Rich1939 Loc: Pike County Penna.

Jeez! Why did your neighbor blame New Egg. They didn't have a choice. Providing that information is now required by law. Upheld by SCOTUS

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

It is true that online companies are now required to collect the appropriate sales tax. But it has always been the case that if you live in a state that has a sales tax you were required to pay it even if the seller didn't collect it. That has not changed.

There are some cases in which a buyer will be exempt from sales tax. In Massachusetts, any purchase that was to be used directly in agricultural production was exempt from sales tax. But in order to get the seller to refrain from collecting the tax you had to provide the seller with form ST-12 that they could keep on file. I suspect other states with similar provisions would have similar paperwork.

traderjohn Loc: New York City

Upstaters.

ecurb1105

Yup, just expect to pay tax on everything. We all live deep in the heart of taxes.

jimstevralia

computing and recording the tax is only the beginning! The next step is collecting and lastly PAYING it! It is not only a state tax, but many municipal taxes at various rates. We know that the consumer will be paying the TAX. Who do we think will pay the ADMINISTRATION?

Bill P

That was once the law, but a recent Supreme Court decision threw that out. Get used to it, it's the brave new world.

JCam Loc: MD Eastern Shore

I would assume CT's tax law like most states is on Sales and USE! Even if bought out of state you are supposed to be a good citizen and report and pay the tax, usually at end of the quarter. I had a state tax collector tell me that line of payees was the shortest line in the state. When we had a small business we tried to be diligent about collecting taxes due because it was too much hassle to try to research three years back. We were a rental company and had to collect the taxes, but about 70% because that large percent of our volume was tax free--schools,colleges, churches, and a lot in NH & RI and our records were pretty good but some idiot in the tax collection division with nothing better to do sent three collectors to do a surprise Audit. They wanted to match every invoice against our Tax Exemption forms; it was a hell of a job for them (we didn't help), I just pointed our three five drawer files full of forms sorted, poorly, by names of the customers, and more boxes full of invoices marked only by year and invoices in numerical sequence by month. I have to admire their endurance; they lasted a month, but maybe they thought any job was better than being in the state house office. I think they found about $200 worth of tax due after the three months, and a large portion was from a church we had just forgotten to get the Certificate.

Actually the lead collector wasn't a bad guy. When he realized another large church (actually the Catholic cathedral) was one of the "miscreants" and a large customer, he asked if we could make those records 'disappear' until they left as they had already spent far more in salaries and expenses than they were going to collect . He also asked about rentals at the State House, and when I told him most were ordered by office the President of the State Senate, he decided not to dig into that can of worms.

They never bothered us again and cancelled scheduled audits of several other rental companies ; I guess we were the test run and it didn't pay off.

JeffR Loc: Rehoboth Beach, Delaware

Then Amazon owes me a lot of refunds, because they base it on the recipient's location, not mine.

royb_36-cox.net Loc: Phoenix

My experience in Arizona is that only the State Sales Tax is paid on online purchases but not the City or County Sales tax. If that is true in every state which has State Sales tax the computation is simple since it is the same x% for everyone in that State.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

Sure. Until the store gets caught up with by New York State. Then they are in tax trouble. What they are doing is violating tax laws.

Kozan Loc: Trenton Tennessee

Jerry, It's not hard at all to incorporate a sales collection algorithm that calculates the tax for each state.
A simple lookup table is all you need. Adding up all the sales tax for each state also would be a trivial task.
At the end of the month you write a check to the state in question. As people say, "It's not rocket science."

Ghery Loc: Olympia, WA

I know a store that will not have a physical presense in Washington, but has a store in Oregon, so they can sell you stuff, ship it to Washington and not charge sales tax. I hope that doesn't change.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

This is incorrect. Use tax for shipped items is, and always has been, based on destination, not place of purchase.

There are two taxes - a sales tax and a use tax, and the use tax has two versions - consumer use tax and seller use tax. These taxes are usually equal and levied based on the location of residence, or where the merchandise will be used. There is still one loophole that some can exploit to their advantage, and that is if you reside in a county or city/town where there is a higher sales/use tax and you have it shipped to a friend where the local taxes are lower, the likelihood you will get caught for tax evasion is low. No matter what - you are obligated to either pay local sales tax or local use tax, and not doing so can get ugly if you are caught.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/use-tax.asp

This, from 2015,

https://www.avalara.com/us/en/blog/2015/04/do-you-know-the-difference-between-sales-tax-and-use-tax.html

explains how use tax used to work, but in light of the South Dakota vs Wayfair decision, the Supreme Court has now made it possible for a state to obligate an out of state seller to register to sell product in their state, and by doing so, obligate to report sales and collect sales tax for sales in it's state, under the concept of Economic Nexus. States must develop their own rules, guided by the SCOTUS decision, and test for constitutionality. I think that the present, there are 30 states that currently have Economic Nexus laws on their books.

This is how it breaks down when it comes to purchases:

1. Face to face purchase and pickup - like a retail purchase in a brick and mortar store - local sales tax prevails.

2. Face to face purchase and shipped - use tax at shipping destination prevails, and legally must be paid - either collected at the vendor and remitted to the destination's taxing authority or self-reported and paid by the purchaser at destination. The use tax also applies to in-state purchases where there are different tax rates in different locations. These rules usually have a threshold for value and volume. If a small store sells 10 items with a total value of $1,000, it is likely that it won't reach the minimum threshold for Economic Nexus. However, a place like Amazon or B & H may sell hundreds of thousands of dollars in merchandise, and do this to hundreds of thousands of consumers in a given state, clearly crossing most thresholds.

3. If you buy something in one of the 5 states that has no sales or use tax and have it shipped to a state that has a local use tax, you are obligated to pay the use tax, and with the new rules, the vendor is obligated to collect and remit the tax.

If you purchase something in NYC, the local tax is 8.875%, not 8.5%. If it is shipped to Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon or Delaware, the store in NYC has no obligation to collect use tax. But if you have it shipped to any other place where there is a sales/use tax, the store can (and should) collect the use tax based on residence, which is usually the address on the credit/debit card, though they might be able to make an argument for collecting the use tax at the shipping destination, regardless of where the residence is.

This is pretty clear and not open to individual interpretation. Nothing you stated in your post is even close to accurate.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

It can if Washington chooses to do so. The recent SCOTUS decision establishes and reinforces the concept of Economic Nexus, and opened the door to states deciding how they will collect sales and use taxes. Solution? Move to Oregon and pray that Oregon doesn't start charging sales tax.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

The June 2018 decision does not require the collection of taxes. It only allows the individual states to craft laws to do so.