Economic nexus thresholds (mostly $100K or 200 transactions — but 14 states are different). Physical nexus from install crews and service trucks crossing state lines. Three-year back-tax lookback when an auditor finds you. Voluntary disclosure agreements to clean up retroactive exposure without penalty. Different from e-commerce nexus — this is the hardware-and-install version, where a single rooftop solar job in Idaho can trigger a registration obligation that lasts decades.
Where you're headquartered, what you sell, total revenue. Defaults are a mid-size hardware reseller — UPS systems / power equipment / drones / generators — with multi-state customer base.
The states where you ship hardware. Revenue per state determines economic nexus crossing. We've prefilled 10 common multi-state-vendor footprint states with typical mid-size hardware-operator revenue distributions — edit to match your actual numbers.
Select the states you ship hardware into:
Annual revenue + transaction count by state (only selected states matter):
Where your crews go physically. Different from shipping — physical presence (install, service, commissioning, training-on-site) triggers nexus regardless of economic threshold. For most hardware operators, this is the bigger exposure.
For each state you sell into, do you also perform install / service in-state?
Where you're already registered and collecting. And — the exemption-certificate hygiene gap that audit defense lives or dies on.
States where you're currently registered and collecting sales tax:
The map of where you've crossed economic or physical thresholds and what to do about it. Voluntary disclosure paths flagged where retroactive exposure is meaningful.
The CFO & Controller's Guide covers the full compliance workflow — nexus methodology, VDA strategy, exemption-certificate hygiene, audit defense, software evaluation. The Business Operators Blueprint adds the operating side — instrumenting your install crews and service trucks so your accounting team has visibility before the state does.
Educational and informational purposes only. This calculator and any output it produces are intended solely for general educational and decision-support purposes. They do not constitute investment, tax, legal, accounting, or any other professional advice, and they do not create a fiduciary, attorney-client, accountant-client, or advisor-client relationship of any kind.
Estimates based on your inputs and current state rules. Sales-tax economic-nexus thresholds, physical-nexus rules, exemption categories, registration procedures, lookback periods, and voluntary disclosure terms vary by state and are amended by state legislatures and revenue departments routinely — sometimes multiple times per year. Results here are a planning estimate, not a legal compliance determination. The Baratelli Institute, its affiliates, and any co-branding professional make no warranty of accuracy, completeness, currency, or fitness for any particular purpose, and disclaim all liability for decisions made in reliance on the output.
Consult your own qualified professionals. Before acting on anything calculated here — especially before filing a voluntary disclosure agreement, responding to a state audit notice, or registering retroactively in any state — consult your own attorney, CPA, or sales-tax specialist licensed in the relevant jurisdictions who has reviewed your specific facts and applicable current law. The Baratelli Institute is a publisher of practitioner reference material. It is not a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, law firm, accounting firm, or tax-return preparer.
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