US Sales Tax & Nexus Compliance
Know every state where you
owe. File in all of them.
Economic nexus analysis across all 50 states, registration with state departments of revenue, returns filed on every state cadence, exemption certificates managed, and voluntary disclosure agreements when there's past exposure to clean up.
Trusted by global businesses
Fifty states. Fifty sets
of rules. One seller.
Post-Wayfair, every state sets its own economic nexus rules, filing cadences, and exemption regimes. Fifty sets of rules, applied to every transaction you ship, and you owe from the day you cross a threshold, whether you noticed or not.
Nexus you crossed without noticing
Economic nexus kicks in at $100k or 200 transactions in most states. You can cross a threshold mid-quarter without knowing, and you owe back taxes from the day you did.
Marketplace sales that complicate the math
Marketplace facilitators collect on marketplace orders in most states, but those sales can still count toward your thresholds, and your direct channel remains your problem. Two channels, one exposure calculation.
Exemption certificates nobody is tracking
Every exempt sale without a valid certificate is a liability waiting for an audit. Certificates expire quietly, and most companies have no idea how many are missing until someone asks.
What you get
What the service includes.
Economic nexus analysis, all 50 states
Your transactions consolidated into one ledger tagged by ship-to state, run against every state's economic thresholds and physical signals: employees, inventory, 3PLs. The output is a state-by-state position, not a guess.
Registration with state departments of revenue
Sales tax permits in every state where you owe. We prepare the applications, handle the state correspondence, and deliver the permit.
Returns on every state cadence
Monthly, quarterly, or annually, per each state's assignment. Prepared from your transaction data, filed on time, with payment remitted and confirmed.
Marketplace facilitator handling
Marketplace and direct-channel sales tracked separately, each state's marketplace rules applied, and returns that correctly reflect what the marketplaces already collected.
Exemption certificates managed
Certificates collected from exempt customers, validated, and tracked for expiry. When an auditor asks, the certificate is a lookup, not a scramble.
Voluntary disclosure agreements
Where past exposure exists, we quantify it and run VDAs to limit lookback and penalties, state by state. Then the platform keeps you current so you never need another one.
Every state sets its own economic and physical nexus rules. This is the map we monitor your transactions against.
Where you owe sales tax in the United States.
How it works
From nexus study
to filed returns.
The same workflow whether you're registering in your first state or cleaning up years of unmanaged exposure.
Step 01
Nexus study
We connect your revenue systems and run a state-by-state nexus analysis: where you owe today, since when, and which states you're approaching.
Step 02
Register, or disclose first
Clean states get registered with the department of revenue. States with material past exposure get a VDA recommendation before registration, so you don't volunteer a liability you could have limited.
Step 03
First filings
Returns are prepared from your transaction data on each state's cadence. You review and approve, we file and remit.
Step 04
Monitored every month after
Exposure tracking keeps running against your live data, so the next state you're about to cross shows up as an alert, not as back taxes.
Check your exposure
Start with the
free tools.
Look up rates with the sales tax calculator, or read the state-by-state guide to economic nexus thresholds. When you want the analysis run on your actual transaction data, book a call.
Checkout-only,
or full compliance.
Calculating tax at checkout is the easy part. Registration, filing, remittance, certificates, and nexus are where the exposure actually lives.
The usual setup
A calculator at checkout and hope everywhere else.
- Nexus checked once, then never again
- Registrations filed where they weren't needed
- State cadences tracked in a spreadsheet
- Marketplace rules applied inconsistently
- Exemption certificates expired and missing
- Past exposure discovered by a state, not by you
Commenda US sales tax
The full lifecycle, every state.
- Nexus monitored continuously in all 50 states
- Registration only where you actually owe
- Returns filed on every state's cadence
- Marketplace and direct channels reconciled
- Exemption certificates managed end-to-end
- VDAs run before a state comes looking
Where it fits
Sales tax is one leg
of indirect tax.
If you also sell into VAT or GST jurisdictions, the same platform monitors, registers, and files there too. US states and 70+ countries on one calendar, fed by the same transaction data.
Common questions
In most states, economic nexus triggers at $100k in sales or 200 transactions, with California and New York at $500k. Physical signals like employees, inventory, and 3PLs create nexus separately. The thresholds vary by state and change, which is why we monitor them continuously against your transaction data instead of checking once a year.
First we quantify the exposure: which states, from when, and how much. For material past liability, a voluntary disclosure agreement can limit the lookback period and reduce penalties; for small exposure, registering and filing back returns is often simpler. We run the analysis, recommend a path per state, and execute it. VDAs take time, typically 12-18 months, which is one more reason to start before a state finds you.
In many states, yes. Marketplace facilitators collect and remit on marketplace sales, but those sales can still count toward your economic nexus thresholds, and your direct-channel sales remain your obligation. We track the marketplace and direct channels separately, apply each state's rules, and make sure returns reflect what marketplaces already collected.
When a customer buys for resale or is otherwise exempt, they give you a certificate instead of paying tax. If that certificate is missing or expired when an auditor asks, the liability is yours. Commenda collects certificates from your exempt customers, validates them, and tracks expirations, so an audit request is a lookup rather than a scramble.
The state assigns a filing frequency, usually based on your volume, and can change it as you grow. Commenda tracks the assignment in every state where you're registered and files on it: monthly, quarterly, or annually. Every deadline sits on one calendar with a confirmation per filing.
We connect to your revenue systems: Stripe, Shopify, NetSuite, QuickBooks, BigCommerce, Chargebee, and CSV for anything not native. Transactions are consolidated into one ledger tagged by ship-to state, which is what both the nexus analysis and the returns are built from.
Stop guessing where
you have nexus.
Book a 30-minute call. We'll run a nexus analysis on your transaction data and show you exactly where you have open obligations, at no charge, no obligation.
