We are headed into a very busy season for a lot of you! The ten biggest sales days of the year happen in November and December. Holiday shopping is one reason for the boost but even grocery retailers have a spike as everyone prepares for their special occasion meals, events, and gifts. 

Collecting, calculating, reporting and paying sales tax continues to be confusing for many merchants and after a holiday sales boom, you do NOT want to be caught with your also increased January sales tax bill!

As you know, you collect the sales tax with each transaction, the more transactions, the more sales tax you need to keep aside to pay to your state in January.

Here are a few tips to make sure you don’t get caught off-guard with your January tax filing:

• Refresh your memory on what you paid last year – Start with what you know. Look at your books from last year and at least get a baseline by looking at what you paid last December and November so you have that top-of-mind.
• Make sure you are collecting sales tax correctly – A quick call or visit from your accountant, POS rep, accounting person, Quickbooks expert or a few minutes on your state’s Department of Revenue site and you should be able to just make sure you are set up to collect sales tax correctly. 
• Keep your records organized – On this same visit from one of the experts listed above, make sure your records are clean and easy for you to read so when you are ready for filing time, you aren’t scrambling for information.
• Create a system to save your sales tax – Soften the blow of January’s tax bill by keeping track more regularly and set up a system to pull that money aside. Perhaps run a weekly report in your POS and move your sales tax over to a separate savings or checking account.
• File on time – Filing late will get you a decent fine so make sure you file early. 27 states actually reward you for filing on time. We have a list of which states reward you for good behavior over here. 

OR…

Put sales tax on auto-pilot and don’t worry about a thing

You can also sign up for DAVO and we will take care of all of your sales tax holdings and filings for you! As an added bonus, if you sign up for DAVO’s automatic sales tax collection and filing service through your POS system before December 15th and we will file your taxes in January for FREE – on time and in full. Guaranteed. Get started and get all the details here. 

We want you to have the very best holiday season ever. Avoid the sales tax hangover and make sure you are ready for January and let’s start the new year off right!