Having new businesses open in your city is exciting. Waiting for those businesses to show up in your sales tax data? Not so much.

There are any number of reasons why a new business may not be in your data yet, including:

• The business hasn't been collecting sales tax
• The Comptroller hasn't been able to verify a new address
• They haven't reached the reporting threshold yet ($5,000 in total tax payments over the previous 12 months)

To aid with compliance of new businesses and sales tax collections, ZacTax has a feature called Pending Taxpayers. Simply add a sales tax permit ID and name, and we'll let you know when that new taxpayer shows up in your data automatically. 

A great time to collect this permit information is during the development process, particularly when it comes time to issue a certificate of occupancy. Adding a "sales tax permit number" field to your CO application ensures that your new business actually has a sales tax permit before they open to the public, and it reminds them to collect and remit taxes to your city.

We encourage you to ask for this information prior to new businesses opening in your city. And once you get the permit number, be sure to add it as a Pending Taxpayer so we can keep an eye out for you!