Sales tax compliance has changed more in the last several years than in the previous few decades, and the pace isn't easing. For firms building or expanding a sales tax practice, it's worth understanding not just where things stand today but where enforcement and regulation are heading, because that shapes how much this work will matter to clients over the next several years.
Everything below is what I'm seeing in the field, not a prediction dressed up as one.
The most significant shift is largely invisible to business owners: states are getting better at pulling data from marketplaces, payment processors, and fulfillment networks to identify unregistered sellers. A business storing inventory in a third-party warehouse, or selling through a marketplace that reports seller activity, is increasingly likely to show up on a state's radar even if it has never filed anything there.
That's a real change from enforcement that leaned on self-reporting and random audit selection. Data-driven identification means a state can reach out to a business that crossed a threshold rather than wait to stumble on it during an unrelated audit. The practical takeaway for firms: the era of an unregistered client quietly flying under the radar indefinitely is closing. The data trail exists now, in the client's inventory locations, marketplace reports, and processor records, even when the business itself has no idea it's there. In my experience, the seller is usually the last one to understand their own footprint.
As state budgets stay under pressure, sales tax has become an attractive place to focus, because it's real revenue often going uncollected through compliance gaps rather than deliberate evasion. What I'm seeing points toward more attention on remote and multi-state sellers specifically, not less.
For firms, that raises the stakes on getting nexus reviews right the first time instead of treating them as a one-time onboarding exercise. A client who was fully compliant two years ago can easily carry new exposure today from channel growth, a fulfillment change, or simply crossing a threshold that wasn't close before.
Marketplace facilitator laws felt like a settled rule once most states adopted them. In practice, the details keep moving. States periodically adjust which transaction types qualify for marketplace collection, how it interacts with a seller's own direct sales, and how sellers have to document marketplace-collected sales on their own returns even when they aren't the ones remitting. I still see confusion regularly over whether marketplace sales count toward a seller's nexus threshold, and the answer genuinely differs by state.
Firms that treat marketplace collection as a fixed, one-time fact rather than something to re-verify risk missing updates that change what a client needs to track and report, even when the platform is handling the collection.
As more of the economy shifts to digital products, subscriptions, and services, states are actively rewriting their codes to capture revenue that didn't exist in the same form when most sales tax statutes were written. What counts as a taxable digital product, and at what rate, varies widely by state and keeps changing as legislatures catch up to how businesses actually sell. A few states even treat certain software and digital sales differently for nexus counting than for taxability, which is the kind of nuance that quietly trips up a firm working from a two-year-old mental model.
This is a growth area for complexity precisely because it's unsettled. Firms serving any client with a digital or subscription offering should expect these rules to keep moving, not stabilize.
As e-commerce clients sell across borders, VAT and GST obligations that used to be a niche concern for firms with international clients are becoming relevant to a much broader set of domestic practices. What's striking is how they arrive. More and more, it's through logistics rather than a deliberate decision to expand abroad. A seller starts shipping internationally through a marketplace, or a third-party fulfillment arrangement, and a VAT or GST obligation follows the inventory across the border, often before anyone has thought of the business as an international filer. A client who starts out purely domestic can bring an entirely different compliance framework into the picture, one most U.S.-focused firms haven't historically needed to understand.
None of these point toward sales tax getting simpler or more static. They point toward a landscape where enforcement is more data-driven, obligations shift more often, and the range of situations a firm has to be ready for keeps expanding. Firms building a practice today aren't just solving today's compliance problem. They're positioning for an environment that will keep generating new complexity, which means the practice you build now needs a process for staying current, not a one-time setup that gets left alone.
Sponsored Content: This article is generously brought to you by one of our valued sponsors. Their support enables us to continue delivering expert insights and the latest industry trends to our dedicated community of accounting professionals.