How to File and Pay the Virginia ST-9 Sales Tax Return

The Virginia ST-9 sales tax return is Virginia’s legacy monthly or quarterly return for in-state dealers, and for any tax period from April 2025 forward it has been replaced by Form ST-1. You still use the ST-9 through Virginia Tax’s eForms system for one purpose: amending returns that cover periods through March 2025.¹ Everything below applies to both forms, because only the form number changed; the rates, deadlines, and dealer obligations are the same.

Two versions of each form exist. One is for a business filing in a single locality. The other, paired with the ST-9B and ST-9R schedules, is for businesses operating in multiple localities or selling at events like craft shows and flea markets.²

Who Has to File

Any business that qualifies as a “dealer” under Virginia law has to register with Virginia Tax, collect sales tax, and file a return every period. The definition reaches anyone selling tangible personal property at retail in Virginia, whether from a storefront, a website, or a temporary booth.³

Out-of-state sellers are pulled in if, in the current or previous calendar year, they had more than $100,000 in gross Virginia retail revenue or 200 or more separate retail transactions in the Commonwealth.³ Marketplace facilitators like Amazon or Etsy are treated as dealers for the sales they process on behalf of third-party sellers and must collect and remit the tax on those transactions themselves.⁴

Register before you file anything. You can start online through Virginia Tax, and once you finish you receive a 15-digit sales tax account number and a Sales Tax Certificate of Registration (Form ST-4), which has to be displayed at your place of business.⁵⁶

Monthly or Quarterly

Virginia Tax assigns your filing frequency based on your tax liability: higher-volume businesses file monthly, smaller ones file quarterly.¹ Either way, you must file a return for every period, even one with zero sales. Skipping a period because nothing is owed is a common mistake, and it triggers the minimum $10 penalty.

Virginia Sales Tax Rates

Every transaction starts with a 4.3 percent state tax and a 1 percent local tax, so the base rate across most of the Commonwealth is 5.3 percent. Several regions add more on top:¹

6.0 percent in Northern Virginia (Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, and surrounding cities), Hampton Roads (Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Newport News, and surrounding localities), and Central Virginia (Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield, and surrounding counties).
6.3 percent in several Southside and Southwest localities, including Charlotte County, Danville, Halifax County, Henry County, and Pittsylvania County.
7.0 percent in the Historic Triangle: James City County, Williamsburg, and York County.

Qualifying food for home consumption and essential personal hygiene products get a reduced state rate of 1.5 percent, plus the 1 percent local tax. On the return, food sales and hygiene sales go on separate lines from general sales so the right rate applies.

Working Through the Return

The ST-9A worksheet, or the equivalent worksheet for the ST-1, walks through the math before you key anything into the actual return. Keep it for your records; you don’t submit it.⁷

Gross Sales, Use Tax, and Exemptions

Line 1 is your total gross sales and rentals for the period, cash or credit, excluding the sales tax you collected. Don’t fold the tax into this figure.

Line 2 is for personal use: inventory you pulled for your own use, or property you bought without paying sales tax and then consumed in the business. This is where use tax comes in. If you bought equipment or supplies from an out-of-state seller that didn’t charge Virginia sales tax, you owe use tax on those items and report them here.

Line 3 is exempt sales and deductions. Common ones are sales for resale (backed by a completed Form ST-10 exemption certificate on file), sales shipped out of state, returned merchandise, and bad debts you previously reported as taxable. Every sale is presumed taxable unless you can prove otherwise, so a valid exemption certificate for each exempt customer is your primary defense in an audit.⁸

Splitting Sales by Rate

After deductions, your net taxable sales get split into qualifying food, essential personal hygiene products, and everything else. Each category is taxed at its own state rate. The worksheet then layers in the regional tax (0.7 percent for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, 1.0 percent for the Historic Triangle, and varying amounts for other regions) and the 1 percent local tax.⁷ If you sell in more than one locality, the ST-9B schedule (or the multi-locality ST-1) breaks the sales out by location.

Dealer Discount

If you file and pay on time, Virginia lets you keep a small slice of the state tax you collected. The discount applies only to the first 3 percent of the state rate and scales down as your volume rises:⁹

$0 to $62,500 in monthly taxable sales: 4 percent of the eligible tax
$62,501 to $208,000: 3 percent
$208,001 and above: 2 percent

One day late and the discount is gone entirely. The worksheet has built-in discount factors for both general sales and the reduced food and hygiene rates, so you don’t do the percentage math by hand.

Filing and Paying

Virginia requires sales tax returns to be filed and paid electronically. If you genuinely cannot file online, you need to request a waiver.¹ The Department of Taxation’s eForms portal is free; no software to buy.²

The deadline is the 20th of the month after the close of your reporting period. June for a monthly filer is due July 20. Quarterly filers follow the same pattern, due the 20th of the month after the quarter ends.¹⁰ When the 20th is a weekend or legal holiday, the deadline moves to the next business day.¹¹

Most businesses pay by ACH debit from a checking account. If your bank uses debit filters, authorize Virginia Tax’s debit filter number (1546001745) before your first payment, or it will bounce.¹² Credit card payments go through too, with a third-party processing fee.

What a Late Return Costs

Late filing and late payment each carry a 6 percent penalty on the unpaid tax for every month or partial month overdue, up to 30 percent. A late return with no tax owed still gets the minimum $10 penalty.¹ Interest runs on top at the federal underpayment rate plus 2 percent, from the original due date until the tax is paid in full.⁷

Sales tax you collect from customers is held in trust for the Commonwealth under Virginia law.¹³ Spending it instead of remitting it can lead to revocation of your sales tax registration and criminal charges at the Class 1 misdemeanor level, which carries up to 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500.¹⁴

Fixing a Prior Return

If you find an error on a return you already filed, correct it with an amended return through eForms. For periods through March 2025, use the same version of the ST-9 you originally filed, single-locality or multi-locality. Enter the corrected figures and the system calculates additional tax owed (plus penalty and interest) or shows an overpayment. For periods beginning April 2025, amend on the ST-1 instead.¹

An overpayment is refunded or credited to a future period. File the correction as soon as you catch the mistake, because interest on an underpayment keeps running, and an auditor finding the error first is a worse outcome than reporting it yourself.

Records to Keep

Keep all sales tax records at least three years from the due date of the return or the date you actually filed, whichever is later. If federal rules make you keep IRS records longer, match that period for Virginia too.¹⁵ At minimum, hold onto:

Sales records: invoices, receipts, register tapes, and anything showing gross sales amounts.
A completed Form ST-10 for every customer who made a tax-exempt purchase. One certificate covers that customer’s future exempt purchases of the same type, but it has to be fully filled out and signed.¹⁶
Purchase records for items bought without sales tax that triggered use tax, including out-of-state purchases and inventory withdrawn for personal use.
Copies of each return filed and the electronic confirmation receipts.

Missing or incomplete exemption certificates are the most common audit problem. If you can’t produce a valid certificate for an exempt sale, the auditor will reclassify it as taxable and assess the tax plus interest, sometimes across years of transactions.

1
Virginia Tax. Retail Sales and Use Tax
2
Virginia Tax. eForms
3
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 58.1-612 – Tax Collectible From Dealers; Dealer Defined; Jurisdiction
4
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 58.1-612.1 – Tax Collectible From Marketplace Facilitators; Marketplace Facilitator Defined
5
Virginia Tax. Register a Business in Virginia
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Virginia Tax. Registering With Virginia Tax
7
Virginia Tax. Form ST-9 Virginia Retail Sales and Use Tax Return
8
Legal Information Institute. 23 Va. Admin. Code 10-210-280 – Certificates of Exemption
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Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 58.1-622 – Discount
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Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 58.1-615 – Returns by Dealers
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Virginia Code Commission. 23 VAC 10-20-20 – Filing of Tax Returns and Payment
12
Virginia Department of Taxation. Form ST-9 – Virginia Retail Sales and Use Tax Return – Section: Payment
13
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 58.1-625 – Collection of Tax
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Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 18.2-11 – Punishment for Conviction of Misdemeanor
15
Virginia Tax. Recordkeeping Requirements – Businesses
16
Virginia Department of Taxation. Form ST-10 Sales and Use Tax Certificate of Exemption