What Ecommerce sales-tax rate do I charge buyers if I have a retail store in Maui, but drop-ship from Oregon?
your doing the sale,not the drop shipper.you are the buyer from the drop shipper,so the order is tax exempt,even if you live in the same state. when someone orders from you,you don't charge any tax if they live outside of your state. in this case the buyer is responsible for tax in their state. you charge the state sales tax if someone orders in your state. if counties or cities have different rates,you charge the rate your business resides in.
Unless "you" have a physical presence in the state, you do not need to charge any sales tax. You charge sales tax only for orders shipped to Hawaii assuming that you don't own the drop shipping company.
You are only required to collect sales tax on states which you have a "nexus" (physical presence). You would have to charge any of your customers in hawaii the hawaian tax rate. You have no obligation to oregon sales tax. Although the product is being shipped from oregon, the business transaction is between you and your customer, and the dropshipper is not you. The dropshipper only has a transaction with you. Look at it like this. You are in hawaii, you have a friend in oregon (friend 1) who is in possession of a personal belonging. You decide to sell that belonging to another friend in oregon (friend 2) and friend 1 just hands the belonging over. The sale took place between you and friend 2. Friend 1 just delivered. I hope that makes it more clear.
Actually, this is no longer true. Even though this thread is more than a year old. If the drop shipper has a nexus in a bunch of states, there's a chance that those states are going to require sales tax even though the business themselves do not have a presence there. This is a state by state basis, but many states are now considering a 3rd party dropshipper or a 3rd party distribution center a nexus, thus making the seller liable for tax in those states. I know this personally, because we have some suppliers that drop ship for us, and through many arguments with states and theirs and our attorneys, it's pretty clear that sellers are liable for tax in these some states that their drop shippers are located. This is part of the Amazon vs states sales tax battle, and small online retailers are getting pulled into it. Here's a quick overview of the mess as stands: http://www.salestaxadvisors.com/v4.2/tax/drop/ Bottom line is that if the drop shipper is registered to collect tax in a state, most likely the seller has to as well even though they aren't registered there nor do they have a presence/nexus. States like Oregon are an exception since they have no sales tax.