How do I handle sales taxes for my e-commerce business in PA?

[Noor1123]

I'm starting an e-commerce business and I'm located in PA. How do I go about sales taxes? Do I charge taxes for all products on my website? How and when do taxes officially get charged? And how do I get my sales tax ID and is it important?

[Kimi]

Hi, @Noor1123.

As a business owner, you may need to charge taxes on your store's sales and remit them to your local government. This will all depend on several different factors however, such as location and individual business circumstances. Because of this, and due to the fact that tax laws and regulations can change often, you'll need to consult with your local tax authority. They can help you verify whether or not your business will need to charge sales taxes, as well as ensure that you're filing and remitting your taxes correctly.

Although we aren't tax experts and aren't able to provide tax advice, we do have some guides that you can read to get you started and help answer some of your preliminary tax questions. Feel free to take a closer look at them below:

• Guide to US taxes
• US taxes reference
• How to charge sales taxes in the US
• Guide to taxes for independent contractors

While Shopify doesn't remit or file your taxes for you, we've recently launched a new feature called Shopify Tax, to help US merchants improve the accuracy of their tax calculations for local customers. If you're a new merchant, this feature will have already been added onto your store automatically, so I recommend going through our help guide here to familiarise yourself with the functionalities that Shopify Tax currently offers.

Have you opened your Shopify store yet, or are you still in the process of doing so? Let me know if there's anything you're currently working on that you need help with. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this Shopify Learn video to help you set up your store in no time!