Sales tax by state.

When you cross that state’s economic nexus threshold. In 47 jurisdictions a remote seller who does not keep an office, staff, or stock in the state still has to register once sales into it pass a set figure. That figure is $100,000 in most states, $250,000 in Alabama and Mississippi, and $500,000 in California, Texas, and New York. Physical presence — an employee, a warehouse, or inventory sitting in a 3PL — creates the obligation immediately, before any threshold applies.

Yes, in 15 states. They count separate transactions alongside revenue, so a low-price, high-volume catalog can cross the line on order count long before it crosses on dollars. New York and Connecticut are the two exceptions that work the other way: both thresholds have to be met, not either one, so a seller who passes only the dollar figure does not register there.

Almost always the customer’s. Most states use destination sourcing, which means the rate is set by the delivery address down to the local jurisdiction. A handful source differently: Texas sends in-state sellers to their own location, and California splits the rate, with the state and county portions following the seller and district taxes following the buyer.

It depends on the state and, in several of them, on how the invoice is written. Some states tax delivery on a taxable order outright. Others exempt it when it is separately stated, which means a combined “shipping and handling” line can make the whole charge taxable where a split line would not have been. Each state page shows the rule and what has to be true for the exemption to hold.

A marketplace facilitator — Amazon, Walmart, Etsy, eBay — collects and remits on the sales it processes, in every state that taxes. Shopify is not a marketplace: it is your own store, so those sales are yours to collect on. The trap is the threshold. Several states count your marketplace sales toward the figure that makes you register, so you can owe a registration for your direct sales because of volume you never touched.

Apparel is treated differently in 7 states. Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Vermont exempt it outright. Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island exempt it under a price cap, applied per item rather than to the order, so a single garment above the cap is taxed on the amount over it while the rest of the basket stays exempt.

The Streamlined Sales Tax registration covers 24 member states in one application, and it is free. It does not cover the large states — California, Texas, New York, and Florida all run their own registration — but it removes most of the paperwork for the rest.