California state tax filings.

Who you deal with in California

3 separate agencies, on 3 separate systems. Doing something with one does nothing to the others.

What California does differently

• The 10-day rule. Your final return, wage report, and payment are due within 10 days of the last wage paid, not on the normal quarterly schedule. Nothing about the regular filing calendar warns you about this, and a business winding down is rarely watching for it.
• The form asks where your leftover inventory went, and every answer has a consequence. Section II gives you the options: sold and reported on the final return, retained, included in an audit, donated, sold for resale with the purchaser's account number, or other. Retained means use tax. Sold for resale means the buyer's permit number had better be real. This is not a box to tick quickly.
• Two clocks running against each other. You have 15 days to register and the EDD can take ten business days to issue the number. Leaving the registration until day fourteen means the account number arrives well after the payroll it was needed for.
• Two registrations share one conversation. A seller's permit and a Certificate of Registration-Use Tax are not the same thing, and which you need depends on whether you are engaged in business in California or selling in from outside. Almost everything published about registering in California describes the seller's permit, so a remote seller reads about a permit that may not be the one they need.
• People confuse the seller's permit with a 'resale certificate' or 'resale number.' CDTFA registers the permit; the certificate is a separate document you fill out for suppliers.

Filings we handle in California

You keep the client. We never email them.