Tips for marketplace sellers filing your Washington sales tax return

Some marketplaces (including Amazon, Walmart and Etsy) began collecting Washington state sales tax on behalf of marketplace sellers in 2018. You can read more about this change to Washington marketplace sales tax here.

If you are a marketplace seller on one of these platforms and you have sales tax nexus in Washington, you are still required to file a Washington sales tax return. Beginning with tax periods January 1, 2018, Washington now asks that you do the following on your sales tax returns:

  • Continue to break down any sales tax you collected from customers by city, county and special taxing district.
  • Report any sales tax a marketplace collected on your behalf on your Washington sales & use tax filing by choosing the option "Retail Sales Tax Collected by Facilitator" and then entering the amount of sales tax that a marketplace collected on your behalf in the "RST Collected by Facilitator" box. (In this case, "Facilitator" means the marketplace that collects sales tax on your behalf.)

If you'd rather outsource your Washington combined sales tax and B&O return, TaxJar can AutoFile this return for you.

Here's how to use your TaxJar report to manually file your Washington sales tax return:

Now, your TaxJar Washington state report is broken down just the way the Washington Department of Revenue wants to see your sales tax filing.

Your TaxJar Washington state Report now includes a new line section for "Marketplace Sales" and a line for "Retail Sales Tax (RST) Collected by Facilitator." 

When you file:

  • Don't forget that Washington still requires all online sellers with nexus in Washington to pay B&O tax on your gross sales, even if all of your Washington sales were Marketplace sales. You will still see this section when manually filing your Washington state sales tax return.
  • Enter the Gross Sales from your TaxJar Report and then click "Add Deduction" to report the Marketplace Sales total from your TaxJar Report.

Enter the "Marketplace Sales" total amount from your TaxJar Report under "Deduction" as "Retail Sales Tax (RST) Collected by Facilitator" on your Washington state sales tax filing.

From there, the Washington tax form still requires that you break down any other non-Marketplace sales tax you collected from customers by city, county and special taxing jurisdiction.

  • If you have non-Marketplace sales imported into your TaxJar account, your TaxJar Washington State Report will include ONLY those amounts in your local breakdowns.
  • Ignore this step during filing if all of your sales were Marketplace Sales