July 28th, 2010
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Rep. Delahunt announced that he will join with a bipartisan group of state lawmakers and small business owners at a Press Conference Thursday morning at 10:00AM in Room 2226 of the Rayburn House Office Building to urge passage of the Main Street Fairness Act (H.R. 5660).
The bill was introduced by Congressman Delahunt on July 1, 2010 and is designed to help states retrieve billions of lost sales tax revenues that are currently owed but go uncollected due to complex, outdated sales tax rules across the country.
For more details please visit Representative Delahunt’s website.
Tags: internet tax
Posted in Main Street Fairness Act | No Comments »
July 27th, 2010
Most people are familiar with the term “sales tax”, because we’re required to pay it almost every time we make a purchase at a local store. (Unless you’re lucky enough to live in a state with no sales tax.) A sales tax is typically a required percentage of the sale price of a good or service, that is paid by the purchaser at the time of the sale, and collected and remitted by the retailer. Sales taxes only apply to retail transactions – not wholesale ones – because they are a type of “consumption” tax.
A “use tax” is not discussed as often, but states that have a sales tax generally also have a use tax. The use tax is required to be paid and remitted by the purchases on goods bought out-of-state, such as over the Internet or via mail order.
I came across this for the first time when we moved out of state just after purchasing a new vehicle. When we went to register for a tag in our new state, we had to pay them the difference in sales tax between the two states – which was 1 1/2% of the sale price of the vehicle (our new state’s rate being 1 1/2% higher than our previous home).
Historically, states have not enforced use taxes to the same extent they do sales tax. There are many more individuals than businesses in a given state, which makes enforcement harder. And since retailers generally cannot do business without registering to collect and remit sales taxes, the infrastructure for sales tax collection is much easier.
This is where Internet tax comes in. You may have heard a lot about this lately, as states are trying to figure out how to recoup losses as more sales tax place online, from smaller retailers who don’t have a presence (or nexus) in the state. Because states have use taxes, most of these sales have always been taxable – but it was up to the purchaser to pay the tax, since it was a use tax. State governments now want to require Internet retailers to collect the sales tax up front, and to remit it to the various states, so they can continue to meet their revenue requirements without spending more money starting to enforce payment of use taxes.
Tags: sales and use tax, sales tax, use tax
Posted in Tax Rules | No Comments »
May 14th, 2010
Did you know that some states don’t impose a sales tax at all? Few of us are lucky enough to reside in these states – after all, there are only five of them! Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Alaska have no state sales tax.
Tags: no sales tax, no state sales tax, states without sales tax
Posted in Tax Rules | No Comments »
October 28th, 2009
We are pleased to announce our official status as a strategic partner with Miva Merchant, one of the shopping carts that AccurateTax.com supports. Read the full press release here.
Tags: miva merchant, press releases
Posted in Company News | No Comments »
May 13th, 2009
http://dor.wa.gov/Content/FindTaxesAndRates/RetailSalesTax/DestinationBased/OnlineSellers.aspx
“The Department of Revenue recognizes that sellers using online shopping carts face unique challenges to change to destination-based sales tax. Some shopping carts have limited capabilities in calculating sales tax. For example, some will only accept one tax rate per state; others apply tax rates only using a 5-digit ZIP code. As you may know, Washington has about 16 different sales tax rates within multiple taxing jurisdictions (about 355) and 5-digit ZIP codes do not accurately correspond with tax rates or taxing jurisdictions.
It is ideal if the shopping cart can use the actual delivery address or the corresponding ZIP+4 code, either of which will deliver an accurate tax rate and taxing jurisdiction. However, that is not available to many sellers at this time.
Although calculating sales tax by address or ZIP+4 codes is most accurate, we understand that it is currently not possible for everyone. In the interim, the Department’s expectation is that sellers will do their best to determine the correct tax rates to collect and to report the sales to the correct jurisdictions when filing their tax returns. If the sales tax collection method used results in the over- or under-collecting of tax, sellers are still required to remit all tax to the Department of Revenue, or if requested, refund the over-collected tax to the customer.”
lifted unceremoniously from the DOR site for your review.
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You can read the whole article on the DOR site, but we wanted to be sure to state emphatically that there IS a zip+4 sales tax collection solution that is NOT only available, it’s in use today. If you have a store that needs the most accurate tax collection mechanisms available today, AccurateTax is here.
Tags: destination-based sales tax, sales tax, washington state sales tax
Posted in Washington Sales Tax | 1 Comment »
May 7th, 2009
A really great affiliate site tracking all the different laws coming down the pipe since New York started it’s battle with Amazon.
http://nyaffiliatevoice.com/2009/05/hawaii-inches-forward/
Apparently, Hawaii is just one of the states to be hitting on this issue now. It’s starting to look like more and more states are going to at least put their toes in the Internet Taxation water.
The practical issue for storeowners is apparent. Most (if not all) of these laws are being written to say that storeowners are responsible only if gross sales are over 10,000 in a given 12-month period. Of course, none of us have a magic crystal ball to accurately determine if we will or won’t have gross sales totaling 10,000 for a year, so what is a storeowner to do? Obviously, we’ll start collecting the tax … JUST IN CASE.
Between the Streamlined Sales Tax Project and all these independent efforts to tax affiliates it appears the writing is on the wall and we may be saying “aloha” to the days of a tax-free Internet.
Posted in Hawaii Sales Tax | No Comments »
March 19th, 2009
In 2008, Washington state joined the ranks of those states that are moving to the Destination-based sales tax model. This was pretty well advertised in Washington circles and many online storeowners in Washington state showed the requisite amount of concern over being able to handle this newly created issue.
While storeowners in the other 49 states seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief at not having a physical presence in Washington state the fact is that Washington is not the only state that currently has rules that apply to destination-based sales tax collection.
Florida, Texas, California and New York all have varying degrees of rules that require storeowners that transact business with customers in these respective states to collect and report sales tax based on where the products that are sold are ultimately delivered.
Obviously, there are two schools of thought on these newly created sales tax burdens – 1) storeowners are playing a “come and get me” game hoping that states don’t actually have the time or money to track down sales that are made in their states and 2) the “I don’t care what the tax rules are I just want to be compliant” crowd. No matter which crowd you hang your hat in, one thing is for sure in a down economy, the money reservoirs that states used to be able to find from in-state vendors is drying up. Here in Florida, we’re dealing with huge budget deficits for our public education system and many of the state legislators are reluctant to raise any taxes locally, but at the same time seem perfectly fine with collecting taxes on outside-the-state vendors who ship items to Florida residents. I doubt this is a problem that is unique to Florida these days and am sure other states are reviewing their own possibilities in this arena.
Whether the states are successful in seeking sales tax collections from outside vendors will be the true test. Will the federal government insert itself into the mix, knowing that some of these states are facing huge deficits and even potential bankruptcies?
No one can say for sure, but as the axiom says, “may you live in interesting times”, well, I guess 2009 qualifies.
Tags: california sales tax, destination-based, destination-based sales tax, Florida Sales Tax, washington sales tax
Posted in General Items | No Comments »
March 7th, 2009
In July 2008, Washington State decided it wanted to join the Streamline Sales Tax effort (an issue we’ll cover a lot in other posts), but the big crux of what this meant to storeowners was that they wanted to move to a destination-based sales tax…meaning that the sales/use tax should be collected not based on where the storeowner’s location is, but rather where the products are delivered.
Generally speaking, this probably makes a lot of good sense for the local communities. Charging sales/use taxes based on the actual destination means that items being purchased by local people benefits the local community, not just the state. Of course, that’s just one perspective. From the storeowner’s point of view, this action is tantamount to opening Pandora’s box.
Two sides of this equation that affect storeowners – compliance and reporting. On the compliance side, clearly the storeowner is now expected to manage their sales tax information for the entire state as rates can fluctuate widely across counties, not to mention that rate changes can occur at any given point in time. So, keeping tax rate data current and properly configured is one issue. The other side of the equation is reporting. Knowing what was collected and what needs to be reported to the state is where the “rubber hits the road” so to speak. Having accurate tax reports that show what amounts were collected, from which counties/areas and for what time periods becomes a godsend.
Back in July 2008, NetBlazon received quite a few calls from Washington State storeowners in need of a solution to handle their compliance and reporting needs, which is why we decided to create the AccurateTax TaxTools product suite. Of course, it now seems that there are a great many states that are interested in getting in on this action, so we will continue to document those tax rules here and as always, we’re open to your own interpretations of these laws.
Tags: destination-based sales tax, sales tax rules, washington state sales tax
Posted in Tax Rules, Washington Sales Tax | 1 Comment »
March 7th, 2009
There are lots of fancy names given to taxes these days. In our very own Florida, we have a humdinger … the discretionary tax. Now, Florida for a long time has kept it simple…6% sales tax, paid by all, easy, clean done…but it seems many counties have decided there’s some revenue to be generated through sales tax collection, hence the introduction of the discretionary tax rules.
The discretionary tax is really just a fancy way of saying county sales tax, but what’s really interesting about this tax is that its supposed to be collected by any and all vendors who make sales into the designated counties…even OUT-OF-STATE vendors. Now, like many of these taxes, the issue for many storeowners is one of likelihood that the Department of Revenue in the State of Florida is going to track you down to get you to pay. Some interesting charts on this from the state’s own website are below:
Florida Sales Tax page
Florida Discretionary Taxes
If you have a business in the state of Florida and collect sales tax, you should definitely check out the rules, as the discretionary tax rules seem pretty clear. In all honesty, I don’t think the state of Florida is making any kind of concerted effort to collect these taxes above and beyond the standard 6%, but then with economic times being what they are, one shouldn’t bet on things remaining that way. Besides, the point of a solution like AccurateTax is to make it simple for storeowners to be compliant with the tax laws, not skirt them or shirk them.
If you’d like to learn more about AccurateTax’s TaxTools, please feel free to contact us at 866.400.2444 or info@accuratetax.com.
Posted in Florida Sales Tax, Tax Rules | 2 Comments »
March 6th, 2009
NetBlazon has announced the release of its first Accurate TaxTools product – the Basic TaxTools solution at the Miva Merchant 2009 conference.
The Miva Merchant 2009 conference held Feb 26 through Mar 1 was a great hit for the Miva Merchant community. There were approximately 350 attendees, 30+ sponsors and even an extra day of classes for storeowners.
Additionally, NetBlazon announced the generally available release of our AccurateTax TaxTools product, which provides the most feature rich sales tax solution for the Miva Merchant platform. If you’d like more information about our product suite, please feel free to contact us at 866.400.2444 or info@accuratetax.com.
Tags: miva merchant, sales tax solution
Posted in General Items | No Comments »
