Why wasn't my exemption certificate accepted?

There are a few important things to take into consideration when validating your exemption certificate.  If you are being asked to provide revisions to your submitted form, it will most likely have to do with the certificate either not being eligible for sales tax exemption (such as in the case of W-9s and IRS letters), the certificate being out of date, or due to it missing important information. We have listed some common examples of certificates requiring revisions below:

  • Vendor/seller name
    • Your organization is not required to indicate a vendor name.  However, should a vendor name be listed on the given certificate, Cleverbridge, Inc. (350 N Clark St, #700, Chicago, IL 60654) is the vendor the certificate should be made out to.

 

  • Buyer’s name and address
    • When making a purchase on behalf of an organization, the organization’s name is to be listed as the purchaser.

 

  • Product purchased or description of goods purchased
    • No lengthy details are required in this case. Just ‘Computer Software’. Kindly further note that due to tax compliance, our customer's tax-exempt certificates are saved in our system as blanket forms that don't reflect additional information pertaining to individual purchases. A Document ID will therefore be ascribed to an organization's profile that can be applied to multiple purchases. 

 

Inclusion of name or address other than the direct buyer

 

  • When making a purchase on behalf of an organization, it's full name and address must be indicated on the exemption certificate.

 

  • Missing signature and/or date

 

  • If applicable, meaning that your submitted form includes the respective fields, kindly provide your signature (oftentimes labeled ‘signature of authorized purchaser’) and also make sure that the date, again only if applicable, is within 90 days of your purchase.

 

  • Wrong State or Form

 

  • Kindly note that sales tax in our system is calculated based upon the entered delivery address for any given order. Should you be a reseller for instance, it might therefore be useful to provide us with what is known as a Uniform Sales & Use Tax Resale Certificate— Multijurisdiction. With other reasons for exemption aside from resale, please always provide the tax-exempt certificate for the state that was taxed, should the billing and delivery address of your order differ, in terms of the entered states.

 

Lastly, should you struggle to find the right tax-exempt certificate for your state, kindly bear in mind that there are 24 States for which we can accept the SST form (Streamlined Sales Tax Agreement). The list of states that accept this form reads as follows:

 

Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

 

Not a tax-exempt organization but still need help?

If you are you a customer inquiring about an order you placed with one of our partners for software or another type of online service, we have helpful information for you, too.  Please visit our Featured Articles section or look up your order using our easy-to-use purchase lookup tool.

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