Selling Skincare Online: Sales Tax Rules for Med Spa E-Commerce and Marketplaces

The online skincare store usually starts as a convenience: a patient runs out of cleanser between visits and reorders from her phone. Then a follower in Atlanta buys the same cleanser, a brand offers the practice an affiliate storefront, and someone suggests listing a few products on Amazon. Within a year the practice has four sales channels, each with a different answer to who collects the sales tax, and a POS tax report that no longer describes what was sold.

This guide sorts out those channels for a med spa. It covers who the seller of record is in each one, how your own website's Florida sales are taxed, when another state's economic nexus threshold can make you register, what marketplace facilitator laws do and do not do for you, how shipping is taxed, and how to track thresholds with a report you already have. It builds on which med spa products and services are taxable, which covers the in-office rules.

Four channels, four sellers of record

Sales tax follows the seller of record, the party that takes the order and owes the state the tax. A med spa selling skincare online usually has up to four, and they are not interchangeable.

The fourth channel is the one owners most often misread. Several professional skincare brands run storefronts where the patient orders on the brand's website using your practice's code, the brand ships from its own warehouse and pays you a percentage. Read the agreement. If the brand is the seller, it collects the tax, the product never touches your inventory, and what you record is commission income, which is not a retail sale and does not belong on your sales tax return. If instead the arrangement has you fulfilling the order from your own shelf, you are the seller and every rule below applies. The two are booked differently and taxed differently, and the contract decides which one you have.

Your own website, starting with Florida

Your website is your store. Shopify, Square and the web stores built into med spa POS systems calculate tax at checkout, but only for the states you have registered in and switched on, and they do not file the returns unless you buy a filing service; Shopify's own documentation says it "doesn't remit sales tax for you" unless you enroll in its managed or automated filing. None of them is a marketplace. The practice remains the seller of record on every order, and our guide to med spa software and POS integrations covers how the web store's payouts should flow into QuickBooks.

In Florida that means a shipped order is taxed at 6% plus the surtax of the county where it is delivered, not the county your practice sits in. A Tampa practice (Hillsborough, 1.5%) shipping a serum to a patient in St. Petersburg (Pinellas, 1%) collects 7%, and to one in Orlando (Orange, 0.5%) collects 6.5%; the Department of Revenue's 2026 surtax table lists every county. Shipping has its own rule. Under Rule 12A-1.045, a delivery charge is not taxable when it is separately itemized and the buyer could avoid it by a choice of their own, such as picking the order up at the practice; it is taxable when it is built into the price or delivery is mandatory. A web store with a free-pickup option and a separately stated shipping line keeps shipping out of the tax base; one that bakes shipping into the price taxes it. Sunscreen and "medical grade" skincare are taxable in Florida unless dispensed under a prescription, and gift cards bought online are taxed when redeemed, not when sold.

Economic nexus: when another state can make you register

Since South Dakota v. Wayfair (2018), a state can require an out-of-state seller to register and collect once its sales into the state cross a threshold, with no store, employee or inventory there. Each state sets its own threshold, measures it over its own period and decides for itself whether marketplace sales count. The five below are the ones a Florida med spa most often asks about. These rules change; confirm any state before relying on a row.

For a med spa the dollar thresholds in Texas, California and New York are far away; a skincare line would have to ship half a million dollars into one state. The trap is the transaction count. Georgia's 200-order test is met by 200 orders of a $60 cleanser, which is $12,000 of sales, and Georgia counts the current year, so a practice can cross in October and owe Georgia collection for the rest of the year. Texas counts services as well as goods in "total Texas revenue," which does not matter for a skincare store but would for a practice billing Texas patients for virtual consultations. And thresholds count what you ship into the state, not where the patient lives: a Georgia patient who buys at your Tampa front desk is a Florida sale.

Marketplace facilitator laws: what Amazon collects and what it does not

Every state with a sales tax now has a marketplace facilitator law; Missouri was the last to add one, effective January 1, 2023. The marketplace calculates, collects and remits the tax on orders placed through it, under its own registration. Florida's version, section 212.05965, is explicit on the seller side: once the marketplace certifies that it collects, you "may not collect" on those sales and must exclude them from your own return. Marketplace orders do not appear on your DR-15 as gross, exempt or taxable sales, and a remote seller measuring Florida's own threshold is told to "consider only those sales made outside of a marketplace."

Texas takes the opposite view for its threshold: a remote seller must include "all sales in the safe harbor calculation, including marketplace sales," even though the marketplace collects the tax on them. Georgia includes them as well. So a practice with $70,000 of website sales and $40,000 of marketplace sales into Georgia has crossed Georgia's $100,000 test and must register and collect on the website orders, while the marketplace keeps collecting on its own. The same sales mix is under the line in a state that excludes marketplace orders.

Three bookkeeping points follow. Marketplace revenue is recorded gross, with the platform's fees as an expense, rather than as a net payout. Tax the marketplace collected never touches your Sales Tax Payable account, because you never collected it. And the Form 1099-K the marketplace or payment processor sends (a card processor reports regardless of amount; a marketplace or payment app once your gross payments exceed $20,000 and your transactions exceed 200) reports gross receipts before refunds, fees and shipping, so it will not equal your revenue and should be reconciled to it rather than booked from it. One contract point as well: many professional brands restrict where their products may be sold online. That is a question for the brand agreement, but it decides which of these channels you are allowed to have in the first place.

Tracking thresholds with a report you already have

Nexus tracking for a med spa is a quarterly habit, not software. The web store exports sales and order counts by ship-to state; the marketplace's order report does the same for its channel. Lay both against the threshold table, add the two where a state counts marketplace sales, and look at order counts as closely as dollars. Do the review in the same close that reconciles retail inventory, because every shipped order also has to leave the back-room count; our inventory guide covers that side. When a state crosses, the sequence is register first, switch collection on in the web store second, and never the reverse; the order of operations, and what to do if you are already late, is in sales tax nexus for med spas.

Worked example: a Sarasota practice adds an online store (illustrative)

Take an illustrative single-location practice in Sarasota, Florida, with two injectors, one aesthetician and about $1.8 million of annual revenue, that launched a skincare web store in January 2026 and listed a handful of products on a marketplace in June. By the end of October its online sales look like this.

Florida: the web store collected tax at the delivery county's rate on all $150,000; at a blended rate of about 7% that is roughly $10,500 for the ten months, remitted monthly on the DR-15 alongside the front-desk retail. Shipping was separately stated with a free in-office pickup option, so it was not taxed. The $12,000 of marketplace orders delivered in Florida were taxed and remitted by the marketplace and excluded from the DR-15.

Georgia: the 200th Georgia order shipped in July. Georgia counts marketplace orders too, but the website orders alone crossed the test. The practice registers with the Georgia Department of Revenue, switches Georgia on in the web store, and collects at each delivery address's combined rate from that point forward. The roughly $5,000 of Georgia website sales that shipped between the 200th order and the day collection was switched on carry tax the practice funds from its own margin, which is the cost of not watching the order count. The marketplace keeps collecting on the $6,000 it facilitated.

Texas and New York: nowhere near the thresholds, no registrations, no returns. The marketplace collected on its Texas and New York orders under its own registration. Nothing about that changes until the quarterly review says otherwise.

What usually goes wrong

Collection is switched on in the web store for a state the practice never registered in, so tax sits in the bank with nowhere to go; or the practice registers and never switches the state on, so nothing is collected and the return is funded from margin. Shipping is bundled into the price and never taxed, or separately stated and taxed anyway. Marketplace orders are added to the DR-15, so Florida is paid twice. Marketplace sales are counted toward a threshold in a state that excludes them, or left out in Georgia and Texas, which include them. The 1099-K is handed to the preparer as revenue. Tax collected online is posted to income because the web store's payout hit the bank feed as one deposit. Commission from a brand storefront is booked as retail sales and taxed. And retail inventory shipped to online customers is never relieved from the count, so the back room shows product that left months ago. Each is a quick fix in month two and a reconstruction in year three.

When to get help

If you sell skincare through more than one online channel, the two lists to compare this quarter are your sales and order count by ship-to state and the states your web store is collecting for. If the lists do not match, or Georgia's order count is climbing toward 200, the registrations need attention before the state notices first. The order matters: measure, decide where you have nexus, register, then switch collection on.

Balance Partners handles med spa sales tax compliance as part of monthly accounting, including the other-state registrations when an online skincare line crosses a threshold and the monthly reconciliation of web store, marketplace and POS tax reports to the returns. Request a 20-minute fit call and bring a sales-by-state export from your web store; it answers most of these questions in the first ten minutes.

Jenny Gao, CPA, EA

Founder of Balance Partners, a CPA-led accounting, tax and fractional CFO practice for med spas. Florida-licensed CPA and IRS Enrolled Agent with more than 13 years of accounting and tax experience. Jenny writes and reviews every guide on this site. About Jenny

This guide is general educational information for owners of med spas and aesthetics practices in the United States and is not accounting, tax, legal, medical, payroll or financial advice for your situation. Rules change and vary by entity, state and facts. Balance Partners, LLC does not provide audit, review, compilation or other attest services. Last reviewed November 8, 2026.