A short YouTube guidance by Donna Genie advising new campground owners to set up sales tax accounts before opening, use resale certificates when purchasing inventory for resale, and register and post sales tax licenses in-store. She warns that sales-taxability (e.g., accommodations, groceries) and rates vary by state and local jurisdictions, notes New Hampshire and Montana lack sales tax, and recommends lining up an accountant early to ensure correct collection and compliance.
All right. In our continuing journeys of things that a new campground owner needs to know as you prepare to open the door, you'll want to make sure that you have a sales tax account already established. And this assumes that you are in a state that has sales tax. Only New Hampshire and Montana in the US Are the only two states without sales tax currently. Make sure that you have that sales tax account before you attempt to buy inventory for your store as well. Remember that when you're buying inventory or anything that you're going to resell, you should not be paying sales tax on it initially. You should be using a resale certificate so that you don't pay sales tax because you are going to collect sales tax from the final end user of that product in your camp store. Also, when you start collecting that, you should already be registered before you open your doors. In most states, they are going to require that you post your registration somewhere in your store to prove that you've registered and have a license to operate. Make sure that you're collecting the right amount of sales tax and you may have to investigate a little bit from your area on how things are taxable. Things like accommodations, groceries, other things have specific rules by state and they differ by state. So in our case, when our new clients come on board, the other issue with sales tax is that we're going to investigate all of the things that they might be potentially selling to make sure that the taxation is correct and the right rates are in effect. Rates are pretty tricky because they may be state rates. They may also go down to local county rates or even down to cities and municipalities having specialized rates. So don't get caught in that trap. Make sure that your sales tax is set up long before you open and that you understand what your sales tax collection policy should be. Ultimately, if you fail to collect the correct sales tax, guess who has to pay it? You do. So we don't want to make that mistake and cut out all our profit. As you look at approaching opening a campground or any business for that matter, it is very important to have your accountant partner lined up long in advance if you're opening a campground. I'm your girl. I'm Donna Bordeaux with campgroundaccounting.com Sam.
