Economic Nexus Thresholds for International Sellers: 2026 State-by-State Guide

The complete 2026 picture of every dollar threshold, transaction count, measurement window and marketplace rule that decides when a non-US ecommerce seller has to register, collect and remit U.S. sales tax.

What Economic Nexus Is, Stripped of Jargon

Economic nexus is the rule that says a U.S. state can force you to register for its sales tax, charge it to your customers, and pay it across to the state — purely because you sold a defined amount into that state. It does not matter whether you live in the state, ship from the state, have staff in the state, or own anything in the state. If your sales into that state in a given period cross the state’s threshold, you are caught.

I’m Paul le Roux, a Chartered Accountant with the ICAEW and CA(SA), and our team has spent more than two decades helping cross-border businesses untangle exactly this kind of multi-jurisdictional tax problem. The reason I’m leading with that introduction is because most international sellers we meet still believe that selling into the U.S. “from outside” gives them some kind of shield. It does not. The rule that ended the old physical-presence test — South Dakota v. Wayfair — applies to a foreign seller on identical terms as to a Texas-based one. If you want the underlying constitutional story, read our walk-through of South Dakota v. Wayfair. If you are not yet sure you are caught at all, start with whether non-US sellers need to charge U.S. sales tax.

This article is the operational reference. It tells you, state by state, the dollar threshold, the transaction threshold (if any), the measurement period, what kind of sales count, whether marketplace channels get added to your total, and how long you have to register once you cross the line. As of May 2026, 45 states plus Washington, D.C. impose economic-nexus rules on remote sellers. The picture is moving — 16 states have now eliminated the old 200-transactions alternative entirely, Kentucky is due to drop it on 1 August 2026, and Illinois completed its elimination on 1 January 2026. We have built the table below to reflect the position as it stands in mid-2026.

How the Threshold Test Works

Strip the rules back to mechanics and every state’s economic-nexus test is built from four moving parts.

One: a dollar threshold. The most common figure is US$100,000 of annual sales into the state — the level South Dakota itself used and the level the Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board endorsed as a presumptive national baseline. Approximately 35 states sit at US$100,000. Alabama and Mississippi sit at US$250,000. California, Texas and New York sit at US$500,000.

Two: a transaction threshold, in some states. The legacy figure is 200 separate transactions delivered into the state during the measurement period. Crossing that count alone — even if your dollar volume is modest — has historically been enough to trigger nexus. As of 2026, 16 states have abolished this alternative entirely, 13 never adopted it, and 16 still apply it (Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia among them).

Three: a logical operator — “OR” or “AND”. Almost every state uses “OR” logic: you trigger nexus if you cross either the dollar threshold or the transaction count. Only two states use “AND” logic, requiring you to cross both: Connecticut (US$100,000 AND 200 transactions) and New York (US$500,000 AND 100 transactions). The “AND” logic makes New York and Connecticut technically harder to trigger than their dollar figures alone suggest.

Four: a measurement period. The window over which the state counts your sales. Some states look back at the previous calendar year only. Most look at the current or previous calendar year (a dual window — whichever crosses first triggers nexus). A handful, including Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas, use a rolling preceding 12 calendar months. Missouri uses a preceding 12 months reviewed quarterly. New York uses its own four sales tax quarters. Connecticut uses a 12-month period ending on 30 September. The choice of window is what determines exactly when your obligation begins.

Layered on top of these four mechanics, two further questions decide whether the test even catches you: what type of sales count (gross, retail, or taxable), and whether your marketplace sales are added in. Both vary by state and both are covered in their own sections below.

Complete 2026 Threshold Table — All 45 States with Sales Tax + DC

The table below is the centrepiece of this guide. It shows, for every U.S. jurisdiction that imposes a statewide sales tax (or its functional equivalent), the current dollar threshold, the transaction component (if any), the measurement window, and which type of sales are counted toward the threshold. Confirm the current figure with the relevant Department of Revenue before relying on it for a specific filing — these rules continue to move.

That is 46 jurisdictions — the 45 states with a statewide sales tax plus the District of Columbia. Hawaii and New Mexico operate transaction taxes (the General Excise Tax and Gross Receipts Tax respectively) rather than traditional sales taxes, but they apply equivalent economic-nexus thresholds and we have treated them as in-scope. The five states with no statewide sales tax — Alaska (at state level), Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon — are covered in the next section.

States with No Statewide Sales Tax (and the Gotchas)

The famous “NOMAD” acronym — New Hampshire, Oregon, Montana, Alaska, Delaware — captures the five states without a general statewide sales tax. For an international seller it is tempting to read that list and conclude these five are free zones. They are not. Each one carries an alternative regime that can still create a U.S. compliance obligation.

Alaska. No state-level sales tax, but more than 100 municipalities and boroughs impose local sales tax at rates from 0 to 7.5 per cent. To centralise compliance, most of the participating jurisdictions registered with the Alaska Remote Seller Sales Tax Commission (ARSSTC). The ARSSTC threshold is US$100,000 in gross statewide sales in the current or previous calendar year — and Alaska eliminated its 200-transaction alternative on 1 January 2025. Once you cross the threshold you must register with ARSSTC within 30 days and collect tax in every participating member jurisdiction. Holding inventory in a specific Alaskan municipality establishes physical nexus there separately and requires direct registration with that jurisdiction rather than through ARSSTC.

Delaware. No sales tax, but Delaware levies a gross receipts tax on businesses selling goods and services in the state, plus annual business licensing obligations. The mechanics differ from sales tax — the tax is on the seller, not the buyer, and rates vary by business activity — but it is a real compliance burden if you have meaningful Delaware-sourced revenue.

Montana. No general sales tax. The only carve-out is an 8 per cent tax on hotel rooms, short-term rentals and similar lodging arrangements. If your business is ecommerce in physical goods, Montana is genuinely a clean state. If you are a vacation rental operator or short-term lodging platform, you do have a registration.

New Hampshire. No general sales tax, but an 8.5 per cent meals and rooms tax on hotel rooms, short-term rentals and prepared food and beverages. Again, a clean state for typical ecommerce sellers; not for accommodations or food-service platforms.

Oregon. No general sales tax, but the Corporate Activity Tax (CAT) applies to businesses with Oregon-sourced commercial activity above US$1 million per year (registration threshold is US$750,000). The CAT computes as US$250 plus 0.57 per cent of Oregon commercial activity above US$1 million, with a 35 per cent subtraction for certain business expenses. Unlike post-Wayfair sales-tax thresholds, Oregon’s CAT nexus standard is fact-intensive — “substantial nexus” rather than a bright-line dollar figure — which creates real ambiguity for international sellers. Portland additionally runs its own local business tax with separate registration.

The takeaway: “no sales tax” never means “no obligation”. It means “check the alternative regime first”.

The Big Trend: Why Most States Are Killing the 200-Transactions Rule

The single most important compliance trend of 2024-2026 is the elimination of the 200-transactions threshold. Sixteen states have removed it entirely, Kentucky drops it on 1 August 2026, and a further 13 states never adopted it in the first place. That leaves 16 jurisdictions still applying a transaction component — about a third of those with a sales tax — and the direction of travel is clearly toward revenue-only thresholds.

The reason is that the 200-transactions rule generated very little additional tax but created a great deal of disproportionate compliance burden. The rule was designed in 2018 to catch high-volume, low-value sellers who would not otherwise hit a US$100,000 dollar threshold. In practice it produced absurd outcomes. A bulk equipment distributor making fifty sales of US$2,000 each — US$100,000 in revenue — would not trigger nexus in a state with both thresholds applied as an “OR”. But a digital-goods seller pushing 201 transactions of US$100 each — US$20,100 in revenue — would. The state would then face all the administrative overhead of registering, supporting and auditing the second seller for the sake of US$20,100 of tax base.

States have concluded that the transaction count is a high-cost, low-yield mechanism. South Dakota itself — the state that originated the post-Wayfair framework — dropped its transaction component on 1 July 2023. California eliminated its component back in 2019. Wisconsin removed it in 2021. Maine in 2022. Indiana in 2024. Louisiana in 2023. North Carolina and Wyoming in 2024. Utah in 2025. Illinois in 2026. Kentucky scheduled for 1 August 2026.

The states still applying a transaction threshold tend to fall into two clusters. The first are middle-population states whose legislatures simply have not yet revisited the original 2018 design: Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. The second are the two “AND” states — Connecticut and New York — where the transaction count is part of an intentionally higher combined bar, not an additional alternative.

For an international seller the implication is twofold. First, transaction count still matters in 16 jurisdictions, so you cannot ignore it. Second, in states that have eliminated the transaction threshold but where you were previously registered solely because you crossed the 200-count, you may now fall below the dollar threshold and revert to a non-collecting status. Illinois explicitly addressed this in its 1 January 2026 elimination — sellers who had met only the transaction count during a prior lookback were moved to voluntary use tax status if they did not meet the US$100,000 revenue bar by 31 December 2025.

Do Marketplace Sales Count Toward Your Threshold?

If you sell through Amazon FBA, Etsy, Walmart Marketplace, eBay, TikTok Shop or any other facilitator platform, this section is critical. The platform is required by every state’s marketplace facilitator law to calculate and remit the tax on your behalf for those marketplace transactions — but that is a separate question from whether those same transactions count toward your economic-nexus dollar (and transaction) totals.

Marketplace sales included in your threshold (the majority pattern — roughly 30 states). California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming all add your marketplace sales to your direct sales when measuring whether you have crossed their thresholds. That means an Amazon seller with US$300,000 of Amazon-facilitated California sales plus US$50,000 of direct Shopify-checkout California sales is sitting at US$350,000 of California revenue — short of the US$500,000 trigger but a clear amber light. The same seller would be over the US$100,000 threshold in any other included-marketplace state.

Marketplace sales excluded from your threshold (the minority pattern — roughly 15 states). Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming exclude marketplace facilitator sales from individual seller threshold calculations. Only your direct sales count. That is genuinely helpful for sellers whose volume is concentrated on Amazon — a foreign FBA seller with US$300,000 of Florida sales entirely on Amazon and zero direct-store sales has no Florida individual registration obligation. Louisiana has nuanced rules that treat marketplace facilitators differently for the purposes of what counts toward the threshold (retail-only) versus what direct sellers count (all gross sales).

The strategic point is that the same shipping footprint can put you above the threshold in one state and below it in another, depending purely on how that state treats your marketplace volume. We deal with the underlying platform rules in our explainer on marketplace facilitator laws, and the platform-specific guidance for Amazon FBA sellers is in our Amazon FBA guide for international sellers.

Gross Sales vs. Taxable Sales — A Costly Distinction

The dollar threshold is only as useful as the definition of the dollars you are measuring. States divide into three camps.

Gross sales (the broadest definition). All revenue into the state counts, whether or not it would have been taxable. Exempt sales, resale transactions, B2B wholesale orders, sales to nonprofits — they all add to your threshold figure. The states using a gross-sales definition include Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Illinois (now), Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri (partial), Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. A seller with US$60,000 of taxable sales plus US$50,000 of exempt resale orders has US$110,000 of gross sales — over the US$100,000 line — even though the actual tax base is only US$60,000.

Retail sales (the middle definition). Direct retail sales count; wholesale and resale transactions supported by valid resale certificates are typically excluded. Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois (technically uses “retail”), Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia operate variations of this definition. The retail-sales standard is fairer for B2B-heavy sellers, but it imposes a higher record-keeping burden: you must document every wholesale exemption claim and produce a valid certificate on audit, or the transaction slips back into the threshold.

Taxable sales (the narrowest definition). Only sales that would actually be subject to tax under that state’s law count toward the threshold. Florida (taxable retail sales), New Mexico, Oklahoma and Arkansas use a taxable-sales approach. The same seller with US$60,000 of taxable sales and US$50,000 of exempt sales has only US$60,000 toward the threshold — well below the US$100,000 trigger.

The costly part of this distinction is that an identical sales pattern can trigger nexus in one state and not trigger it in a neighbouring state. International sellers running multi-channel B2B and B2C operations must keep their accounting books in a form that can produce all three views: gross, retail and taxable. Without that, you cannot calculate the threshold in 46 jurisdictions on a single spreadsheet.

When Does the Clock Start? The Grace Period in Each State

Crossing a threshold is only the first half of the compliance problem. The second half is registering and starting to collect tax within the state’s grace period. Get this wrong and you become liable for the tax you should have collected from your customers between the threshold-crossing date and the date you finally registered — and you cannot in practice recover it from buyers who have long since closed their orders.

The variation across states is enormous. Five broad patterns capture it.

Next-transaction states (no grace period). Arkansas, California, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma (effectively), Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming require collection from the very next sale after the threshold is crossed. Compliance practice generally accepts a one- to two-business-day window for actually completing registration, but conceptually there is no buffer.

30-day grace period. Florida, Kentucky, Nevada, New Jersey, New York and Washington allow approximately 30 days from threshold-crossing to register and begin collecting. The clock starts on the date you crossed.

60- to 90-day grace period. North Dakota and Colorado operate in this band. Colorado specifically aligns to the first day of the month after 90 days exceeding the threshold.

Month-aligned deadlines. Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Vermont all use “first day of the following calendar month” or “first day of the second calendar month” or similar logic. This gives you administrative clarity — you know exactly which date your collection obligation begins.

Multi-month windows. Tennessee gives 75-plus days (first day of the third month following the month of threshold-crossing). Texas gives a three-month window (by the first of the fourth month following). Missouri uses quarterly determination. These are the most generous timelines and reflect specific legislative choices to lighten the load on remote sellers.

The compliance discipline is to set up a monthly internal review that flags every state where your current-year-to-date revenue is within 20 per cent of the threshold. The cost of monitoring is invariably lower than the cost of missed-registration penalties.

Why International Sellers Cross Thresholds Faster Than They Realize

One pattern we see repeatedly with international clients is that they discover, mid-conversation, that they crossed thresholds in four or five states two years ago without realising it. A few structural reasons drive this.

The first is foreign-exchange dazzle. A South African seller looking at Rand-denominated revenue and seeing R3.5 million of U.S. orders will not instinctively translate that into U.S. dollars on a state-by-state basis. R3.5 million at a R18 to the dollar exchange rate is just under US$200,000 — easily above the US$100,000 threshold in any state where the bulk of those orders shipped. UK sellers translating from GBP, Indian sellers from INR, and Australian sellers from AUD face the same psychological gap.

The second is the under-counting of marketplace volume. An Amazon seller sees their U.S. settlement statement and naturally treats those proceeds as “Amazon’s problem” for tax purposes. In 30-plus states, the gross volume still counts toward the individual seller’s nexus threshold even though Amazon remits the tax. A seller with US$400,000 of Amazon California revenue and US$80,000 of direct Shopify California revenue has total California exposure of US$480,000 — below the US$500,000 trigger, but a single dollar of further direct-website growth and they are caught and must register for the direct channel.

The third is the four-largest-states effect. California, Texas, New York and Florida are by far the largest consumer markets in the U.S. and the first states where most international sellers cross any economic-nexus threshold. Three of these four sit at elevated thresholds (California and Texas at US$500,000, New York at US$500,000 plus the 100-transaction “AND” trigger), but Florida sits at the US$100,000 baseline with a previous-calendar-year measurement. A modest U.S. footprint of US$120,000 a year that happens to concentrate in Florida triggers Florida nexus immediately.

The fourth is the rolling 12-month trap. Sellers who plan around the calendar year are often blindsided by states using rolling 12-month windows (Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas) or quarterly-reviewed 12-month windows (Missouri, Minnesota). A seller exceeding US$100,000 on 15 March 2026 in Illinois is caught immediately — they cannot wait until 31 December to assess.

The fifth is the seasonal effect. A seller with holiday-heavy revenue concentrated in November and December can cross a threshold late in the year and remain unaware until they prepare year-end accounts in February — by which time, in next-transaction states, the back-tax exposure is already a quarter of accumulated sales.

Done-For-You: How We Monitor Threshold Crossings for Cross-Border Clients

Sales Tax Compliance USA is a done-for-you service built specifically for non-US ecommerce businesses that need their U.S. sales tax problem solved without becoming part-time American tax practitioners themselves. We are not a software subscription, we are not a self-service portal, and we are not a referral firm that hands you a checklist and disappears.

What we do operationally: we pull your sales data on a rolling basis — direct-channel sales from Shopify, WooCommerce or your custom checkout, and marketplace sales from Amazon, Etsy, Walmart, eBay and TikTok Shop — and reconcile every order to its destination state. We apply each state’s specific measurement period, sales-type definition (gross, retail or taxable), marketplace-inclusion rule and transaction-count test to produce a single monthly nexus dashboard showing, per state, exactly where you stand against the threshold. Yellow-zone states (within 20 per cent of the threshold) get flagged for the following month. Green-zone states get scheduled for registration so you do not blow a grace period.

When you cross a threshold, we register you with that state’s Department of Revenue end-to-end — including the EIN application (IRS Form SS-4) for foreign entities, the state-specific sales tax permit application, the sourcing of your ITIN or foreign identification number for states that require it, and the bank-account and remittance-method set-up. We then file your monthly, quarterly and annual returns in every state where you are registered, and we respond on your behalf to any audit notice that arrives.

You receive one consolidated invoice from us in your home currency where possible. The underlying state tax remittances are paid on your behalf out of a managed compliance account funded from your settlements. You see one dashboard, sign one engagement, and stop worrying about the 46-jurisdiction patchwork. For the wider catalogue of state-specific guidance, see our full state guides directory.

If you have read this far because you suspect you have already crossed thresholds in two or three states without registering, the right next step is a free threshold audit. We will pull a 24-month look-back of your shipping data and tell you exactly where you stand — no obligation, no upsell.

Book a Free Threshold Audit

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

The 2026 economic-nexus landscape is more rational than it was in 2019. The transaction threshold is steadily being scrapped, the dollar threshold is settling at US$100,000 in most states, and three big consumer states (California, Texas, New York) have signalled with their elevated US$500,000 trigger that they understand the difference between meaningful market engagement and inadvertent cross-border spillover. That is progress.

What has not changed is the underlying compliance fragmentation. Forty-six jurisdictions, six different measurement windows, three different sales-type definitions, two different marketplace-treatment rules, five different registration timelines and an “AND” versus “OR” logical operator that varies by state. No two states are quite the same. For an international seller building this from scratch, the realistic options are either to dedicate a substantial in-house U.S. tax function to it or to outsource the entire problem to a specialist done-for-you service that already runs the playbook across all 46 jurisdictions. The cost difference between the two is usually decisive.

Whichever route you choose, the one piece of advice that matters most is to monitor threshold status monthly, not annually. The cost of a quarterly nexus report is trivial compared with the cost of a single back-tax assessment in California or Texas. Build the monitoring before you need it — not after a Department of Revenue letter lands in your inbox.