Maine has enacted new requirements for marketplace facilitators, effective October 1, 2019. Marketplace facilitators will be required to collect and remit sales tax on behalf of marketplaces sellers on sales of tangible personal property and taxable service facilitated through the marketplace and delivered into Maine if the marketplace’s sales exceed the state’s economic nexus thresholds.
A marketplace facilitator must register if they have, in the previous or current calendar year:
A marketplace facilitator’s gross sales include sales facilitated on behalf of marketplace sellers and any sales made directly by the marketplace facilitator.
A marketplace facilitator is defined as any person that facilitates a retail sale by providing a marketplace that lists, advertises, stores, or processes orders for tangible personal property or taxable services for sale by marketplace sellers and directly, or indirectly through an agent, contractor, or affiliated person, engages in activities such as transmitting communication between marketplace sellers and customers, collecting payment, fulfillment or storage services, customer service, or assisting with returns/exchanges.
A marketplace facilitator must provide marketplace sellers with a written statement in which the marketplace facilitator explicitly provides that the facilitator will collect and remit taxes on all taxable sales on behalf of the marketplace seller.
Once a marketplace seller receives this written statement from a marketplace facilitator, the marketplace seller shall exclude marketplace sales from their individual threshold calculation for economic nexus. A marketplace seller that is required to register with Maine due to substantial physical presence with the state or non-marketplace sales that exceed the economic nexus thresholds will not include receipts from marketplace sales in its total of taxable sales filed on its return. Finally, any marketplace seller that already is registered with the state and no longer meets the requirement to be registered should contact Maine Revenue Services.
Under the new legislation, room remarketers and transient rental platforms that arrange, offer, furnish, or receive consideration for the rental of living quarters in Maine are also required to register. (H.P. 1064, Laws 2019, effective October 1, 2019)