Collect tax in Pennsylvania

When to register for tax collection

See Thresholds to get insights about your potential tax registration obligations in Pennsylvania. Stripe also notifies you with email and Dashboard alerts when you need to register to collect tax. Learn more about how the monitoring tool works.

Sellers who meet the nexus threshold must register for a Pennsylvania sales tax permit, collect sales tax on sales that ship into Pennsylvania, and remit that sales tax to the state.

Those who don’t meet the economic threshold must make an election by March 1 of every year and do one of two things:

• Register for a Pennsylvania sales tax permit, collect sales tax on sales that ship into Pennsylvania, and remit that sales tax to the state.
• Comply with the state’s notice and reporting requirements.

Threshold: 100,000 USD

Period: Previous year

Included transactions: Gross sales

Effective date: 1 July 2019

Register to collect tax

Register for sales tax in Pennsylvania at the tax authority. Read more about registering for sales tax in the US in our guide.

After you’ve registered to collect tax in Pennsylvania, go to Registrations to add your registrations to Stripe in the Dashboard. This turns on tax calculation and collection in Stripe for your transactions in Pennsylvania.

Customers in the city of Philadelphia or Allegheny County owe use tax on purchases from remote sellers outside those locations. If you are a remote seller you can voluntarily collect and remit these local taxes on their behalf. You’ll be able to indicate whether you want to collect these local taxes as part of adding your registration to Stripe.

Learn how to add your registration in the Dashboard.

How we calculate taxes

If your origin address is in the US and differs from your customer’s state, Stripe always calculates tax based on your customer’s location.

If your customer is in Pennsylvania and your origin address is also in Pennsylvania, Stripe applies tax based on your origin address, depending on the type of product or service you sell.

Sellers based in Philadelphia city or Allegheny County will have the local tax calculated automatically. If you are a remote seller and selected the local taxes for Philadelphia city and Allegheny County in Stripe then we will calculate and collect that additional tax. You can change this by editing the tax registration on the Dashboard.

Report and file your taxes

Stripe provides reports of your completed tax transactions. Go to Registrations to access these reports.

Exports

The tax transaction data export provides a comprehensive and aggregated view of transactions by location, including a breakdown of individual tax amounts. Learn more about tax reporting exports.

Location reports

Location reports offer a summary of transaction and refund data for specific US locations and align with Pennsylvania filing requirements. You have the option to report on an annual, semi-annual, quarterly, or monthly basis.

Reporting-specific considerations:

• You’ll only see amounts under Allegheny county and Philadelphia city sections if you chose to voluntarily collect local taxes or have an origin address in these jurisdictions.

Filing

You are responsible for filing and remitting your taxes to Pennsylvania. Stripe doesn’t file taxes on your behalf. For automating filing in the US, we recommend using TaxJar’s AutoFile solution.