Form an LLC, start selling online, and you've signed up for a question most founders don't know exists: at what point does another state get to tax my sales? Until 2018 the answer was physical presence — offices, staff, warehouses. Then the Supreme Court's South Dakota v. Wayfair decision let states tax sellers based on sales volume alone, and within two years virtually every state with a sales tax had adopted an economic nexus rule. Cross a state's threshold and you must register with its tax authority, collect its sales tax, and file its returns — whether or not you could find the state on a map.
This page covers when the obligation starts. What you owe, which products are taxable, and how to file are per-state questions beyond one guide — but the trigger points below are each verified against the state tax authority that enforces them, because this is a dataset where popular guides rot fast.
The default: $100,000 — and a vanishing transaction test
Most states copied South Dakota's original rule: economic nexus at $100,000 in annual sales into the state, or (originally) 200 separate transactions. That second prong created an absurdity: a seller of $5 stickers could owe registration in a state where they'd earned $1,000, while a seller of two $40,000 machines owed nothing. States have been quietly deleting it — and the symbolism is hard to beat: South Dakota itself, the state that won Wayfair, repealed its 200-transaction test effective July 1, 2023 (per the SD Department of Revenue). Alaska's commission followed on January 1, 2025. If a guide you're reading still lists transaction counts for every state, that's a sign of its age.
The exception states — verified against each tax authority
| State | Threshold | The fine print that matters | Official source |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | $500,000 | Preceding or current calendar year; sales by 'related persons' are combined; marketplace-facilitated sales count toward the total — but if ALL your California sales run through registered marketplaces, you may not need to register yourself | CDTFA |
| Texas | $500,000 | Preceding 12 months; once crossed, permit required by the first day of the fourth month after. Texas's franchise-tax nexus ALSO triggers at $500,000 — cross one, check the other | TX Comptroller |
| New York | $500,000 AND >100 sales | The only both-tests state among the giants: meet the dollar figure without the transaction count and you're NOT required to register. Lookback = preceding four sales-tax quarters; register within 30 days of crossing | NY Tax Dept. |
| Alabama | $250,000 | Previous calendar year, counting only sales made directly by you (not marketplace-facilitated). Alabama also offers the flat-8% Simplified Sellers Use Tax program instead of tracking local rates | AL Dept. of Revenue |
| Mississippi | $250,000 | Any twelve-month period — a rolling window, not a calendar year; the state calls it 'substantial economic presence' | MS Dept. of Revenue |
| Alaska | $100,000 — with no state sales tax | The strangest entry: Alaska levies no statewide sales tax, but its cities and boroughs do, and the Alaska Remote Seller Sales Tax Commission requires registration at $100,000 in statewide gross sales. The 200-transaction prong was removed effective Jan 1, 2025 | ARSSTC |
| South Dakota | $100,000 only | The Wayfair state itself — transaction test repealed July 1, 2023 | SD Dept. of Revenue |
Every jurisdiction: the full 51-row table
Compiled from the Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board's official state guidance — an intergovernmental body of the states — retrieved August 23, 2026, and cross-checked directly against eleven state tax authorities (California, Texas, New York, Alabama, Mississippi, Alaska, South Dakota, Illinois, Utah, Connecticut and Maine). One error in the aggregate chart was caught and corrected in that process: Connecticut's tests are joined by and, not or — the same both-tests structure as New York, which most guides miss. Details that matter, like whose window is rolling and whose is calendar-year, are stated per state. Download the full table as CSV (CC-BY, reuse with attribution).
| State | Sales threshold | Transaction test | Measured over |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | $250,000 | None | Prior calendar year (direct sales only) |
| Alaska | $100,000 | None — removed 1/1/2025 | Previous or current calendar year · no state sales tax; local taxes via ARSSTC |
| Arizona | $100,000 | None | Current or previous calendar year |
| Arkansas | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Current or preceding calendar year |
| California | $500,000 | None | Preceding or current calendar year (related persons combined) |
| Colorado | $100,000 | None | Current or previous calendar year |
| Connecticut | $100,000 AND 200 retail sales | Both required | Twelve-month period ending September 30 |
| Delaware | — | — | No statewide sales tax |
| District of Columbia | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Previous or current calendar year |
| Florida | $100,000 (taxable sales) | None | Previous calendar year |
| Georgia | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Previous or current calendar year |
| Hawaii | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Current or preceding calendar year |
| Idaho | $100,000 | None | Current or previous calendar year |
| Illinois | $100,000 | None — removed 1/1/2026 (the newest repeal) | Preceding 12 months |
| Indiana | $100,000 | None — removed 1/1/2024 | Previous or current calendar year |
| Iowa | $100,000 | None | Previous or current calendar year |
| Kansas | $100,000 | None | Current or preceding calendar year |
| Kentucky | $100,000 | or 200 sales | Previous or current calendar year |
| Louisiana | $100,000 | None | Previous or current calendar year · all fees rise 10/1/2026 under Act 921 |
| Maine | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Current or previous calendar year |
| Maryland | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Previous or current calendar year |
| Massachusetts | $100,000 | None | Preceding calendar year |
| Michigan | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Previous calendar year |
| Minnesota | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Any 12 consecutive months |
| Mississippi | $250,000 | None | Any prior 12-month period (rolling) |
| Missouri | $100,000 | None | Previous or current calendar year (adopted 1/1/2023 — the last state in) |
| Montana | — | — | No statewide sales tax |
| Nebraska | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Prior or current calendar year |
| Nevada | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Prior or current calendar year |
| New Hampshire | — | — | No statewide sales tax |
| New Jersey | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Prior or current calendar year |
| New Mexico | $100,000 (taxable gross receipts) | None | Previous calendar year |
| New York | $500,000 AND >100 sales | Both required | Preceding four sales-tax quarters |
| North Carolina | $100,000 | None — removed 7/1/2024 | Previous or current calendar year |
| North Dakota | $100,000 | None | Previous or current calendar year |
| Ohio | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Current or preceding calendar year |
| Oklahoma | $100,000 (taxable sales) | None | Preceding or current calendar year |
| Oregon | — | — | No statewide sales tax |
| Pennsylvania | $100,000 | None | Previous 12 months |
| Rhode Island | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Previous calendar year |
| South Carolina | $100,000 | None | Previous or current calendar year |
| South Dakota | $100,000 | None — removed 7/1/2023 (the Wayfair state itself) | Previous or current calendar year |
| Tennessee | $100,000 | None | Previous 12 months |
| Texas | $500,000 | None | Preceding 12 calendar months |
| Utah | $100,000 | None — removed 7/1/2025 | Previous or current calendar year |
| Vermont | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Preceding 12 months |
| Virginia | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Previous or current calendar year |
| Washington | $100,000 | None | Preceding or current calendar year |
| West Virginia | $100,000 | or 200 transactions | Preceding or current calendar year |
| Wisconsin | $100,000 | None | Previous or current calendar year |
| Wyoming | $100,000 | None — removed 7/1/2024 | Previous or current calendar year |
Reading notes: “or 200 transactions” means either test alone triggers the duty — the low-price-seller trap. Only Connecticut and New York require both tests at once. Twelve states plus Alaska's commission have now dropped the transaction test entirely, eight of them since 2023 — with Illinois the newest, effective January 1, 2026. Thresholds count different bases in different states (gross sales, retail sales, or taxable sales — Florida, Oklahoma and New Mexico count only taxable receipts), so a seller near a threshold should confirm the basis on the state's own page before concluding anything.
The four states with no sales tax at all
New Hampshire, Oregon, Montana and Delaware impose no statewide sales tax, so there is no economic-nexus registration to trigger — selling a million dollars into Oregon creates no Oregon sales-tax duty. (Alaska traditionally completes this 'NOMAD' list, but as the table shows, its local-tax commission makes it the exception that proves nothing: no state tax, real registration duty.) Note the mirror image, familiar from our Delaware and state guides: forming your LLC in a no-sales-tax state does nothing for nexus — the obligation follows where your customers are, not where your LLC lives. A Delaware LLC selling $600,000 into California owes California registration exactly like anyone else.
Marketplaces changed most of the answer
If you sell through Amazon, Etsy, eBay or Walmart, marketplace facilitator laws — now in every sales-tax state — make the platform collect and remit on your marketplace sales. For a seller who sells only through marketplaces, that removes most of the day-to-day burden, and in some states (California explicitly) it can remove the registration duty itself. Two cautions the platforms won't give you: marketplace sales frequently still count toward your threshold, so your own-website sales can inherit an obligation your Etsy volume created; and using Amazon FBA means your inventory sits in Amazon's warehouses across many states — physical presence you didn't choose, which creates old-fashioned physical nexus in states whose economic thresholds you'll never touch.
What crossing a threshold actually obligates you to do
Register with the state's tax authority (every state runs an online portal; several participate in the multi-state Streamlined Sales Tax registration), then collect the right rate on taxable sales, then file returns on the state's schedule — including $0 returns in most states once registered, the same file-even-when-nothing-is-owed trap as every other compliance system. The deadlines are real: New York gives you 30 days from crossing; Texas gives you until the first day of the fourth month. What this page deliberately won't tell you is whether your specific products are taxable in a specific state, or how to remediate past uncollected tax — those are questions for the state's own guidance or a sales-tax professional, and any page that answers them generically for all 46 states is guessing.
Why this belongs on a registered-agent site
Because it's the same lesson every page here teaches: compliance obligations follow activity, not incorporation paperwork. Your LLC lives in one state; your registered agent sits there; your annual report goes there. But taxes follow your customers, employees create insurance duties where they work, and selling across the country quietly makes you a taxpayer in states you've never visited. The formation boom is minting hundreds of thousands of first-time online sellers a year, and nexus is the compliance wall most of them hit first — usually via a letter from a state they didn't know they owed.