DoorDash Sales Tax: Are Restaurants Paying Twice?

If DoorDash, Uber Eats or Grubhub already remitted sales tax on your delivery orders, and those same orders also landed in the gross sales on your own return, you paid that tax twice. It happens in a large share of states, because the apps are marketplace facilitators there: state law makes them collect and remit the tax on your behalf.

The fix is not "exclude all delivery sales." That is the other way to get it wrong. Which platform remits, in which state, from which date, and whether local taxes are included all vary, and DoorDash changed its local-tax handling again on May 1, 2026. This guide shows how the double payment happens, where it hides in Toast, how to back marketplace sales out of your return, and a checklist to find out if it happened to you.

Do I pay sales tax on DoorDash orders?

In most states, no: DoorDash does. In a few big states, yes: you do. DoorDash says it is registered to collect and remit tax directly to the state for all merchants in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, Washington DC, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming (DoorDash).

In Arizona, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York and Utah, DoorDash remits only for non-restaurant merchants like grocery and liquor stores. California and Texas do not appear on its list at all.

The three apps do not agree with each other, which is why so many restaurants file wrong:

Sources: DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub. Grubhub does not publish start dates. The full 50-state matrix is in our marketplace facilitator sales tax by state guide.

Two rows deserve a second look. In Tennessee, Uber Eats stopped remitting on February 28, 2025, so a Tennessee restaurant that stopped reporting Uber Eats sales years ago may now be under-reporting. And in California, an owner in r/restaurantowners summed up the mess: they had to enter the tax as "marketplace facilitator sales" on the state return, "but not for DD or GH, just UE."

Why some states leave restaurants out

It is state law, not platform whim. California's Marketplace Facilitator Act says a "delivery network company" is not a marketplace facilitator unless it elects to be one, and it names kitchens and restaurants as local merchants (RTC 6041.5). Uber Eats elected; DoorDash and Grubhub did not. New York's guidance says a marketplace provider is not required to collect tax on "restaurant food" at all (TSB-M-19(2.1)S). Florida excludes delivery network companies that are not registered as dealers (TIP 21A01-03).

How does a restaurant end up paying sales tax twice?

The app collects tax from the customer and remits it to the state. Then the integration drops the same order into your POS with the tax attached, and your return is built from POS totals. The state gets the tax once from the app and once from you.

Cherry Bekaert, a CPA firm, describes the exact sequence: when an Uber Eats sale "runs through the restaurant's ordering system, the sale is typically not flagged as a third-party sale and is mistakenly added to monthly sales reports used to create the restaurant's own monthly sales tax returns, resulting in double reporting." It adds that the overpayment "may date back to the initial adoption of the third-party marketplace platform" (Cherry Bekaert).

Here is the money path, step by step:

1. The customer pays the app: menu price, fees and tax.
2. The app remits the tax to the state under its own marketplace facilitator account.
3. Your payout excludes that tax. DoorDash says payouts "exclude any taxes that DoorDash collects and remits directly to tax authorities."
4. The integration pushes the order into your POS with the tax the app calculated.
5. Your POS Sales Summary shows that order in net sales and in the tax total.
6. Whoever files your return takes gross sales, or the tax total, from that report.
7. You pay tax on sales the app already paid tax on.

No step is fraudulent or even unusual. It is a reporting default. That is why it runs for years.

It gets worse with multi-location exports

An operator with more than 20 locations described it in r/ToastPOS: with DoorDash integrated in marketplace facilitator states, "using the toast accounting export is steadily overstating our tax liability each day," because the export "sums all taxes and does not break it out." Another user in the same thread had the same problem with Uber Eats, with each company blaming the other.

The accounting export feeds your general ledger. If your sales tax liability account is inflated by the platform's tax, and your bookkeeper files from that liability balance, the double payment is baked in every month.

Where does the double count hide in Toast?

Toast does separate the tax, but only in specific places, and not in the number most people grab. In Toast Web, the Sales Summary report's Tax summary tile shows three lines for third-party orders: Marketplace facilitator tax, Remitted by 3rd Party and Remitted by Restaurant (Toast). The Accounting Overview report has a Taxes table with the same split (Toast platform guide).

The trap is the headline tax figure. One r/ToastPOS user explained the fix their team adopted: they stopped filing from "Tax Amount at the top of the Sales Summary" and switched to "State + Local Tax in the Tax Rate section," because that line "does not include MFTP or Toast MFTP amounts." Another user in the thread had to "go back eight months" and amend returns after discovering the overpayment.

Three more Toast details that cause misses:

• Only three partners report. Toast says "only Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub inform Toast of any sales tax amounts they remit." Any other ordering channel is not in those lines.
• Middleware orders are not tagged. Orders that reach Toast indirectly, through a different ordering service, "are included in reporting using tax rates configured in the Toast platform and are not included in marketplace facilitator reporting" (Toast platform guide). If DoorDash comes in through a middleware tablet aggregator, Toast may show it as your own taxable sale. Toast says partners can be configured to report correctly, but the partner has to request it.
• Toast is now a marketplace facilitator too. For Toast Local app and Toast Local orders, Toast registered to collect and remit in 32 states between December 12, 2024 and May 1, 2025, such as Georgia on April 7, 2025 and Illinois on May 1, 2025. Those show as a separate "Toast marketplace facilitator tax" line.

What changed with DoorDash local taxes in 2025 and 2026?

DoorDash now hands certain local taxes back to you instead of remitting them. Starting May 1, 2024 in Alabama and Florida, July 1, 2025 for tablet (non-integrated) restaurants in all its marketplace facilitator states, and May 1, 2026 for restaurants on "select POS integrations," DoorDash "will include certain local taxes, typically food and beverage taxes, in payouts to eligible restaurant merchants rather than remitting those taxes directly to the tax authorities" (DoorDash).

Its warning is in bold: "DoorDash will not remit to tax authorities any taxes that are included in payouts to merchants."

This creates the mirror-image error. A restaurant that correctly learned "DoorDash pays our sales tax" and started deducting every DoorDash sale may now be skipping local food and beverage tax that DoorDash dropped into its payout. Uber Eats does something similar: in Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Nebraska, South Carolina and Virginia, local meals and beverage taxes and bag fees "will be passed back to merchants" (Uber Eats).

DoorDash also warns that if your POS or middleware cannot display those local taxes, your POS tax reports "may not match" its own, and tells merchants to "rely on DoorDash's Transactions and Payouts reports." In other words, for DoorDash tax, the POS is no longer the source of truth.

The report that settles it is DoorDash's Monthly Subtotal Tax Breakdown, under the Statements tab in the Merchant Portal. For every tax it collected, it lists the jurisdiction, the type of tax, the remittance responsibility (DoorDash or Merchant), the taxable basis and the amount. Anything marked DoorDash is not yours to pay. Anything marked Merchant is.

How do you back marketplace sales out of your return?

You follow your state's instruction, and they are not the same. Some states want total sales reported and then deducted; at least one wants marketplace sales left off the return entirely.

Washington is the one people miss. The facilitator takes over sales tax, but you still owe business and occupation tax on the gross. And under Washington's delivery guidance, the app collects sales tax on "the full selling price charged to the customer," fees included (Eversheds Sutherland summary of ETA 3223.2021).

For the amount to deduct, use the platform's own numbers, not the POS. DoorDash shows it per order and per payout in a column named "Subtotal Tax Remitted by DoorDash to Tax Authorities." Uber Eats labels it "Marketplace Facilitator Tax" in the Payment Details Report (Uber).

How much could the double payment be?

The math is simple: marketplace sales that went onto your return, times the tax rate the platform actually remitted, times the months it went on. Here is a clearly hypothetical example, not a real client and not a typical result.

A restaurant does $18,000 a month on DoorDash and Uber Eats combined, in a state where both apps remit. Assume a 7% combined rate, of which 1% is a local food and beverage tax the apps pass back to the restaurant.

Two things shrink that number in real life. First, only months after the platform's start date in your state count. Second, if you kept a timely-filing discount on the extra tax, the refund is net of it. Two things grow it: more platforms, and more months. Every month you wait, the oldest month can fall out of the refund window.

To run your own figures, use the delivery sales tax overpayment calculator. It takes the platform's remitted-tax totals first, and falls back to sales times rate only if you do not have them.

Checklist: did you double-pay sales tax on delivery orders?

Work through this with one month of data first. If that month shows a gap, extend it back.

1. Confirm your state and start date. Look up your state on the DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub lists. Note which apps remit for restaurants and from when.
2. Pull the platform tax reports. DoorDash Payouts report (column "Subtotal Tax Remitted by DoorDash to Tax Authorities") and Monthly Subtotal Tax Breakdown; Uber Eats Payment Details Report ("Marketplace Facilitator Tax"); Grubhub statements.
3. Pull the return you filed for that month. Note gross sales, deductions and taxable sales.
4. Pull the POS number the return was built from. In Toast, check whether it was the headline Tax Amount or State + Local Tax, and whether net sales included delivery orders.
5. Compare. If the platform remitted tax on sales that are also sitting in your taxable sales, that is the double payment.
6. Check the reverse. On the DoorDash breakdown, anything with remittance responsibility "Merchant" must appear on your return. If you deducted it, you underpaid.
7. Check middleware. If orders reach Toast through an aggregator, compare platform order counts to Toast's marketplace facilitator order counts.
8. Check Toast Local. If you use the Toast Local app, look for the separate Toast marketplace facilitator tax line from late 2024 or 2025 onward.
9. Write down every affected month. That list becomes your refund claim schedule.

If you only do one thing, do step 5 for last month. It takes 20 minutes and tells you whether the rest is worth it.

What if your state makes you remit the delivery tax?

Then the risk flips from double-paying to under-paying. In Texas, New York, and California for DoorDash and Grubhub, the restaurant remits tax on delivery orders. The question becomes: tax on what amount?

An owner in r/restaurantowners posted a letter from their state's revenue department saying a restaurant "cannot accept a resale certificate from a third party seller" and must remit tax "on the gross receipts of the meals sold, not the amount remitted to you by the third party seller after the commission." If your delivery menu is marked up, the taxable amount is the price the customer paid, not the smaller deposit you received.

Texas says a marketplace seller whose provider has not certified that it collects "should collect sales and use tax until you receive a certification" (Texas Comptroller). In New York, the CPA Journal notes a delivery company can accept responsibility by contract, and a restaurant can keep Form ST-150, the Marketplace Provider Certificate of Collection, as support (CPA Journal).

If a platform in your state does remit, get it in writing. DoorDash says Merchant Support will send a letter confirming it remits for your store, and Uber Eats offers the same confirmation through its merchant help center. Keep it with your sales tax records.

What do you do if you find a double payment?

Fix the going-forward filing first, then go after the past. Change how next month's return is built so marketplace sales are deducted or excluded the way your state requires. Then quantify the open months and file for the refund.

Refunds are claimed with the state, not with DoorDash or Uber Eats. The deadlines in the states we checked run from three years (California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Illinois) to four years (Texas, Ohio, Washington), each counted a little differently. Our step-by-step guide, how to claim a restaurant sales tax refund, has each state's clock, form and evidence list.

Pavado is not a CPA or tax preparer. We find and quantify the gap from your exports; the amended returns or refund claims are filed by your business or your CPA, and the state decides the outcome. If you want the broader picture of where restaurant money leaks, start with the restaurant profit leak audit. If your delivery deposits never tie to your POS in the first place, read Toast sales and payout reconciliation. And while you are in the DoorDash portal pulling tax reports, check for disputable error charges inside their 14-day window.