Proper Wholesale Paperwork

Processes

Feb 4

We’re preparing for both wholesale flower and wholesale bulb sales this month. The last time we made a concerted effort to help new customers open accounts with us it was very clear that there is some confusion out there about how to do this and how to keep yourself out of trouble, too, if you’d like to offer your products wholesale.

The following post will be helpful for anyone who is new to wholesale buying or wholesale selling.

Here is our context: New York is the second most regulated state in the country after California. Based on the sheer number of rules in a state, the other runners up include Ohio, Illinois, Texas, Oregon, Washington, Florida, Massachusetts, and Louisiana.* As a New York business, we need to be on top of our paperwork, especially in our situation where we’re transitioning from mostly retail sales and lots of sales tax dollars going to the state each quarter to far less being collected. Red flags are going to be flying in the auditor’s office. And we need to have everything set up properly.

To enter into wholesale sales its important that you collect the proper paperwork from your buyers to protect yourself from audit. If your state collects sales tax, you must prove that your wholesale sales are legitimate and that you do not owe sales tax to the state. Flowers, while perishable, are not considered food items. Sales tax is due on them in our state for retail sales.

There are two commonly used forms related to sales tax collection.

A sales tax Certificate of Authority is a certificate (bright orange in New York State) that a business must display in it’s place of work. Even if you are selling your flowers at a farmers market, you should have this form displayed. It should be wherever you are selling your flowers, because it is proof to the CONSUMER that you are required and authorized by your state as a real business to collect sales tax. This certificate is for the consumer. If you want to sell flowers in your state you want to make sure you have one of these if your state collects sales tax. This certificate is not for the companies you want to buy from.
A Resale Form (ST-120 in the State of New York) is the form you download and print out and fill in for companies that YOU want to buy from. If you want to buy bulbs from us, you need to send us your state’s equivalent of this form.

We’ve gone ahead and collected each state’s equivalent Resale Forms for you as best we could. If you want to start buying wholesale from a distributor, you can find the resale form you’ll need. And— if you want to start selling wholesale, you can use this list to ensure that your customers are sending YOU the proper paperwork. We will also add this to the downloads and templates resource page for easy reference in the future.