For goods sold at retail, selling through distributors does not move the obligation while a higher tier of the producer cascade is present, and not being able to see your state volumes is not the same as being under the threshold. This page covers the three allocation methods in order of defensibility, the Colorado, Maryland, Maine, and Oregon provisions that expressly provide for estimated data, and what you have to write down for the estimate to hold up.
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Last updated October 25, 2026.
For items sold at a physical retail location, selling through distributors, brokers, or a wholesale channel does not shift producer status to them while a higher tier of the producer cascade is present. The same holds for the packaging that directly protects or contains an item sold remotely. In every enacted state the cascade stops at the first tier that applies, and the statutes, and Maryland's rule, pass over a manufacturer, licensee, or brand owner that is not within the United States, or in California is not in the state, for a lower tier, but Colorado's rule puts the brand owner first with no U.S. location test (6 CCR 1007-2 Part 1, s18.2.2(A)). Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington put a distributor tier at the bottom of the cascade for items sold at a physical retail location, reached only where no manufacturer, licensee, brand owner, or importer can be identified. California reaches the seller or distributor when no brand-owning manufacturer, brand owner, or exclusive licensee is in the state (PRC 42041(w)(3)). The Colorado cascade for packaged products and the Oregon cascade for items sold in packaging at a physical retail location end at the importer, and Oregon assigns packaging used to ship a remote sale to the person that packages and ships the item (ORS 459A.866(1)(b)(B)) and all other packaging to the person that first distributes the packaged item in or into the state (ORS 459A.866(1)(c)). Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington have the same kind of rule for packaging outside their retail and remote-sale provisions, which names the person that first distributes the item in or into the state as the producer, with no tier above it (38 MRSA 2146(1)(O)(3); Md. Envir. 9-2501(p)(1)(iii) and COMAR 26.04.14.02B(25)(d); Minn. Stat. 115A.1441 subd. 26(a)(3); RCW 70A.208.020(29)(a)(iii)). Not being able to see your sales into a state does not change whether you are the producer there.
California defines where a sale occurs, but the definition does not move producer status. PRC 42041(w)(5) provides that "for purposes of this chapter, the sale of covered materials shall be deemed to occur in the state if the covered materials are delivered to the purchaser in the state." It is drafted chapter-wide rather than confined to the producer definition, so it governs the cascade and may also bear on the small-producer threshold at PRC 42060, although that threshold counts gross sales in the state rather than sales of covered materials. If you deliver to a distributor outside California and that distributor ships the goods in, the provision does not settle whether that sale is yours in California, because it says "if" and not "only if." Producer status turns instead on whether the brand owner or licensee is in the state under 14 CCR 18980.1.1(a), which pairs California court jurisdiction with in-state service of summons or with consent and producer registration. If one is, it remains the producer of the packaging on the good, and its obligation applies when that covered material is sold or distributed in the state by any person (14 CCR 18980.1.1(f)(1), 18980.5(b)); if there is no brand owner or licensee in the state, the person who first sells or distributes the good in the state is the producer (14 CCR 18980.1.1(f)(2)).
In every state the practical fix is a data clause in the distribution agreement, which is covered in the section on what a distributor owes the producer.
Every tonnage test in every state is measured per state. So the sentence "we do not know our Minnesota volume" cannot be completed with "so we are probably under a ton there". You have to estimate the number before you can know whether the estimate clears the threshold, so the estimate is what shows whether a producer is under the threshold.
A company that files nothing because it could not measure has not claimed an exemption, it has simply not filed, and in California relief is not automatic in any case: it must be applied for and approved. And a company whose national volume is obviously large cannot assume the per-state split rescues it, because the tonnage thresholds are low, at one ton per state.
Full thresholds and test logic are on the de minimis page.
Use the best method your data supports, and be able to say why a better one was unavailable.
One, ship-to state at order line level, from your own ERP. This is actual data rather than a proxy and it is what a regulator will expect a company with an ERP to be able to produce.
Two, retail sell-through or syndicated data. Retail point-of-sale where a customer provides it, or syndicated market data such as Circana or Nielsen. This is a measurement of where product sold rather than where you shipped it, which makes it better than ship-to for the redistribution problem below and worse for auditability, because you did not generate it and cannot always reproduce it.
Three, allocation of national volume. Population share is the usual basis, and it is a fallback rather than a method of choice. It is defensible only when documented as an allocation, applied consistently, and paired with a statement of what better data was unavailable and why.
Whatever you choose, changing basis between cycles without explaining why is worse than picking an imperfect basis and staying with it. An inconsistent series looks like an attempt to manage the number, and it is the pattern most likely to invite a question.
Four states provide expressly for estimated data: Colorado, Maryland, and Maine for prorated national data, and Oregon for estimated market data. Maine's Chapter 428 lets a producer that cannot estimate its Maine tonnage report national tons, which the SO multiplies by Maine's share of the U.S. population, for start-up registration only (Sec. 8(A)). Colorado, at 6 CCR 1007-2 Part 1 section 18.2.5(B), provides that a producer, if requested, must report the data necessary to meet its plan obligations "and may use prorated national data if state-specific data is not available or feasible to generate." Maryland, at COMAR 26.04.14.09D(2) and (3), uses the same words with one more condition: a producer "may use prorated national data if state-specific data is not available or feasible to generate upon approval from the Department."
The Colorado and Maryland rules carry conditions. Permissive rather than mandatory ("may use"), available only where state-specific data "is not available or feasible to generate", and in Maryland subject to MDE approval before it is used, not after. Neither is a default, and a producer that holds ship-to data in its ERP has a weak claim that state-specific data was not feasible to generate. Neither rule specifies the basis of proration. Population, revenue, and unit share are all unnamed: none is blessed and none is forbidden.
Maine's statute and Chapter 428 set their own estimation methods (38 M.R.S. §2146(13)(A)(1)(d)(iii); Ch. 428 Sec. 8(A) and 9(D)). Oregon, at OAR 340-090-0700(1)(d), has a producer submit its market data with a description of its methodology, which "must be in accordance with applicable best practices", and requires a producer that submitted "estimated market data" to report corrections before the next annual reporting deadline once better data shows the estimates were not accurate; OAR 340-090-0910(2)(b)(A) separately allows national data pro-rated to Oregon's population, but only to pick the SKUs for life cycle evaluation. The other three states are silent, and silence is not permission. No statute or rule in California, Minnesota, or Washington authorizes an estimation methodology. That does not make estimation improper, since a producer required to report a number it cannot measure directly has to derive it somehow. It does mean that outside Colorado, Maryland, Maine, and Oregon you are relying on a documented, reasonable methodology rather than on a permission, and the page you write to defend it is doing the work that a citation would do.
Cite Colorado 18.2.5(B) in Colorado and Maryland 26.04.14.09D in Maryland, get MDE's approval first in Maryland, and do not cite either anywhere else as though it traveled.
When product ships to a distribution center in one state and sells in five, ship-to state is not state of sale. Using ship-to silently overstates the DC state and understates every state it serves, and the overstatement can be large enough to change which states you are above threshold in. Only Maine addresses it, and the other enacted states are silent. Where a producer cannot obtain unit counts, Chapter 428 requires an estimate for each distribution network that assumes equal per capita sales across the distribution area, defined along state lines (Sec. 9(D)).
The defensible construction is a documented, reproducible redistribution basis: customer sell-through data where it is provided, retailer store counts in each state, or population share as the fallback, with the basis retained and applied the same way year over year. Note that this is a second methodology layered on the first, and it needs its own paragraph in the document described below rather than being folded silently into the tonnage estimate.
A foreign brand owner with no United States entity. Where no manufacturer, licensee, or brand owner exists in the United States, the cascade continues. In Washington, Maryland, Minnesota, and Maine it reaches the United States importer (Maryland's rule says the person that imports the product, the other three say importer of record), and then the first distributor in or into the state. Colorado's and Oregon's statutes reach the importer at their third tier (Colorado's rule lists it fourth, 6 CCR 1007-2 Part 1, s18.2.2(A)(4)) on the same condition, that nobody in the tiers above exists within the United States. California has no importer tier at all and goes straight to whoever sells, offers for sale, or distributes in or into the state. So an importing distributor of a foreign brand can be the producer, and often is.
Unbranded and generic product. Packaging that carries no brand identification is reached expressly at tier 1 in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington, and in Colorado's statute (C.R.S. 25-17-703(30)(a)(I)), which lands the obligation on the manufacturer rather than on anyone downstream. But Colorado's rule reaches that manufacturer only at the third step of its order of obligation, after the brand owner and licensee steps (6 CCR 1007-2 Part 1 s18.2.2(A)(3)). A distributor selling unbranded goods it did not make is generally not the producer there; the factory is. California's tier 1 requires a manufacturer that owns or licenses the brand, so unbranded product falls to whoever sells or distributes it in or into the state (PRC 42041(w)(3); 14 CCR 18980.1.1(f)).
Both cases are worked through on Am I an Obligated Producer?, which also covers the four states where a written assignment can move the duty.
A distributor has no reporting duty of its own unless a state's producer definition makes it the producer, and no obligation to hand you state-level sell-through data. Nothing in any of the seven laws creates one.
The fix is contractual and can be made at renewal. The clause needs to specify the field (units or weight by ship-to or sell-through state), the cadence (annually, before your earliest state reporting deadline), the format, and a retention period long enough to survive an inquiry. Distribution agreements written before these laws existed rarely address any of the four.
Retention periods decide how long the clause has to reach, and they differ. Colorado requires producers to maintain records for five years (6 CCR 1007-2 Part 1 section 18.1.5(A)), with production due within ten business days of a department request or a later timeline the department sets (section 18.1.5(B)). Maryland is also five years (COMAR 26.04.14.09B), with records available within fifteen business days or a longer timeline the Department sets (26.04.14.09C). California's is three years (14 CCR 18980.6.8(d), 18980.7.7(d)), and 18980.6.8(c) makes each participant producer responsible for records sufficient to show its compliance, whether held in its own custody or by the PRO. Set the contractual period against the longest requirement you are subject to, not the shortest.
One document, refreshed annually, retained at least as long as your longest applicable retention period.
It should state: what data sources were used and where they came from; why the chosen method was chosen, and what better method was unavailable and why; how any samples were selected and why they represent the portfolio; how supplier-provided weights were validated; the quality-assurance step; the state allocation basis and its rationale; every assumption and conversion factor with its source; and the date and the owner.
That list is assembled from Oregon's instruction to document data sources, references, assumptions, and calculations, and the five-year retention periods in Colorado and Maryland. No single jurisdiction requires all of it.
An estimate labeled as an estimate, with its basis stated, is a methodology, and the same estimate presented as a measurement is a misstatement.
Circular Action Alliance accepts estimated, forecast, or pro forma data where complete records do not exist (CAA Reporting Policy V2.0, section 3.4), and it does not preapprove methods (section 3.5). An estimate can later be replaced with better data through one Adjustment per report each year, so wait until that data is complete before asking for one (sections 3.12 and 3.13).
The one-page guide sets out when an estimate is needed and the usual fallback for units by state and for component weights, then what can still change once the report is in.
Your download is ready. The one-pager comes with your free EPR Atlas account.
Work out whether you are the producer at all on Am I an Obligated Producer?, check whether your packaging is even in scope on B2B packaging and EPR, then run the numbers in the fee calculator and check your dates on reporting deadlines by state.
Every state guide has the fee schedule where one has been published, registration deadlines, program plan status, eco-modulation detail, the statute and any implementing rule, and exemptions.