Sales tax proved to be a more complicated aspect of an e-commerce store. I knew it would be hard because each state has its own sales tax. However, the actual complication was that the manufacturer had its own sales tax regulation. So, I had to do more research into something called nexus. Nexus means you have to pay sales tax if you meet certain conditions. The outsourced manufacturer has nexus in almost all the states. But I only have nexus in my home state.

The way around this is to give the manufacturer a reseller certificate. A reseller certificate says that another party will pay the sales tax. When I got my local business license, it included a reseller certificate. I submitted the reseller certificate, and it was accepted. But it only worked for my home state.

I was still going to get charged sales tax in other states because the manufacturer had nexus even though I didn’t. The solution was to submit another document because some states will honor your reseller certificate, but not all states.

I decided to postpone figuring this all out until after launching the store. I would get charged sales tax one way or another. The biggest issue was making it show up correctly in Shopify. I decided the best next step was hiring a taxing service to figure it all out.