A SpotBureau product · Compliance & tax

Pinrates

Compliance that shows its work.

Every direct-to-consumer wine shipment decided the moment it’s placed — licensure, eligibility, and tax — with every rate version pinned, every rule cited, and a return you could file. Fifty states, every district, one ledger.

Pinrates is a SpotBureau product, offered through SpotBureau For Business.

Decision · CA shipmentALLOW

Form 401-A2 · regenerated · version pinned

Total sales$1,240.00
State tax · 6.000%$74.40
County / local · 1.250%$15.50
District tax · 0.375%$4.65
Tax due (line 17)$94.55
Variance vs. filed (line 18)$0.00
Decided · pinned · cited · written to the ledger
Illustrative decision
50
States · every district
3,517
Cited rate versions
353
Decisions replayed
$0.00
Line-18 variance
Illustrative

Three gates, run on every order

Every shipment stands on three legs.

License, eligibility, and tax — decided in sequence, each one cited. A shipment that fails any leg never ships; Pinrates runs all three the moment an order lands and writes the verdict, with its reasons, to the ledger.

01 · License

Cleared to ship?

May this winery ship into the destination state at all — and is the fulfilling party licensed?

ALLOW · partner license in force
02 · Eligibility

Permitted & in-window?

Is the product permitted, the address shippable, the buyer of age and verified, and inside the annual volume window?

CONDITIONAL · 11 / 12 btl-yr
03 · Tax

Owed, to the dollar.

What is owed once state, district, and excise are resolved at the rooftop — not an estimate, a figure you can file?

ALLOW · rooftop · 3 versions pinned

One decision, and its receipt

The answer isn’t a status. It’s a worked return.

Eighteen months later, a state asks why you charged $94.55 on one shipment. Pinrates’ answer is a worked return — regenerated from first principles, line by line, with every number pinned to the rule that produced it. Working from first principles is what catches a district rate that changed mid-year, or a wine classed under the wrong excise tier.

Replay · 2 years laterSAME ANSWER

Append-only ledger · rule versions preserved

Licensein force
Eligibility4 of 12 btl-yr
Tax basisrooftop · 3 pinned
Tax due (line 17)$94.55
Variance vs. filed (line 18)$0.00
Replayed on demand · citations intact · ready to hand over
Illustrative decision

The constitution

Four rules Pinrates will not break.

These aren’t features. They’re the reason a compliance answer from Pinrates is one you can put your name on.

Two keys

Author ≠ reviewer

No rule goes live on one person’s say-so. Every rate version is authored by one hand and countersigned by a credentialed reviewer before it can decide anything.

Cited

Every number sourced

Each rate carries the authority it came from — the schedule, the publication, the district. Click any figure in a decision and the citation is right there.

Refuse to guess

Conditional, never silent

When the data isn’t there, Pinrates returns conditional and says exactly what’s missing. It never quietly falls back to a default and calls it an answer.

Replayable

An append-only ledger

Every decision is written with the exact rule versions it used. When a state questions a shipment from two years ago, you replay it — same answer, same citations.

See the full ledger, live on Pinrates.

How it works, who signs the rules, and the API — all on the Pinrates site.