Taxes

Finally, you need to stay on top of the confusing tax laws that apply to e-commerce businesses. You need to charge sales tax on a transaction if a state government decides you have a nexus with its state.

“Having nexus” in a state basically means that you’re doing business there. The tricky part is that many states define this differently — it could depend on your physical presence in the state, the number of transactions you do within the state, whether you gain revenues from an affiliation with a business or person in the state, or whether you use cookies or software on devices within the state. If you do have nexus in any given state, then you’ll need to register for the state sales tax permit.  

All of this will be legally required, so you won’t have any say in how you organize your sales taxes. But you will be able to decide how much of this process you reveal to your customers. Most customers expect to see the amount of sales tax included in their transactions.

However, providing a description of how this amount is calculated couldn’t hurt, either. Again, the more information you give your customers, the more knowledgeable and empowered they’ll be to make the right decisions.