Unsure where you owe sales or use tax or dealing with legacy compliance pain?
Check Your ExposureExposure cleanup is the process of understanding, prioritizing, and addressing past sales tax and use tax obligations. The right approach depends on scope, jurisdictions, time periods, and how the business has grown. Cleanup should never start with registration or filing. It should start with clarity. These guides are designed for serious businesses that are growing or already operating at scale and want to fix exposure without creating unnecessary disruption.
Cleanup is easiest when you can answer:
Cleanup is simplest when you can answer a few core questions before acting. Without clarity, businesses often register too broadly, file unnecessarily, or lose leverage with jurisdictions.
Most businesses resolve exposure using one or more of the following paths, depending on risk, size, and internal resources.
Businesses typically choose from:
Each path has tradeoffs. The goal is to choose the least disruptive option that still moves the business toward compliant operations.
Not all jurisdictions create the same level of risk at the same time. Effective cleanup depends on prioritizing where action matters most rather than reacting everywhere at once.
A good plan typically prioritizes:
If thresholds are the driver, review economic nexus by state. Prioritization is critical for mid market and enterprise businesses managing exposure across multiple jurisdictions.
Many businesses discover that sales tax exposure and use tax exposure overlap in time and reporting. If you have not reviewed use tax yet, see use tax explained. Ignoring use tax during cleanup often leads to incomplete remediation and future audit risk.