You can owe US sales tax on ebooks, templates, presets and courses, but only once your sales into a state pass its economic nexus threshold, and only if that state taxes your kind of digital product. The usual trigger is $100,000 in sales or 200 transactions into one state in a year. Sell through a marketplace like Gumroad or Etsy and the platform normally collects the tax. Sell from your own site and the job is yours.
Economic nexus decides when a state can ask you to collect
A state can require an out-of-state seller to collect sales tax based on sales volume alone, no office or warehouse needed.
That became the rule when the Supreme Court decided South Dakota v. Wayfair on June 21, 2018, as Avalara's summary of the decision lays out. Before that, a state could only make you collect if you had a physical presence there.
South Dakota's law became the template. You create nexus once your sales into the state pass $100,000 or 200 separate transactions in the current or prior year. The law covers tangible goods, services and "any product transferred electronically," according to Avalara's Wayfair FAQ. That last phrase is what pulls an ebook or a preset pack into scope.
Two details catch small sellers off guard. The threshold is per state, so you can owe nothing in forty states and still cross the line in one busy one. And states set their own numbers. Some have dropped the transaction count and look at dollars only, because 200 small digital sales are not the same burden as 200 car sales. Look up the current figure for any state where your sales are climbing.
Calculator resting on printed financial charts beside a laptop
Whether a state taxes your product is a separate question
Crossing a threshold only matters if the state taxes what you sell, and digital goods are taxed unevenly.
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The Delivvo team
Delivvo runs the client cycle for service businesses: inquiry, quote, contract, deposit and delivery. Payments go straight to your own account.
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Most states with a sales tax tax at least one category of digital goods, such as ebooks, digital audio, digital video or downloaded software. Numeral's digital goods guide tracks the state-by-state table, including Puerto Rico. A handful of states with a sales tax leave downloads alone, so look up your own product in your own top states instead of assuming.
The category label matters as much as the state. One state may tax an ebook as a "specified digital product" and exempt cloud software. Another may tax "prewritten software" and ignore a downloadable PDF. Software as a service is its own fight and it is growing. Since 2024, Vermont ended its exemption for remotely accessed software (July 1, 2024), Louisiana began taxing it (January 1, 2025) and Maryland added a 3% tax on data and IT services (July 1, 2025), according to the Sales Tax Institute. Other states have passed or scheduled SaaS taxes that run into 2027.
Even the odd corners can matter. Texas taxes "data processing services," which the Texas Comptroller says includes things like web hosting. If you are unsure whether your product is taxable somewhere, answer that before you worry about thresholds.
A marketplace usually collects the tax for you
If you sell through a marketplace, the marketplace normally has to calculate, collect and remit the sales tax on those orders.
A marketplace facilitator lists a seller's products, takes the customer's payment and pays the seller, as Avalara's state-by-state guide to marketplace facilitator laws defines it. Most states with a sales tax now have such a law. For you, that is a clean upside: on marketplace sales you often do not register or file for those orders at all. The tax appears as a line the buyer pays, not money out of your pocket. Check each platform's own tax help page for the exact states it covers.
Two cautions apply. Marketplace sales can still count toward your nexus totals in some states, so keep the platform's reports. And "the platform handles it" only holds for sales made on that platform. The moment you sell through your own checkout, a payment link or a client invoice, the duty comes back to you.
Your own site makes you the seller of record
If you sell from your own checkout, no facilitator stands between you and the state, so you collect once nexus exists.
The sequence is simple to state and easy to ignore:
You make sales into a state that taxes your product.
Your sales into that state pass its threshold, often $100,000 or 200 transactions.
You register with the state's tax authority, collect the right rate at checkout and file returns on its schedule.
Two points save real headaches. Your home state may expect you to register from your first sale, because you have a physical presence there. And most small sellers moving a few thousand dollars of presets across the country are nowhere near $100,000 in any single state, so they may owe nothing yet. "Yet" is the word to watch. Keep a running tally of sales by state so you see a threshold coming instead of finding out a year after you crossed it.
Laptop on a desk showing code and design work
If you are choosing between a marketplace and your own store mainly because of tax, the trade is convenience against control. The Gumroad vs Payhip vs Ko-fi comparison goes through which platforms handle tax and what they charge for it. Packaging your work as a productized service helps too, because you are tracking one product line instead of a dozen custom quotes.
A tracking habit beats a tax department
You do not need an in-house team. You need four habits, repeated every quarter:
Record gross sales and transaction counts for each state.
Note which of those states tax your specific product.
When a state gets close to its threshold, register, turn on collection at checkout and file on time.
Save the platform remittance reports for marketplace sales so you can show the tax was handled.
When you sell into many states, a sales tax tool or an accountant costs less than one penalty notice. Pair this with a regular freelance tax routine and sales tax turns into a checklist. This is general information, not tax advice, so check it with your accountant before you register anywhere.
How Delivvo keeps direct sales and client work on paper
Delivvo does not calculate or file US sales tax. What it does is keep the paper trail clean for the part of your business that does not go through a marketplace: the work you quote, contract and invoice yourself.
If you sell a service alongside your digital products (a custom template build, a course setup, a branding package), the flow looks like this:
A client fills in your inquiry form and lands on your lead board.
You send a quote built from your packages and add-ons.
The client signs and pays the deposit on one link, and Delivvo creates the client, project, contract and invoice from that single step.
Invoices carry your business details, a sequential number in your format and a Tax Invoice title, and you can void one or issue a credit note if something changes.
The client pays through your own gateway. Stripe, PayPal, Tap, Telr, PayTabs and others are supported, and Delivvo takes 0% and is never the merchant of record.
The detail a spreadsheet will not give you: every invoice, receipt and contract carries a verification code, so an accountant or a state auditor can check a document against the record. Sales by client and by project sit in one place, which makes your per-state tally much easier to build at quarter end. If you need to prove when a customer paid and for what, the record already exists.
Do I owe sales tax on an ebook I sell to one customer in another state?
Almost certainly not on a single sale. You only have to collect once you cross that state's economic nexus threshold, commonly $100,000 or 200 transactions in a year, and only if the state taxes digital products. One ebook does not get you there.
If Gumroad or Etsy collects the tax, do I still have to do anything?
For those marketplace sales, usually not, because the platform collects and remits as a marketplace facilitator. Keep the reports anyway. Some states still count those sales toward your nexus totals, and anything you sell off the platform is your responsibility.
Which states should I watch most closely?
The ones where your sales are growing and that tax your product type. Look up your top three states first. If you sell software access, track the recent SaaS tax changes in states like Vermont, Louisiana and Maryland.
Is sales tax the same as income tax?
No. Sales tax is collected from your buyer and passed to the state. Income tax is charged on your profit. You can owe income tax on every dollar you earn and still owe no sales tax if you never cross a nexus threshold.
The short version
Three questions decide everything: does the state tax your product, have you crossed its threshold, and did a marketplace already handle the sale? Track sales by state, register when a line is close, and check the details with your accountant.
Delivvo runs the whole client cycle for service businesses, from the first inquiry to the quote, contract, deposit, invoice and delivery, so every direct sale has a numbered invoice and a clean record when tax time comes. Clients pay you directly through your own gateway, and Delivvo takes 0%. Start free
