Receipt requirements · WA
Washington receipt requirements
What a business issuing its own receipts in Washington needs to show: the rate, whether tax has to be stated separately, which categories are exempt, and whether a written rent receipt is required.
Rates verified: 2026-08-05. Rates change — check your state Department of Revenue before relying on a figure for filing.
Sales tax at a glance
- State rate
- 6.5%
- Combined with local
- 7% – 10.7% combined
- Sourcing
- Destination-based — tax follows the buyer's address
Does tax have to be separately stated?
Washington expects the retail sales tax stated separately from the selling price on the receipt or invoice. The business and occupation tax, by contrast, is the seller's own liability and should not be shown as a tax charged to the customer.
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
- Prescription drugs exempt
- Most professional services exempt from retail sales tax
- Manufacturing machinery and equipment 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 Washington
A landlord who accepts cash must provide a receipt for any rent payment made in cash, and must provide a written receipt on the tenant's request for payments made in any other form.
Authority: RCW 59.18.063.
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.
Worth knowing in Washington
Washington has been strictly destination-based since 2008, so the rate on the receipt follows where the buyer takes delivery — a Seattle shop delivering to Spokane charges the Spokane rate. Washington's rent receipt rule also splits by tender: mandatory for cash, on request for everything else.