Hawaii receipt requirements

Sales tax at a glance

State rate

4%

Combined with local

4% – 4.5% combined

Sourcing

Destination-based — tax follows the buyer's address

Does tax have to be separately stated?

The general excise tax is imposed on the business, not the customer. Passing it on is optional and, where the business does pass it on, the visible surcharge is itself part of gross income and taxable.

Whatever the rule, print it as its own line. Separately stating tax is what lets a reviewer isolate the pre-tax cost, and it is the mechanism most state statutes use to let a seller exclude the tax from gross receipts. The display conventions are covered here.

Exempt and specially rated categories

• ·Very few exemptions — the GET base is unusually broad
• ·Prescription drugs and prosthetic devices exempt
• ·Wholesale transactions taxed at a reduced rate
• ·Groceries are taxable

A basket that mixes an exempt item with a taxable one needs a per-line tax flag and separate taxable and non-taxable subtotals, or the tax line cannot be checked against the lines it came from.

Rent receipts in Hawaii

No statute requires a written rent receipt; a tenant may still request one and most landlords issue one.

The two fields landlords most often omit are the period the payment covers and the unit number. The full field list is here, and the statutory format is in the rent receipt spec.