Reverse Sales Tax Audits

Uncover Refund Opportunities

What if your business has been overpaying sales and use tax without realizing it? A reverse sales tax audit is designed to answer that question. It reviews the sales and use tax applied to your purchases to determine whether tax was charged correctly and to identify tax refund opportunities.

These types of overpayments are common in complex, multi-state operations and supply chains. Vendors may apply tax incorrectly. Exemptions may not be claimed. State tax rules change, and invoices do not always reflect those updates. Small errors can accumulate over time, and in some cases those overpayments add up to thousands of dollars.

A reverse sales tax audit helps recover those dollars and correct the underlying issues. This improves cash flow and helps ensure sales and use tax is applied correctly going forward.

Recover overpaid sales tax while strengthening compliance.

Experience. The Difference.

Tailored Guidance for Your Business

Reverse sales tax audits focus on reviewing past transactions to identify where tax may have been overpaid and determine what can be recovered. In addition to recovering funds, this process helps you strengthen internal controls, reduce audit exposure, and support compliance.

Our SALT team supports organizations across a range of industries, with particularly strong refund potential in manufacturing, construction, healthcare, technology, and distribution. Our process includes:

Diagnostic review: Review your accounts payable data and perform invoice sampling to identify potential areas of overpaid sales and use tax.
Accounts payable data analysis: Analyze transaction-level data to isolate patterns, errors, and high-value areas for further review.
Opportunity identification: Evaluate exemption qualification and perform jurisdictional taxability analysis to confirm where refund opportunities exist.
Refund recovery and support: Prepare refund claims, manage state correspondence, and coordinate with vendors to support recovery and prevent future errors.

Gaining a Strategic Advantage

Reverse sales tax audits follow a structured process to identify, validate, and recover overpayments. You move through each step with a clear understanding of what is being reviewed and why, with open communication throughout. The goal is to recover funds, improve cash flow, and apply sales and use tax more consistently going forward.

Industry Involvement