Skills / Tax

Sales and use tax reconciliation

What it does

Reconciles filed sales and use tax returns to the sales ledger and the general ledger, jurisdiction by jurisdiction and period by period, and rolls the liability forward.

Sales tax is the exposure that grows quietly. It is trust-fund money — collected from customers and held for a jurisdiction — and in most states an unremitted balance attaches personally to responsible persons. Unlike income tax, there is often no statute of limitations running in the taxpayer's favour where no return was ever filed, so an unfiled jurisdiction compounds indefinitely.

Three failures produce nearly all of the damage, and none of them appear on the face of a return: collected but not remitted, sales in a jurisdiction with no return and no documented conclusion, and marketplace sales double-reported. So this starts from the ledger and works outward. Marketplace-facilitated sales are tracked separately throughout — in most states they count toward the facilitator's obligation rather than the seller's, and aggregating them produces registrations the client does not need.

What it proves

Six tests, and no clean workpaper unless:

  • Gross sales per all returns reconcile to GL sales revenue, with every difference named — exempt, out-of-state, marketplace-facilitated, intercompany, freight, discounts, returns.
  • The liability rollforward foots — beginning + tax collected per the GL − tax remitted = ending, and the ending balance is explainable as amounts not yet due.
  • Every jurisdiction with sales activity is accounted for — a return filed, or a written nexus conclusion on file. Silence is not an answer, and a jurisdiction with activity and no return cannot be explained away with a reconciling item.
  • Effective rates are derived from the returns themselves — tax reported ÷ taxable sales, per jurisdiction per period, compared across periods.

It asserts no rate and no nexus threshold. Rates are derived rather than looked up, which is what lets it find a rate that never changed in a jurisdiction that changed its rate. The nexus output is a screening schedule with an instruction to confirm each state's current threshold — not a conclusion.

What you get

Seven tabs:

  1. Reconciliation — the gross sales bridge, the liability rollforward, and the six test results. The signable page.
  2. By Jurisdiction — sales, taxable, exempt, tax collected, reported, remitted, derived rate, and differences, per jurisdiction per period.
  3. Nexus Screening — direct sales, marketplace sales, transaction counts, registration and filing status, and the confirmation instruction per jurisdiction.
  4. Liability Rollforward — beginning to ending, with the excess over the final period's liability isolated.
  5. Rate Analysis — derived effective rate by jurisdiction by period, with movement flagged.
  6. Exempt Sales — by jurisdiction and customer, certificate status, and the exposure at the derived rate where no certificate exists.
  7. Exceptions & Memo — unexplained differences, escalations, and the figures requiring confirmation against current authority.

Where it stops

It screens; it does not conclude on nexus. Every threshold has to be confirmed against the state's current rules, and the schedule says so on its face.

Tax collected and not remitted, sales in a jurisdiction with no return, exempt sales with no certificate quantified at the derived rate, use tax never accrued, registration in a jurisdiction with no activity — each is reported as a fact with figures. Whether to file a voluntary disclosure, amend, or register is a decision for the person signing.