King County (WA) Sales Tax

The sales tax is paid by the consumer to the business. The business then collects the sales taxes and pays them out to the Department Of Revenue. Sales taxes are paid on qualifying goods, otherwise known as taxable goods. Sales taxes also apply to taxable services. Not every product or service sold qualifies for sales taxes. Some are sales tax exempt.

On the category of sales exempt, there are various items and services. These depend on the type of business that is selling them and depends on the state. Various states have different rules when it comes to sales exempt items and services. Sales tax exempt are also businesses that are qualified as non-profit.

To get more information on sales taxes, you can check this link. You will get info about what should a business do to collect taxes, about the applicable laws that determine how a business pays sales taxes and how to determine the appropriate sales tax for a newly established business. It is imperative to know that the tax rate that a business charge depends on its nexus, otherwise known as a place of incorporation.

Some areas have very small sales taxes. Starting, we have Alaska, which has a sales tax of 1.76%. We need to be mindful that products and services are very expensive in Alaska. Moving on with the list, we have Oregon, Delaware, Montana, and New Hampshire that have a 0% sales tax rate. If you need information regarding the ranking of states based on sales taxes, you can check this page.

There are some special goods and services that do not qualify for the sales tax rate but instead are charged another rate. The most common category of these items falls under the excise tax. This is a special tax rate that is charged to gas, fuel, tobacco, and other goods that are heavily regulated by the government. Some services qualify for excise tax, such as using the highway. Air travel is in this category too.

A sales tax certificate is a document that allows a business to make sales-tax-free purchases of goods and services that it intends to reuse for business and to later sell and collect sales tax on. Some states allow buyers and businesses that engage in frequent transactions to create a blanket certificate. This is a simplified version of the sale certificate, and it is valid for a specified amount of time.

Sellers that do not have a large volume of transactions do not even need a sale certificate. Such is the case of garage sales. Some states offer direct payment certificates, which allow for the purchasers to not pay any sales tax to their sellers, but they pay everything to the government directly. There are numerous intricate scenarios and for this, you need a good CPA or a sales law specialist to better guide you.

45 states (do not levy these taxes in the states Alaska, Oregon, Delaware, Montana and New Hampshire) and the District of Columbia impose general sales taxes that apply to the sale or lease of most goods and some services, and states also may levy selective sales taxes on the sale or lease of particular goods or services. States may grant local governments the authority to impose additional general or selective sales taxes.