Massachusetts receipt requirements

Sales tax at a glance

State rate

6.25%

Combined with local

6.25% statewide, no local add-on

Sourcing

Destination-based — tax follows the buyer's address

Does tax have to be separately stated?

Massachusetts expects the tax stated separately from the sales price on the receipt or invoice. There is no local general sales tax, though many municipalities add a local option meals tax that appears as part of the tax on prepared food.

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

• ·Groceries exempt
• ·Clothing exempt up to a per-item threshold
• ·Prescription drugs exempt
• ·Newspapers and magazines exempt

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 Massachusetts

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.