If the marketplace collects the tax, do I still register?
Often yes. A facilitator rule moves the duty to collect on platform sales to the platform; it does not generally erase the seller from the picture. Registration, return-filing or documentation duties frequently survive the shift, and they survive it state by state rather than as one answer everywhere. There is also usually a second channel: sales made direct, through the seller own store or by invoice, where nobody else is collecting anything. The useful way to hold this is that the platform has taken over one part of one obligation. What is left belongs to the seller, and what is left differs between the places you sell into.
Do I have to file a return for sales the platform taxed?
In many places you do, and the return is not empty. It typically has to show the gross sales figure and then remove the part on which the platform collected, so the taxable line reconciles to what you actually remitted. That is why a facilitator rule does not remove the compliance work so much as change its shape. Sellers who stop filing on the assumption that no liability means no obligation accumulate missed returns, and missed returns are noticed independently of whether any tax was due. Check, for each place you are registered, what has to be reported rather than what has to be remitted.
How do I reconcile platform collected tax to my own books?
Treat it as a recurring monthly reconciliation rather than a year-end exercise. The inputs are the platform settlement or tax reports, your own sales ledger, and the returns you file. The items that cause the differences are predictable: refunds and returns processed in a later period than the sale, orders shipped from a different place than they were invoiced from, currency conversion, and fees netted off settlement. Agree how each of those is handled and write it down, so the same treatment is applied every period. What you want at the end is a schedule tying gross sales to the platform-collected amount and to the figure on your return.
Do my marketplace sales count towards my own thresholds?
That is a state-by-state question and one worth settling early, because it decides whether your direct sales alone put you over. Some places include everything you sold into them, whoever collected the tax; others leave out sales where the platform took the duty on. The answer changes the size of the figure you are testing, sometimes dramatically for a seller whose volume sits mostly on a platform. So the monitoring has to hold two figures per place — total sales and direct sales — and apply whichever the local rule asks for. One combined number cannot answer both versions of the test.
I sell on a platform and from my own website, what changes?
The split is the whole issue. Platform orders sit under the facilitator rule and the platform collects; orders taken on your own site are ordinary sales and the duty is yours, which means registration where you have an obligation and collection at the right rate. Two channels, two treatments, one set of accounts. The practical requirement is that the accounting system can tell the two apart at transaction level, because every return, every reconciliation and every threshold test depends on that division. Where it cannot, the figures have to be rebuilt by hand each period, and that is where the errors get in.
The platform tax report does not match my sales figures, why?
Usually because the two are measuring different things rather than because either is wrong. Settlement reports are built around when money moved and your ledger around when the sale was made, and the two part company over refunds, cancelled orders, replacement shipments and anything straddling a period end. Fees deducted before settlement narrow the figure further, and orders fulfilled from a different location can be attributed elsewhere. Work through the categories one at a time and quantify each, rather than looking for a single explanation for the whole difference. Once the categories are known the reconciliation becomes a short routine and the gap stops being alarming.
What is double taxation?
Double taxation means the same income being taxed by two authorities. It comes in two forms: juridical, where two countries each tax one person on one amount, and economic, where two different people are taxed on the same underlying profit — a company on its earnings and a shareholder on the dividend paid out of them. Relief comes from a treaty, a foreign tax credit, or an exemption, and which one applies depends on the income type. How to avoid double taxation sets out the routes.
How many days can I spend in a country before I become tax resident?
It depends on the country, and a day count is only ever the start. Many use a threshold in a tax year, some also look at averages across several years, and some have no day test at all and decide on where your home and life are. Two countries can both conclude you are resident, which is what the treaty tie-breaker exists to settle. Counting days without checking the tie-breaker is how people end up filing as resident nowhere. See the residency tie-breaker.
