Do transaction counts still matter for economic nexus thresholds?

Transaction count thresholds were part of the original economic nexus design. Most states enacted them alongside the dollar threshold in 2018 and 2019. A significant number have since removed them. Whether transaction counts still matter for your business depends on which states you’re selling into and what your order profile looks like.

Where transaction counts came from

South Dakota’s 2016 law (the one the Supreme Court upheld in Wayfair) included two prongs: $100,000 in annual sales or 200 separate transactions. The “or” matters: either condition alone triggers nexus, regardless of the other.

When states scrambled to enact economic nexus laws after the 2018 ruling, most followed South Dakota’s model. The 200-transaction prong was designed to catch high-volume/low-value sellers, businesses making many small sales that would collectively add up to significant economic activity even if no individual sale was large.

The trend toward dollar-only thresholds

Starting around 2021 and continuing since, a notable number of states have dropped the transaction-count prong. The rationale: tracking transaction counts is compliance overhead for sellers, and the dollar threshold alone captures the sellers states are trying to reach. A business doing 250 transactions averaging $40 each generates only $10,000 in state sales: a level many states concluded wasn’t worth the compliance complexity.

States that have moved to dollar-only thresholds (or raised the transaction count significantly) include South Dakota itself (dropped the transaction count in its own law), Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and others. This list has grown over time and continues to change through state legislation.

Where transaction counts still apply

As of early 2026, a meaningful number of states still retain transaction-count thresholds. The specific states are subject to change through legislation, so verifying against each state’s current statute or the state’s DOR guidance is necessary.

The states most likely to still have transaction-count thresholds tend to be those that haven’t updated their nexus statutes since initial enactment.

Who the transaction count threshold still catches

The transaction-count prong matters primarily for sellers with low average order values (AOV):

• A seller with 300 transactions averaging $250 has $75,000 in sales, under the $100K threshold. In a state with a 200-transaction rule, they’ve crossed via transaction count.
• A seller with 300 transactions averaging $500 has $150,000 in sales, they’d cross the dollar threshold first.

The transaction count threshold is most likely to be the relevant trigger for:

• Low-AOV consumer goods (sub-$50 items)
• High-frequency commodity products
• Subscription models with frequent small charges

B2B sellers with large individual transaction values will typically hit the dollar threshold long before accumulating 200 transactions.

How to track transaction counts

If you’re monitoring economic nexus thresholds, transaction count tracking requires the same state-level data as dollar tracking, but counting orders rather than summing revenue.

In Shopify: the order count is visible in Analytics alongside revenue. An export filtered by shipping state and date range gives both the revenue total and the order count.

In Amazon Seller Central: the Geographic Sales report includes order counts by state.

For multi-channel sellers, the same aggregation challenge applies: transaction counts from all channels must be combined to assess the threshold in states that count transactions.

The conservative approach

If you’re uncertain whether a specific state still has a transaction-count threshold, track both the dollar total and transaction count for that state. The additional data doesn’t cost much to maintain and protects against a state that hasn’t updated its threshold definition.

Tax compliance software that monitors economic nexus should track transaction counts by state for states where the count threshold is active.