How to verify a Pennsylvania resale certificate (REV-1220)

The short version. Pennsylvania uses one form for every sales tax exemption — the REV-1220 — so verifying it is mostly a matter of checking that the right box is ticked and the right number sits next to it. Resale is box 3, and the number that belongs there is the buyer's 8-digit PA Sales Tax License ID. Form REV-1220 (TR) 07-23, checked against the Department of Revenue's own PDF on September 21, 2026. Two dates to keep: the completed certificate must be in your possession within 60 days of the sale, and you must keep it four years.

Most states give you a stack of forms and make you pick. (New to this? How to verify a resale certificate covers the general shape of the job.) Pennsylvania gives you one. The REV-1220 covers resale, manufacturing, nonprofits, public utilities, wrapping supplies and a handful of software situations — all on the same page, distinguished only by which of eight numbered boxes the buyer checks. That design removes one kind of error and creates another. You will never receive the wrong Pennsylvania form. You will regularly receive the right form with the wrong box ticked, or the right box ticked with an empty line beside it.

(For a state that works the opposite way, see Louisiana, where the state issues the certificate itself. California sits somewhere in between — no mandatory form at all.)

What counts as a valid REV-1220

The form says it plainly across the top: "THIS FORM MAY BE PHOTOCOPIED – VOID UNLESS COMPLETE INFORMATION IS SUPPLIED." Complete, for this form, means all of the following.

At least one tax checked at the top. Five boxes sit under the title: State and Local Sales and Use Tax; State 6% and Local 1% Hotel Occupancy Tax; Public Transportation Assistance Taxes and Fees (PTA); Vehicle Rental Tax (VRT); and Additional Local, City, County Hotel Tax. For a normal resale purchase, the first one is the box. None checked is an incomplete certificate.

Unit or blanket, chosen at the top. The form opens with "CHECK ONE": a Pennsylvania Tax Unit Exemption Certificate covers one transaction; a Pennsylvania Tax Blanket Exemption Certificate covers multiple. This is a checkbox at the very top of the form, not a note written into the description. If neither is marked, you cannot tell whether the certificate you are holding is good for one order or for the relationship.

Your details as the seller. Name of Seller, Vendor or Lessor, and the address. Fill these in yourself if the buyer left them blank — this is your copy of the record.

One reason box, with whatever it asks for. See the next section.

The signature block, complete. Four fields run along the bottom: Name of Purchaser or Lessee, Signature, EIN, and Date. Note what that third field is. It asks for the buyer's federal Employer Identification Number, not their Pennsylvania license number. The license number belongs up in box 3. A certificate with a nine-digit EIN in the signature block and an empty box 3 is a common and genuine defect — the number you need for a resale claim is missing. (If EIN and resale number blur together for you, we wrote about the difference.)

The regulation behind all of this is 61 Pa. Code § 32.2. Its wording is worth knowing, because it is stricter than "mostly filled in": a certificate "shall be dated and executed in accordance with the instructions published for use therewith, and must be complete and regular in every respect."

The eight reason boxes (and which one is resale)

The middle of the form is a numbered list of eight exemption reasons. Guides routinely miscount them or renumber them, so here they are as the form prints them.

1 — Direct use. Property or services used directly and predominately in the purchaser's operation of manufacturing, mining, dairying, processing, farming, shipbuilding or timbering. The buyer writes which one.

2 — Purchaser is a/an, followed by a Sales Tax Exemption Number. The back of the form lists sub-options A through S: government bodies, municipal authorities, credit unions, school bus operators, charter schools, and so on. Exemption numbers for the religious, educational, charitable, volunteer fire and relief-association categories begin with 75; a Keystone Opportunity Zone account (option R) begins with 72. If a buyer hands you a "75" number for a resale purchase, the number and the reason do not match.

3 — Resale. This is the one you are usually verifying. The form's own text: "Property will be resold under License ID (If purchaser does not have a PA Sales Tax License ID, include a statement under Number 8 explaining why a number is not required)." The instructions on the back describe that number precisely: an 8 digit number assigned by the department. The same instructions set the limits of the claim — resale covers property resold "(1) in original form; or (2) as an ingredient or component of other property."

4 — Public utility service, with room for a PA Public Utility Commission number and a US Department of Transportation MC/MX number.

5 — Exempt wrapping supplies, with a License ID, and the same fallback to box 8 if the buyer has no license.

6 — Canned computer software bought by a financial institution subject to the Bank and Trust Company Shares Tax or the Mutual Thrift Institutions Tax.

7 — Canned computer software licenses billed to a Pennsylvania address but used outside Pennsylvania, with an invoice number, a total license count and a count of users outside the state.

8 — Other, explained in detail, with more space on the reverse.

Two things follow from that list. First, resale is box 3 and only box 3 — a certificate with box 1 ticked for a distributor who is simply reselling goods is claiming the wrong exemption. Second, box 8 is not a catch-all; it is where a buyer with no Pennsylvania license explains why they do not need one, and the form points to it from boxes 3 and 5 by name.

The 60-day rule

Pennsylvania does not ask you to be right about the buyer. It asks you to act in good faith, and it defines good faith in four parts on the face of the form:

For this certificate to be valid, the seller/lessor shall exercise good faith in accepting this certificate, which includes: (1) the certificate shall be completed properly; (2) the certificate shall be in the seller/lessor's possession within 60 days from the date of sale/lease; (3) the certificate does not contain information which is knowingly false; and (4) the property or service is consistent with the exemption to which the customer is entitled.

And then the sentence that makes it matter: "An invalid certificate may subject the seller/lessor to the tax."

The regulation puts the deadline in auditor's language. Under 61 Pa. Code § 32.2(b)(2)(iii), the certificate "shall be in the physical possession of the seller or lessor, and available for Departmental inspection, on or before the 60th day following the date of the sale or lease to which the certificate relates."

Read that twice, because it is not the rule most people carry in their heads. The deadline is not "before you ship." It is not "by the end of the quarter." It is sixty days from the sale, and what has to exist by then is a complete certificate in your files. A form that arrives on day 40 with box 3 blank has not met the rule; the clock is still running on the version you can actually use.

Check the license against the state's list

One claim that circulates about Pennsylvania is that online verification is not available. It is. The Department of Revenue publishes the license file as open data.

The dataset is "Sales, Use & Hotel Occupancy Tax Licenses and Certificates" on data.pa.gov, attributed to the Department of Revenue. When we checked it on September 21, 2026, it held 338,776 active records, and the rows had last been refreshed on September 15, 2026. (The dataset's own description says it is refreshed monthly; a field in its metadata says weekly. Treat it as current to within a few weeks, not to yesterday.) Each record carries the county, legal name, trade name, street address, city, postal code, account number, license type and expiration date.

The license types tell you something useful on their own. Of those records, 282,066 are Sales License/Retail and 26,384 are Sales License/Wholesale. The rest are not sales licenses at all — they are exemption certificates for charitable (9,733), religious (8,751), volunteer fire (2,106), relief association (1,806), veterans (1,445), non-profit education (1,338) and school-district (605) organizations, plus transient vendors, promoters and a handful of booking agents. A buyer whose record comes back as "ST Exemption/Charitable" is not a reseller.

Now the catch nobody mentions. The published account numbers are masked. They appear as eight characters with the middle two replaced by asterisks — 67**7798 — so the file shows you the first two digits and the last four. That is enough to narrow a search and not always enough to identify one business, because two licenses can share a masked pattern. This is why a number alone should never read as "verified": the honest result from a masked list is a match on the number and the business name, or no conclusion at all.

That is how we built our own check against this file: match the number's visible digits, then match the business name, and return "unverifiable" rather than "verified" when the name does not line up or is missing. Our free validator now runs that check on the license number in box 3. If it can't find an active match in the state's file, the result says so as a warning, with the date of the data.

One more thing the file gives you free: expiration dates. Pennsylvania licenses do expire, and the list says when. A license whose expiration date has passed was never a valid basis for an exemption on today's sale, however good the certificate looks.

Which raises the renewal question, because the answer surprises people: Pennsylvania renews these automatically. From the Department's own Retailer's Information guide, REV-717 (SU) 02-26: "Sales, Use, and Hotel Occupancy licenses are renewed automatically every five years provided there are no outstanding filing obligations or tax liabilities." The five-year clock is real, but it is not a form the buyer files — it is a condition they either keep or lose. A buyer who has fallen behind on filings can lose a license without ever telling you, which is the case for re-checking a number on a long-running blanket certificate rather than trusting the copy in the file.

Out-of-state buyers: box 8, or the multi-state form

There is no line on the REV-1220 for another state's number. That absence is the answer to a question guides often get wrong.

A buyer with no Pennsylvania Sales Tax License ID does not write their Ohio number in box 3. The form tells them exactly what to do instead: leave the license line empty and "include a statement under Number 8 explaining why a number is not required." The explanation is the substitute for the number, and a certificate that has neither is incomplete.

The alternative is the MTC Uniform Sales & Use Tax Certificate — the multi-state form published by the Multistate Tax Commission, which many businesses use in place of each state's own. Pennsylvania accepts it, with a limit stated in the form's own Pennsylvania footnote and grounded in 61 Pa. Code § 32.3: it is accepted as a resale certificate only, never as a general exemption certificate. The same footnote carries the same license rule — the buyer enters the 8-digit Pennsylvania number, or explains in writing why they are not licensed.

So: a distributor in another state buying for resale can hand you the MTC form and you are on solid ground. The same distributor handing you the MTC form for a manufacturing exemption has handed you a document that does not work in Pennsylvania. (Louisiana takes the harder line — it does not accept the MTC certificate at all.)

Four years, not three

The retention rule is on the form, one line under the good-faith conditions: "The seller or lessor must retain this certificate for at least four years from the date of the exempt sale to which the certificate applies."

Four, not three. Several widely-read guides say three, and the difference is not academic — it is the difference between having the document when an auditor asks and explaining why you do not.

Two smaller rules travel with it. The form may be reproduced, but any reproduction "shall contain the same information as appears on this form." And the instruction printed in capitals, which saves a certain number of phone calls: "IMPORTANT: DO NOT RETURN THIS FORM TO THE PA DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE." Nobody files a REV-1220 with the state. It lives in the seller's records, which is precisely why the state's rules about your possession of it carry the weight they do.

The form also notes that it "cannot be used to obtain a Sales Tax License ID, PTA License ID or Exempt Status" — a buyer who sends you a REV-1220 as evidence that they have registered has proved nothing at all. And misuse, in the form's own words, "by seller, lessor, buyer, lessee or their representative is punishable by fine and imprisonment."

Where guides get it wrong

Four corrections, from the form and the regulation rather than from anyone's summary.

Retention is four years, not three.

The deadline is 60 days of possession, not "at or before the sale." A certificate can arrive after the invoice and still be good, as long as it is complete and in your hands inside sixty days.

Blanket is a checkbox at the top of the form, not a phrase written into the description field — one of the eight ways a certificate quietly fails.

Pennsylvania license data is published, despite the widely-repeated claim that online verification is unavailable. The masking limits what a number alone proves, which is a real caveat — but it is a different statement from "not available."

The checklist version

• At least one tax box checked at the top
• Unit or blanket marked — one of the two, at the top of the form
• Your name and address as seller
• Exactly one reason box, and the right one: box 3 for resale
• Box 3 carries the buyer's 8-digit PA Sales Tax License ID — or box 8 carries a written explanation of why no number is required
• Signature block complete: printed name, signature, EIN, date (the EIN is not a substitute for the license number)
• The number checks out against the state's public license list — matched on name as well as number, and the expiration date has not passed
• MTC form instead? Fine in Pennsylvania, but as a resale certificate only
• In your possession, complete, within 60 days of the sale
• Filed and kept for four years

Or skip the manual pass: our free validator reads Pennsylvania exemption certificates (REV-1220 and the MTC form) and checks the required fields and the reason-box rules behind them. You see whether it passes, and how many issues it has, in about thirty seconds and with no signup. Add your work email to see each finding with the rule behind it and download a timestamped PDF of the result. Hello Sales checks a resale certificate against the state's own rules and tells you which field fails and why. Run yours through →

Pennsylvania is a records problem as much as a document problem: the completed certificate has to be in your possession within 60 days of the sale, and you have to keep it four years. The free validator checks one certificate at a time. Keeping them all on file — the document, the values read from it and the result of each check, with an audit trail — is what the paid product is for.

Questions people ask

What is a Pennsylvania exemption certificate?

Form REV-1220, the Pennsylvania Exemption Certificate. One form covers every sales tax exemption the state grants at the point of sale — resale, direct use in manufacturing, exempt organizations, public utilities and several others — with the buyer checking one of eight numbered reason boxes to say which exemption they are claiming.

Does the REV-1220 expire?

The certificate itself carries no expiration date. The license behind it does: Pennsylvania sales tax licenses renew automatically every five years, provided the holder has no outstanding filings or liabilities. A blanket certificate from 2021 can therefore be perfectly valid paperwork sitting on top of a license that lapsed — which is why re-checking the number periodically matters more here than a renewal calendar would.

Do I send the REV-1220 to the Department of Revenue?

No. The form says so in capitals: do not return it to the Department. It stays in the seller's files for four years.

Can an out-of-state buyer use the REV-1220?

Yes, and there are two routes. The buyer can use the REV-1220 itself, leaving box 3's license line blank and writing an explanation under box 8 of why no Pennsylvania number is required. Or they can present the MTC Uniform Sales & Use Tax Certificate, which Pennsylvania accepts as a resale certificate only. What no state text supports is simply writing another state's registration number on the Pennsylvania form's license line.

What number goes in box 3?

The buyer's Pennsylvania Sales Tax License ID — an 8-digit number assigned by the Department of Revenue. Not the EIN (that belongs in the signature block), and not another state's permit number.

Is the MTC form accepted in Pennsylvania?

Yes, as a resale certificate only. The MTC form's Pennsylvania footnote, grounded in 61 Pa. Code § 32.3, limits it to resale claims and requires the same 8-digit license number or a written explanation of why the buyer is not licensed.

How long do I keep a Pennsylvania exemption certificate?

Four years from the date of the exempt sale the certificate applies to. That is the form's own rule, and it is longer than the three years several guides report.

What happens if the certificate arrives late?

The good-faith conditions require the completed certificate to be in your possession within 60 days of the sale. Past that, the protection the certificate would have given you is not reliable, and an invalid certificate can leave the tax with you rather than the buyer.

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Form REV-1220 (TR) 07-23, checked against the Department of Revenue's PDF on September 21, 2026. Rules cited from 61 Pa. Code § 32.2 and § 32.3, and from REV-717 (SU) 02-26.

(General education, not tax advice — the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue or a SALT professional is the authority for your situation.)