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Compliance

RESALE
CERTIFICATES.

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A US wholesale sale to a reseller is exempt from sales tax when the buyer holds a valid certificate for the state the goods land in. The part almost everyone gets backwards: the exemption belongs to the DOCUMENT, and at audit the state asks the SELLER to produce it.

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What to know
Three conditions, all at once
A certificate counts only if it is verified, covers the destination jurisdiction and has not expired. Checking two of the three produces a confident wrong answer in the direction of undercharging, which is the expensive direction.
  • Verified — not merely filed by the party claiming the exemption
  • In jurisdiction — a California certificate does not exempt a Texas shipment
  • Unexpired — a lapsed certificate exempts nothing, retroactively or otherwise
"They are a business" is not an exemption
A wholesale sale without a certificate on file is taxable exactly as a consumer sale is. The buyer being a reseller is irrelevant without the paperwork, and the state pursues the seller for the uncollected tax rather than the buyer who should have supplied it.
The seller needs to be able to produce it
At audit you are asked for the document you relied on. GRAJ shows every certificate that exempted an order YOU sold — with the buyer, the order count and the sales base it covered — because being liable for a document you cannot reach is the position this record exists to prevent.
Elsewhere the mechanism is different
Canada has no resale certificate for GST/HST at all: the buyer pays and recovers it as an input tax credit. Europe zero-rates cross-border B2B under the reverse charge. Carrying the US instinct across either border is a systematic under-collection.
Where to go next
TAX EXEMPT
In your account — sign in and it opens on your own figures.
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SALES TAX
In your account — sign in and it opens on your own figures.
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GLOSSARY
Every term on GRAJ, defined in plain words.
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GRAJ

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