What Is a Resale Certificate? (Interior Design, Explained)
A resale certificate is a state-issued document that lets a business buy goods without paying sales tax, because the goods are being resold — and the tax will be collected from the final buyer instead. For a designer, it's what makes trade sourcing economics work: buy the sofa tax-exempt, resell it to your client, collect the tax on that sale, and remit it to the state.
What it takes to get one
The certificate certifies a sales-tax registration, so the prerequisites stack: a formal business (a sole proprietorship works, though many designers choose an LLC for liability), an EIN from the IRS, and a registration with your state's department of revenue as a seller. That registration is the real commitment — it comes with ongoing return filings on the state's calendar, whether monthly or quarterly, often even in periods with no sales.
The two complications designers hit
First, the certificate has to be on file with each brand you buy from, per state, and kept current — a missing filing means paying tax at checkout, which is hard to recover. Second, the certificate follows the delivery state, not your home state: furniture is taxed where it lands, and roughly a quarter of states — including California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington — don't accept out-of-state certificates. A project delivering into one of those states means registering there first. The full picture is in sales tax for interior designers.
Where to go deeper
How the certificate fits the broader setup: registering a design business and the complete guide to trade programs. Definition of the pricing it unlocks: what is trade pricing.
On Suede, none of this paperwork is yours: procurement runs through us under our own access and tax registrations, and we invoice your client, collect and remit the sales tax, and pay out your earnings. You pick the products and find clients, Suede manages the rest. Join the waitlist here.
Orientation only, not tax advice; rules vary by state.