussion is ComplYant's very own founder, Shiloh Johnson. Although we are a tax compliance software, we are not an advisory firm. Any information provided by our team members is not intended to be taken as advice or perceived as a specific position on any subject of tax law. We're glad to have you Shiloh to talk about Shopify and how to set up that account. So go ahead and take it away.

What is SBE (03:18):

Shiloh:

Sure. Hi everyone. Shiloh here, founder and CEO of ComplYant. Before we get started a quick nod to one thing that Fran said, SBE stands for Small Business Expo. They have them all over the country. If you are a Shopify seller, it could make sense for you to the very least be in attendance. They usually have a lot of really cool booths that are relevant to your company at your size and stage, which isn't common. Usually, conferences are massive and for large co companies. So, to have a hyper small business focused conference, I think it’s really resourceful, hence why we do it. So, I would suggest it if you are there and I think it's free to attend too. So anyway, that's SBE. Before we get started, collective side, deep breath, let it all go into the world is absolutely chaotic in current times, and it feels weird to refocus on making money. But I think these actions we take to build ourselves and our companies ultimately that's to building personal wealth, which will allow us to make more decisions for folks in power, which I think could shift the needle. So, keep doing the work that you're doing, your Shopify company matters. Trust us, it does. So, let's get started.

What is sales tax? (04:29):

A little bit about how to do what you're gonna do a whole, whole lot better. This will be brief, not so painless. I like to keep it simple because obviously tax can be chaotic and very difficult to follow. So we're not gonna actually go through the steps of signing up. We're gonna talk about some pluses and minuses. We're gonna talk about some things to think about as you're building your Shopify company. And so, it's less about setting it up and more about how to make sure you're doing all the tax pieces correctly. So, before we dive into this piece, I just wanna give a little nod to my background. I've been in corporate tax accounting for 14 years, licensed and actively in the state of California as a CPA and I have an undergrad in accounting and a graduate degree in taxation, and I've been doing a lot of tax work for small businesses for a very long time. So just wanted you all to know who you're hearing from, not just giving you the gas, but actually, the truth as I experienced it. 

So, the first moment we're gonna nod to is obviously what is sales tax and why you should care? So, sales tax is basically the cost of doing business in a certain city, state, or county. So, think of it as an opportunity to sell to the customers that live in that jurisdiction. And when you sell to those people that jurisdiction expects to collect a tax on the sales you made to people in their jurisdiction, which is very different than what we normally think, which is like the sales tax that I pay to do business where I live, that's one part of it. The other part of it is paying sales tax to the people that live somewhere else. And that's what has changed so massively when we think about nexus rule changes, but we'll get to that in a second.

Why should you care? (06:12):

Why you should care? Because sales tax is more heavily audited than any other tax type. More than income tax, more than business licenses, BPB, all of it. Sales tax is the most heavily audited than any other tax type. And so, you wanna make sure you don't get caught. The reason this is because states actually control sales tax and not the federal government and states actually have more audit resources than the federal government does. So, they tend to be more audit heavy and that's how they collect a big chunk of their tax revenue is through audits. So, you don't wanna get caught slipping. So, if you set it up early and often, early and immediate, you don't have to worry about later on not having it together.

What is Nexus? (07:02):

What's nexus and why you should care? So, nexus is basically rules that are attached at the state level. It's a government ruling that happened and an adjustment to Wayfair was this massive ruling that happened to say how we shift nexus. So, the nexus rules have changed drastically in the last few years. And that's why everyone you'll hear a lot of conversations about like nexus tracking. I know Shopify is working with tax charts to figure out how to create an easier flow for that. That's because the rules around where you pay tax to and the thresholds that are required have drastically changed. It used to be that you could sell to any other state, if you were located in Florida, you could sell to any other state, and you would only have to pay tax in Florida. That is not the case anymore. Now with online sales being what they are, the entire retail world almost is online. Meaning you can sell anywhere at any time for almost nothing. It's extremely easy to sell a business, start a business, and sell products more than it has ever been before in the history of this country. And so, as a result, sales tax is diminishing because if you're no longer physically going into a store to buy a piece of candy and they can't collect tax on that candy, then their tax revenue is diminishing, thereby meaning the states.

Why Nexus matters (08:12):

So, their way to collect on said tax revenue is to change the way that sales are taxed. Nexus is what that is. It's the change in the way that sales are taxed. So, the thing that matters the most and why you should care is basically, nexus has three types. There's like marketplace, click-through and one other one that I can't think of at the moment, but none of the names matter, what matters is that you understand a gist of what it means. And it just means that every state has threshold requirements, but once you hit that revenue threshold, you are then required to remit sales tax to that state. The general threshold is a hundred thousand dollars or 2000 transactions or something like that. Once you reach that threshold, that's general, right? Every state has its own rules. So don't take that general rule as being the thing, end all be all. In fact, sales tax Institute has this really great chart that I think we have a link for it too if you could drop it in the chat. There's this really great chart for determining which states, and what their thresholds are per state. And in so doing, you get to figure out, okay, I'm getting a ton of sales in Texas. What's the threshold in Texas? Do I need to start paying sales tax there? This matters because what I'm gonna discuss in a minute is basically how you set up your Shopify account. Everyone makes really incorrect assumptions. And if you don't understand nexus, you won't understand how to set up your account. That's why I'm explaining it to you. And that's why you should care.

Setting up Shopify account and paying sales tax (09:45):

So should you pay in every state you sell to? This is what I meant when I had talked about nexus because basically those rules that say, once you hit certain thresholds, you're required to pay sales tax. What happens in Shopify is when you turn the sales tax feature on, it turns it on for every single state. But if you're a small vendor and you only have one or two sales in, I don't know, Tennessee or Texas or whatever, you don't have to remit tax in Tennessee or Texas. But if you turn it on and you collect tax for Tennessee or Texas, you now have to pay it. Confusing, right? But if you're not required to pay it, you don't need to turn it on. So, knowing what states you need to turn it on in is the trick to setting up your sales tax in Shopify.

This is the thing that I see small business owners get wrong all the time. They just think, well, I'll turn it on. And then Shopify turns it on. And now you are charging sales tax on every single invoice. That's not required. You're only really required to charge sales tax if your business, what they sell is taxable. Oftentimes Shopify you're selling goods so more often than not that's probably taxable. And you're only required to actually pay on every sale for the state that you live in if you live in a state that charges sales tax. So, you need to know, obviously if you're in Oregon, this doesn't apply, but if you're in Seattle, it does. So, knowing what the sales tax rules are, and where you physically are, is extremely important. And then after you figure that out, it's determining at what point have your sales kicked up so much that it's worth turning on sales tax in those states. You don't have to turn it on in every state unless you have hit the click-through nexus or marketplace nexus threshold.

So, saying it all again, check the chart, and then once you see and understand how your sales revenue goes, you should be looking at your sales every single month, getting an understanding of how much you're selling. I know Shopify gives you this really cool dashboard that you can see how much you sell per state. Look at that collectively each month, each quarter, twice a year, whatever makes sense for your business size. And as you grow, as you sell more, just keep an eye on it. If you're seeing California pickup and you're not physically located in California, oh, wait, what's the threshold. Let me check. I've hit the threshold. I need to start paying. Here's why this matters. The government is not gonna come to you and say, Hey, you've hit the threshold. You need to pay to us. They're only gonna come to you when someone else you're selling to, or someone you're buying from, let's say you buy from a wholesaler. They get audited and then they have to give them sales records and then your name and your company name are on those records. And they're seeing a lot of transactions to you on that company's record. They then use that as the reason to come audit you.

And then they're saying to you, Hey, we think you might have sales tax in our state. What are you doing? And if you're not doing anything, now you're gonna get caught with your sales tax pants down. And we don't want that. So, make sure that you are doing the work upfront so that you don't get caught in an audit. Here's something else that matters too that you should think about, when you are like say, flying off the radar, your statute of limitation stays open forever. It never closes. If you never open up a sales tax account in Florida, and you should have opened one four years ago, they're not gonna just audit you for the last year. They're gonna audit you for every year that ever happened, that you ever sold anything in Florida. And they will collect penalties and interest for all of that. So it's all good till it's not all good. That's what I always say to everyone. Do what you want until you shouldn't do what you want anymore. <Laugh>.

Helpful Software (13:28):

Software. So, there are a few tools that you can use to help you process your sales tax. Obviously, TaxJar is one of them, they connect directly with Shopify. I know Davos is another one. Sovos is another one. Those are the only three I can think of that hyper-focus on sales tax automation to help you process your transactions tax requirements. Remember Shopify is not going to do this for you. Even if they put it on the invoice for you, they are not paying the tax. They're just putting it on the invoice. And then they're sending that money to you. The relationship you have to understand is that it's your responsibility as the business owner to take that sales tax from being deposited into your account and then pay it to what government it belongs to. That is now your obligation as a business owner. I know that it is so easy to run a sale. You can do it in Venmo and DM and all these places. And you're thinking like, Hey, the government will never find out. You can run that risk if you want to. I just would advise not to, because it's all good until it's not all good. I say that by saying, you obviously can do whatever you want, it's your business. But once the state figures out that that's how you're operating, it is going to be hell trying to sort it out and then get clear. So don't put yourself in that position. Just try to stay up front from moment one.

Also, think about the longevity of your business. Maybe you're like, I don't know, I’m trying this thing out, side hustling. We'll see what I do. And then five years from now, you become a viral sensation and you're selling millions of millions of dollars on Shopify. Now you've got quite a headache because you better believe every state is gonna come collect. Like, Hey, we want whatever portion of what you're selling that belongs to us. And at that point, you've gotta hire auditors, you've gotta hire lawyers. You've gotta hire tax accountants all to help you sort of sort out this mess that you ignored way too long. So, like bookkeeping, like banking, like all things financially for your business, you should start early while you're small, because it's so much easier to understand when you only have five or six transactions versus 500 or 600. And it will happen because I believe in all of your businesses.

ComplYant (15:39):

The other piece of software I wanna mention is obviously us, ComplYant. What we do to help small businesses manage the entirety of their tax compliance requirements. That's everything from income tax, sales tax, payroll, business personal property, business licenses, and annual reports, all of it from one dashboard. We help you remember what to pay, how to pay, and when, so you don't fall behind. And we do some other cool things coming soon. So ComplYant.co, visit us today.

Offboarding your business (16:06):

Okay, I don't sell much. Why do I have to do this? Because you won't not sell much for very long. You're only small for a season. And if you decide to do away with your business, like it didn't pop the way that I thought it was gonna pop. I'm just gonna let it go. There is a process for off-boarding your business. You can't just let it go. So, there are two parts to this equation. I did great, now I'm doing better. And I did okay and now I need to cancel. So, if you did okay, but now you need to cancel, you wanna make sure that you off-board your business. That means closing it with the state, the Secretary of State if you registered it, close it with the city. If you've registered your business license, close on your bank accounts, and close it with the IRS. Even if you only open for a few months during the year, you still have to close your business. Don't just open it real quick and then run away. Because according to the government, all government authorities, once you open it, it stays open until you tell them otherwise. So, make sure that you off-board, if you decide the business is no longer viable. Don't just close your Shopify account and walk away.

Moving Past Shopify? (17:06):

The other part of that is you did okay, and now you're doing great. You want to make sure that you set things up so that you're not, I did great and now I have a mess on my hands because no one wants to spend their first million dollars in revenue, half of it on tax issues. If anybody pays attention to the news, you'll notice that Chad Boseman passed away, may he rest in peace. And his family finally settled his estate and his family got half, and his wife got some. And then the government and the state lawyers got a big chunk. They got more than the family because he didn't have things set up because he probably didn't think that he would pass away and he did. And obviously, his health failed, and all these things happened, but we avoid what we have to do and then it end up becoming a massive problem later. I know money makes people anxious and we don't like making those decisions and we don't like kind of, I'm not sure I'm scared, I don't know what to do. It's better to go and get scared than to not do it at all. Avoidance is expensive. I'll say it again. Avoidant behavior is expensive.

It is percentage upon percentage of fees that keep piling never goes away when you don't pay something. It doesn't start the day you decide to do it. It starts the day you sold, whatever you sold, wherever you sold it. So, keep that in mind. You're not, well, I'm just getting audited from today. Nope, you're getting audited from today and every day before when you first started the business. So please, please, please keep that in mind. I know it feels like I only have a few dollars in sales. Why do I need to care? It's easier to manage tax when your business is small, it's easier to manage bookkeeping when your business is small, it's easier to manage your bank accounts when your business is small. And then you build up a flow, a process, and clarity, and then when the business gets popping, you're already ready to go. Good business behavior doesn't allow for you to ignore your business finances. You have to pay attention, even when it's hard. Ask questions, barter time for time, getting communities. We have a really good Facebook group where there are lots of questions that can be asked and answered, get in the community and figure out how you could do the hard stuff better so that you don't have a mess on your hands later. That's why you should do this. Okay, I've done enough talking, I'll let you guys get some questions at me. I'll stop sharing

Q&A (19:24):

Fran:

So, if you haven't done so yet go ahead and drop your questions in the Q and A or chat box now, both are located at the bottom of your zoom screen. Or you can raise your hand using the reactions option also at the bottom of your zoom screen to ask your question live to Shiloh. We'll wait for a few minutes to see if there are any questions submitted. You had so many amazing gems. I just was trying to capture all of them, Shiloh <laugh> I missed the good behavior that doesn't allow for I think you said not to be in the depths of your finances. I think that was it.

Shiloh:

Yeah, we cannot ignore it, absolutely. We cannot ignore the hard things because they're hard. We've gotta put our mind on the hard things and get help early while it's small. And then you learn how to do it. You have clarity about your business, you know how much money you really have because remember the money that goes into your bank account is not the money you have. That's the money you've been given. Some of that money goes to other places. And the money you really have to spend is a small fraction of the money that you actually get deposited. So in order to have that clarity, you've gotta know what you owe and where and when. Put your mind on your money, your money on your mind.

Q1: Tracking Nexus  (20:56):

Fran:

Absolutely. <Laugh> So we've got a question. There are 50 states, that's a lot to keep track of nexus, et cetera. How do people keep track of it all?

Shiloh:

So super great question. I know I mentioned self tax Institute. They have this really great chart I think we dropped it in the chat too. There's this really great chart that lays out every single state and what their nexus thresholds are in a very simple format. It just gives you all the states and then it gives you what their dollar amount threshold is and their transaction threshold. Remember it's one or the other. And then there are some states that require you to report, even if you do not owe. So, Colorado is actually one of those states. So having that clarity around what that is, is super helpful. The other thing you need to think about too is software, no matter how good it is, it has limitations. TaxJar has limitations, Sovos has limitations. So, the expectation or the earnest is really on you as the business owner to know if you owe, even if TaxJar is like we do Nexus tracking and we tell you that you need to pay in blah, blah, and blah, blah, state. It's up to you to confirm that that is accurate. Don't just assume that any software, no matter who it is, us included, is truth and barn none. Because if you do that and then they are wrong, or you didn't double-check, or you didn't do something that they said you should have done or vice versa, the state is going to come after you, not TaxJar, they're gonna come after you, not Sovos.

So, you understanding or having some clarity around which states have what amount thresholds and what transaction thresholds. And it doesn't take a ton of like, I'm monitoring this every single day. You can actually do this like once a quarter, put a reminder on your calendar for one afternoon, once a quarter and say, okay, I'm gonna examine all of my sales across all of the states for the last quarter. That's three months. And in the last three months, I've sold $20,000 and a third of that went to Texas. That feels like a lot. Remember these thresholds are pretty high. They're usually a hundred thousand dollars or 2000 transactions. That's pretty high, right? So, we're not talking about 5,000, that's a lower threshold. So once you start getting up in the dollar amounts and the transaction amounts, then that will give you the gut feeling that says, you know what, I'm selling way too much to this state. Let me check what the nexus rules are. You literally can Google nexus chart, nexus tracker, or any version of that and you will get some breakdown of what those rules are state by state. It's worth checking out.

Q2: What to do if you haven’t been tracking (23:33):

Fran:

We have another question. If someone hasn't been tracking sales tax correctly up till recently and might owe because of it, is there anything they can do to find out or get ahead of it?

Shiloh:

So, the best thing you can do is treat your sales tax similar to the income tax calendar by starting from January 1, 2022. Backdate all of your revenue. So go into Shopify and pull a revenue report and backdate it all the way to the beginning of the year, and then use that report sorted by state. And if you're not sure how to do that ask Shopify, how do I get a state report of all of my sales in said state. Then you can see how much you sold and then focus on the state you are physically located in first, make sure you've set up a sales tax account for that state. And then add that tax information into Shopify and turn tax on. I wouldn't wait. Do it as soon as you can. It's better to start now. Remember they may not audit you. They may not find, out who knows, but it's better to start now than to wait. Cause all it takes is one state government authority buying candles from you. And then they realize that you don't charge sales tax and you should be. That's the tricky thing about sales tax. It's very clear if you're following or not. The second someone buys from you they can tell.

If your system isn't set up, if you don't have sales tax turned on, it's not gonna show up on their invoice. And now they're saying, Hey, you should have charged me sales tax and you didn't and now you have a problem on your hands. So start today, don't wait. And just back date it for the beginning of the year and then start there. As you go, I don't know how long you've been in business, but as you go, it could make sense for you to hire a tax professional who can come in and help you clean up any prior years. But I would say the best thing to do is start as of 01/01/2022 and then figure out how much money you have earned and what sales tax you owe. Start in the state you live in. That's the best place to start. I imagine you're not so massive that you have nexus in other states. So hyper-focus on your state and make sure you are registered with the sales tax division in your state, and then make sure that your nexus or that your sales tax is turned on in Shopify. And remember, you don't have to turn it on in every state, but if you turn it on in every state and you collect, you have to give that money over. It's not your money. So don't turn sales tax on in Tennessee. If you don't owe sales tax in Tennessee and then keep it. That's illegal and you will be in jail.

So don't do that. The state expects their money. If you're charging sales tax in whatever state, make sure that you send it to that state, even if you don't owe it. If you realized I turned on sales tax in Tennessee and I don't have to do that. Turn it off, give Tennessee whatever money that you've collected for them. And then now you can start fresh going forward. You cannot keep the money. Even if you read somewhere that what you do is not subject to sales tax, you still have to remit that money. You cannot collect any monies under the guise of tax and not remit them to the state that it's due. Please remember that. Cause I have had several people say, well, I kept it because such and such wasn't taxable. Nope, you can't do that. You still have to give it over.

The other thing you have to think about too is while states are trying to be supportive through current times, they do have payment plans. They have penalty and interest waiver requests you can do. But keep in mind they expect to get paid. So, if you have collected a hundred dollars in California sales tax, they expect that you have their hundred dollars in California sales tax and they expect that you can pay it. The excuse of I don't have that money is not accurate. You do have that money. You collected it, right. If you didn't have that tax line item, you would've never collected it. So, you just wanna make sure that if you're collecting the tax that you remit it, please. Please don't keep money that doesn't belong to you. The government will find out and they will come for it.

Q3: Practical things we encourage (27:39):

Fran:

I love that you're talking a lot about just those beginning stages. And question follow-up while we wait for some more questions and also, Sydney, we are getting you hopefully the link for the Facebook group. But what can a new seller do to stay organized in those beginning stages? I know you're mentioning a couple of things, turn things on. Are there any practical things that we can encourage?

Shiloh:

Oh, absolutely. So, there are a few things that you can do right now, right away. You don't even have to set anything up. You can just open up your business bank account. If you do not have a business bank account and you've been operating out of your personal account, the first thing you can do to help you get organized is to open up a business bank account and separate your funds. If you're operating like a side hustle and you don't wanna like legitimize it, I have news for you. Even if you're a side hustle, you're still a business, you're just operating it like a sole proprietor. You're still a business. You can get a DBA and that DBA will allow you to get a business bank account. Separate the way that you're spending money. Even if all you're doing is putting money in and you have not started making money, you still need to separate that, right? If you're your sole investor, you're putting your own money into this business, get a business bank account, and instead transfer the money that you're going to be spending on the business into that business account as an investment or loan to the business – separate the money. That is the number one thing I can suggest for practically getting organized.

Another thing that could help you is understanding your tax landscape, understanding what taxes you owe, where, and when. ComplYant can help with that. If you don't know that you have to get a business license in New York, then you're not gonna do that thing. And then you're gonna have a headache later. So, setting up a ComplYant account, and giving a clear understanding of what taxes you owe and where and when will help you very quickly and easily. We even have a free version, you don't have to pay any money for the early version. So do that. It's worth it. 

Another thing you can do is start thinking about your bookkeeping. If you don't have some way that you're tracking bookkeeping. There are a few tools like Xero, QuickBooks, Freshbooks, all these things with the same thing, basically, they just organize your transactions. So, the bank account is where you put the money or you spend the money out of, and then these bookkeeping tools help you organize the money that you spend and collect.

And that's really important because that organization then feeds into your tax return. So, it's a lot clearer and easier to understand how you spent the last 12 months in your business. This also helps when you wanna get financing, loans, grants, any kind of financing offering, they're gonna expect for you to produce documents like reports. They're gonna expect tax returns. And if you're kind of operating under the radar, it gets very difficult to take advantage of those things. So, legitimize, set up a business entity, figure out what entity is right for what you're doing, whether it's an LLC or an S Corp or C Corp, please set up something, get a business bank account, separate how you're spending funds, get a business credit card if your credit will allow it. There is some business credit card that doesn't even require credit guarantees. Please do that. It will help for you to sort of separate how you're spending, bookkeeping, and ComplYant.

Outro (31:01):

Fran:

Yes. Like you mentioned before, if not it's a headache later <laugh>. So, I just wanna take some time to just thank you again, Shiloh, for just enlightening us on how sellers can just be proactive about their Shopify accounts and just also some really great gems as well. Thank you everyone for joining us today. A recording of today's call will be emailed to you at a later time. And for more information about ComplYant or if you missed an opportunity to ask a question, feel free to email us. Our email address is hello@complyant.co, that's H E L L O C O M P L Y A N T dot co. You can also send us any topic suggestions you'd like for us to cover in our upcoming webinars. Thanks everyone again. Enjoy the rest of your day.