Startups Stack Exchange Archive

Sales tax for e-commerce consumer-to-consumer platform like Etsy?

• posted by: romain on 2014-11-18
• tagged: united-states, taxes, sales, new-york, peer-to-peer
• score: 7

My friends and I are working on a platform for artists to sell their artwork. We do not own or store the art, but take a commission on the sale. See it as Etsy.

We are based in NYC and the LLC is registered in Delaware.

Should we charge for sales tax, or is the artist responsible for including sales tax in the artwork price?

If we do have to charge,

• should the tax be calculated on the artist’s nexus, or ours?
• should the artist collect the sales tax money or should we?
• what is the tax rate based on?
  • The artwork price,
  • the artwork price minus commission,
  • the artwork price and shipping cost, or
  • something else?

Answer 2942

• posted by: Laxiton6893 on 2015-01-09
• score: 1

Last I checked, sales tax is only applied to brick and mortar stores. Meaning if you have a store in a state, then you will have to pay sales tax for that state.

In your case you are not selling anything other then providing a services which is not taxable so you would not need to worry about it. Keep in mind you may need to file that income for that state around tax time but connect with a CPA for that.

---

All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.