Seriously? Online tax?

Actually, you have always been liable for Use Tax in lieu of sales tax in those situations, but most states never enforced it. It seems that company is just informing you of your obligation.

 

^ Exactly, how is this a surprise? What the company just did was uphold their fiduciary duty. Now that the ball is in your court they can easily say that they did everything they could to inform you of your responsibly, the IRS cannot hold them responsible for you not paying the tax.

This was very smart on their part.

 

Yes. It is notoriously difficult to enforce. I asked my accountant about it. He recommended against trying to keep track and file my online purchases. This state turns a blind eye.

The only stores that are obliged to charge the buyer sales tax are those that have a physical retail presence somewhere in the state. It's the reason the Apple Store charges me sales tax, for example, whereas B&H Photo doesn't.

 

The summary that they are providing you is the result of a new Colorado law that was signed in February.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/08/amazon-reacts-to-colorado_n_490028.html

The law initially sought to make the internet vendors collect the tax, but that got canned....

http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/25/co...hnology-business-intelligence-shopathome.html

 

See Mohan's post ... it is apparently a new law in Colo.

Funny. I was just reading about this today in my Internet Commerce class.

 

I actually hadn't heard about it, and just found out about it googling after reading Dukebound's post. I know almost every state has been talking about this, since online purchasing does essentially function as a loophole in sales tax law in many places.

What did your prof. have to say about it? Does he/she think it's actually going to work at collecting the money?

 

Oh, it's an online class ... so no lecture. And, it wasn't on the Colorado law, but Use Tax liability when purchasing on the Internet in general.

 

OTOH, they've been talking about it since the 1970's when mail order first became a big deal.