http://news.com.com/States+push+to+tax+Net+shopping/2100-1028_3-6060450.html States push to tax Net shopping April 12, 2006, 11:27 AM PDT Did you buy anything through the Internet last year without paying sales tax at the time? If you did, state tax collectors warn that you'd better say so by April 17 and write a check--or else. Online purchases from sites like Amazon.com and eBay may seem to arrive in a state of untaxed bliss. But the law actually requires shoppers to pay their own state's sales tax rate--the concept is called a "use tax"--and voluntarily cough up the exact amount owed each year at tax time. Tax bureaucrats for years have lamented the difficulty of collecting use taxes on catalog and mail order sales. Now, with online shopping growing rapidly and nearing $100 billion a year in consumer sales, tax collectors are adopting more aggressive tactics. [...] "If you've written zero or left it blank, during the audit we're going to make you produce your financial records, bank statements, credit card statements," said Michael Bucci, a spokesman for the New York Department of Taxation and Finance. "If we find out you have made purchases you haven't reported to us, not only are you going to be liable for the amount owed, the tax liability, but also interest and penalties, which...could be up to three times as much as what you actually owe." [...] _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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