There's no single yes/no answer — it's a state-by-state check. Here's the order to work through it in, so you're checking the right things instead of guessing.
Updated 10 July 2026. General information, not tax advice — always confirm with your state's Department of Revenue or a tax professional.
Whether you sell direct-to-consumer, through Shopify, or across marketplaces, the underlying question is the same in every state: do you have physical nexus, economic nexus, or neither? Work through these in order.
This isn't just your home state. It includes any state with a remote employee or contractor, a warehouse or office, inventory in a third-party fulfillment center (including Amazon FBA — see our FBA nexus guide), or, in some states, regular trade-show or event attendance. Physical nexus applies regardless of how much or little you sell there.
Most economic nexus thresholds are measured over the current or previous calendar year, or a rolling 12-month window. You need total sales dollars and transaction counts by state — from every sales channel, not just one. This is the step most sellers underestimate the effort of.
Check each state's dollar threshold (commonly $100,000, but $500,000 in California, Texas, and New York, and $250,000 in Alabama and Mississippi) and, where it still applies, its transaction-count threshold. Our state-by-state reference has the current number and measurement period for all 50 states plus DC. Watch for New York and Connecticut, which require you to cross both thresholds, not just one.
If some of your sales run through Amazon, Etsy, Walmart, or a similar marketplace, that platform is legally required to collect and remit tax on those specific sales in every state with a sales tax. But whether those sales still count toward your own threshold varies by state, and marketplace collection doesn't necessarily cover your direct or Shopify-channel sales. See our marketplace facilitator laws guide for the details.
Once you've confirmed nexus in a state, the next step is registering for a sales tax permit there — not collecting tax first and registering later. Collecting without a permit can itself create compliance problems. See how to register for a sales tax permit.
If your sales are concentrated in one or two states, or you're pre-threshold everywhere but your home state, a manual review once a quarter is usually manageable. If you sell across many states, run multiple channels, or are growing quickly, manually re-checking 50 states' thresholds against your own numbers becomes its own part-time job. That's the specific problem a monitoring tool like NexusRadar is built to solve — it doesn't file anything for you, but it tells you where you stand and flags states you're approaching, so registration decisions are yours to make with current numbers instead of stale ones.
Your home state, in almost all cases, plus any state where you have physical presence such as an office, remote employee, or stored inventory. Beyond that, it depends on your sales volume into each state relative to that state's economic nexus threshold.
It depends on the state. Some states count marketplace-facilitated sales toward your economic nexus threshold even though the marketplace collects the tax; others exclude them. Check the specific state's rule, since this affects whether you cross the threshold at all.
Then that's generally the only state where economic nexus applies to you, in addition to any state where you have physical nexus. Thresholds are evaluated state by state — crossing one state's threshold doesn't affect your status in any other state.
Regularly, not once. Thresholds are measured over rolling or annual periods, so a business that's growing can cross a new state's threshold at any point during the year. Many sellers check monthly or quarterly, or use a monitoring tool that checks continuously.
Confirm the specifics with that state's Department of Revenue or a sales tax professional before doing anything. States vary in how they treat past unregistered periods, and some offer voluntary disclosure programs with reduced lookback periods — but the right move depends on your facts, so this is not something to guess at.