A plain-English look at who needs a sales tax license, what's taxable, and how to stay compliant.
Published July 2026 · General information, not personalized tax advice — see note below.
If you sell tangible goods, or certain taxable services, to customers in Maryland, you generally need to register with the Comptroller of Maryland for a sales and use tax license before you make your first taxable sale — not after. This applies to brick-and-mortar shops, online sellers with a Maryland presence, and in many cases out-of-state sellers who exceed a sales or transaction threshold into Maryland (often called "economic nexus"). Whether your specific product or service is taxable, and whether you've crossed a nexus threshold, both depend on current Maryland rules that are worth confirming for your situation rather than assuming.
Maryland taxes most retail sales of tangible personal property, plus a defined list of services (certain digital products, some repair and installation services, and others). Plenty of common transactions are exempt or taxed differently — resale purchases, certain food items, and various business-to-business transactions among them. The list of what's taxable is set by Maryland law and does change, so if you're launching a new product or service line, it's worth checking before you price it rather than after a customer asks why (or doesn't ask, and you find out at audit time).
Registering gets you a sales and use tax license and a filing frequency (monthly, quarterly, or annually) based on your expected sales volume. Once registered, you collect tax on taxable sales, hold it in trust for the state, and remit it on your filing schedule — Maryland doesn't wait until year-end to see that money.
Even in a period with zero taxable sales, a registered business generally still needs to file a return showing that — skipping a filing because "there was nothing to report" is a common and avoidable mistake that can generate penalty notices for a return that was never filed.
Operating without a required sales tax license, or collecting tax without remitting it, can expose a business to back taxes, penalties, and interest reaching back further than most owners expect — sales tax problems tend to compound quietly until an audit surfaces them all at once.
If you're starting a business that sells goods or services in Maryland, or you're expanding into online sales, registration status is one of the first things worth getting right — it's a quick conversation up front versus a much harder one after the fact.
A note on this article: this is general information for Maryland small businesses, not tax, legal, or accounting advice for your specific situation. Taxability, nexus thresholds, and filing requirements are set by the State of Maryland and can change — always confirm current requirements at marylandtaxes.gov, or talk with our team about your situation before acting on it.