by Sarah Craig January 13, 2025
Most US states consider grocery items to be fully or partially sales tax exempt, while also considering prepared foods like hot restaurant meals to be taxable. However, Kansas is an exception. Kansas does not exempt any types of purchase from the state sales tax. This post will go over when retailers should and should not charge sales tax on food sales in Kansas.
As of January 1, 2024, the Kansas state sales and use tax rate on food and food ingredients, and certain prepared food, was reduced from 6.5% to 4%. More information from the state on this change here .
If food is only cut, repackaged, or pasteurized by the seller the food is not considered prepared food, and the reduced state sales tax rate of 4% applies.
The reduced state sales tax rate applies to some, specifically defined prepared food. The reduced state sales tax rate applies if:
Other prepared food is taxed at the full rate of 6.5%. T he state has provided a booklet for more information here .
Kansas considers coffee, coffee substitute, tea, soft drinks and sodas to be fully taxable at the grocery item rate of 6.5%.
Do you sell groceries, meals or beverages? Are you required to collect sales tax in Kansas? Then this may sound like a huge headache.
That’s where TaxJar can help.
With the TaxJar API , you can be sure you’re collecting the right amount of sales tax on every transaction. Our product tax codes ensure you do collect sales tax on that soft drink but don’t collect sales tax on that plain coffee drink.
Not to mention, most e-commerce businesses have nexus in multiple states. For example, groceries are taxable in some states, but non-taxable in others. With TaxJar, you’ll collect the right amount of sales tax from every customer, in every state, every time.
Ready to automate sales tax collection, reporting and filing? Click here for more on how TaxJar can take the headache out of sales tax in your food & beverage business .
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