Nonprofit sales tax exemption
Being a nonprofit does not by itself make your MapleGather subscription exempt from sales tax. Exemption is granted case by case, by us, after a person reviews your exemption certificate — and there is no setting in the product that turns it on.
The short version
Section titled “The short version”If your organization holds a valid sales tax exemption certificate, contact support and send it to us. We’ll review it and, if it applies, mark your account exempt. From then on your subscription page shows a “Tax-exempt — certificate on file with Browncoat” note.
You cannot switch this on yourself. There is deliberately no toggle, no checkbox, and no “claim exemption” link anywhere in MapleGather. If you’re looking for one, this article is the whole answer: the route is support.
How it works
Section titled “How it works”Why nonprofit status isn’t enough on its own
Section titled “Why nonprofit status isn’t enough on its own”Sales tax exemption for nonprofits is a rule of the taxing authority, not a property of being a nonprofit. It varies by state and by city, it often depends on what is being bought rather than who is buying, and it usually requires a certificate you have already obtained from that authority. A 501(c)(3) determination letter is not the same thing as a sales tax exemption certificate.
Because of that, we can’t infer it from anything we already know about your organization.
How to request it
Section titled “How to request it”- Submit a support ticket telling us your organization name and which state your exemption certificate is for.
- Wait for our reply, then send the certificate back as an attachment on that reply.
- We’ll review it and tell you either way.
Send the certificate by reply rather than on the ticket form: the form’s attachment field takes images only (JPEG, PNG, GIF, or WebP, up to 10MB), and exemption certificates are usually PDFs.
If it applies, we mark your account exempt. If it doesn’t, we’ll tell you why so you can take it up with the authority if you think it should.
What changes once you’re exempt
Section titled “What changes once you’re exempt”Your subscription page shows the note “Tax-exempt — certificate on file with Browncoat” where tax lines would otherwise be, and your total equals your subtotal.
Your invoices do not carry an exempt marker. An issued invoice records what was charged, and an exempt organization’s invoice simply has no tax lines — which looks exactly like an invoice for an organization we aren’t registered to tax. That’s expected, not an error: the note lives on the subscription page because that is the only surface that knows your exemption status.
Nothing else changes: your $29.00 base fee and your $0.06 per-contact rate are unaffected, because exemption is about tax, not about price.
Why it works this way
Section titled “Why it works this way”Sales tax we’re required to collect is money we owe the authority whether or not we collected it. A control that let a customer mark their own account exempt would let anyone remove that charge with a click, and we would still owe it. Keeping the grant out-of-band, behind a human reading an actual certificate, is what makes the exempt marker mean something.
The certificate itself, who reviewed it, and when — we keep all of that on our side. It doesn’t appear anywhere in the product.
Edge cases & boundaries
Section titled “Edge cases & boundaries”- We don’t validate certificates automatically. A human reads it. Expect a reply rather than an instant change.
- The default is taxable. Until a certificate is reviewed and accepted, your bill is taxed normally where tax applies.
- Exemption doesn’t backdate. Invoices already issued are never re-taxed, so an exemption applies from the point we set it, not to earlier bills.
- Exemption is independent of whether tax currently shows. The note is a standing fact about your organization, not a replacement for whatever else is on the page — so it appears alongside your bill whatever shape that bill takes. If you’re exempt and also outside every area we collect in, both facts are true and the page states both.
- If your certificate lapses, tell us. An expired certificate is not a valid one, and we’d rather correct it forward than discover it later.
- This is not your members’ tax. This article is about the tax on what MapleGather charges your organization. Whether your own members’ invoices carry tax is a separate matter entirely, on a separate plane of billing — it is unaffected by anything here, and it is not yet available.