If a wholesale buyer hands you a Louisiana resale certificate, the good news is that Louisiana is one of the easier states to verify -- there's a public lookup that gives you a definitive answer, expiration date included. The catch is that almost everything else about Louisiana is different from the states you're used to. (For the checks that apply in most states, start with how to verify a resale certificate is valid.)
Louisiana certificates work differently
In most states, the buyer fills out a resale certificate form and hands it to you. Louisiana flipped this: the resale certificate (Form R-1064) is issued by the Louisiana Department of Revenue itself to qualifying dealers when they register. Your buyer doesn't complete a form -- they receive one.
Two consequences:
The old buyer-completed form is gone. If someone sends you Form R-1042, they're working from outdated advice -- LDR has discontinued it, and it no longer appears in the state's forms library. Ask for their current R-1064 instead.
Every certificate expires annually. An R-1064 is valid for one year from its approval date. It renews automatically about 60 days before expiration if the dealer has been filing and paying on time; otherwise the dealer has to renew manually through LaTAP. Practically, this means a Louisiana certificate in your files is always on a renewal clock, and "we collected it last year" is not the same as "it's valid today."
Verifying it: the LaTAP lookup, step by step
Louisiana's Department of Revenue runs a "Validate a Resale Certificate" tool inside LaTAP, its taxpayer portal. It needs four inputs:
- Your Louisiana account number (you, the seller)
- Your business name
- The purchaser's Louisiana account number
- The purchaser's business name
Account numbers are 10 digits with no hyphens (like 1234567001). If the purchaser is a consolidated filer, use their 11-character Location ID (like B12345678901) instead.
A valid certificate comes back with the account number, the business name, and -- usefully -- the resale exemption's expiration date, so you can calendar the renewal on the spot. An invalid one returns a message that the account doesn't hold a valid resale exemption.
Two timing notes: records update daily, but newly registered dealers can take about a week to appear -- so a brand-new buyer failing the lookup may just be early, not invalid. If a case won't resolve, LDR's business line is sabusiness@la.gov.
What Louisiana won't accept
This is where sellers get burned. Louisiana does not accept:
- Other states' resale or exemption certificates
- The MTC Uniform Sales & Use Tax Certificate
That second one surprises people, because the MTC form circulates as a "works in 30+ states" shortcut. Louisiana isn't one of them -- LDR's own FAQ puts it plainly: exemptions are not transferable, and the state does not accept the multi-state certificate.
So what does an out-of-state buyer use? There are real paths:
- Form R-1079 (the foreign/out-of-state purchaser certificate) for goods being transported out of Louisiana for resale -- but don't accept it without proof of the buyer's home-state registration or license number.
- Registering with LDR to get a Louisiana resale exemption of their own.
- Interstate-commerce documentation -- purchase order, invoice, and bill of lading showing the goods left the state -- or a drop-shipment letter.
- Remote sellers registered with Louisiana's Remote Sellers Commission use a separate 9-digit account, verified through the Commission rather than LaTAP.
Keep the records
Louisiana requires you to keep the supporting records until the tax "prescribes" -- three years from December 31 of the year the tax was due, so effectively three to four years. The certificate, the lookup result, and (for out-of-state paths) the shipping documentation are all part of that file.
The checklist version
- Current R-1064, not the discontinued R-1042
- Account number in the right format (10 digits, or 11-character Location ID)
- Run the LaTAP lookup with the four inputs; save the result
- Calendar the expiration date the lookup returns
- Out-of-state buyer? No MTC, no home-state cert -- use R-1079 with registration proof, or the documentation paths above
- Keep everything three to four years
Louisiana's annual expirations and issued-not-completed certificates make it one of the higher-maintenance states to sell into -- but also one of the most verifiable. The state tells you exactly when a certificate dies. Use that.
Our free validator runs the document-level checks -- form, fields, ID format, expiration -- with the rule citations behind each one, in about 30 seconds. Checking numbers against state-published registry data (TX & PA today) is part of our plans.
(General education, not tax advice -- the Louisiana Department of Revenue or a SALT professional is the authority for your situation.)