4 ms·
This can be difficult to explain. Sales tax or 'Sales and Use tax 'SUT' is the responsibility of the customer not the vendor. I'm an accountant and often a sm
by Bricejm 16y ago
This can be difficult to explain. Sales tax or 'Sales and Use tax 'SUT' is the responsibility of the customer not the vendor. I'm an accountant and often a small business will send us a bill that doesn't include sales tax. Some things are exempt from sales tax, but some things are not. It's up to us to decide if we need to 'assess' ourselves sales tax based on the service/product that we received. We send a check to the government for the sales tax the vendor didn't charge us. When we're audited this is one of the big issues that we need to provide documentation. It seems to be a concept that's turned around, but it's up to the customer to make sure the tax is paid, not the vendor. Although it is different state to state.
The only way I see Amazon liable for sales tax is through the purchase of their inventory, not the actual sales to customers like us, although it is normally assumed that large corporations charge sales tax and there might be a tax law that says just that. I looked at my last Amazon order and I wasn't charged sales tax, so I'm not sure how Amazon gets around this.
- slantyyz 16y agoI'm neither an accountant nor an American, but I thought that e-commerce was a grey area with respect to sales taxes in the US. Most e-commerce companies didn't charge sales tax outside of the state they operated in. During the dotcom days I was assigned to research the implications of interstate transactions, and honestly, all that nexus stuff was dizzying. I only recall hearing periodically (every couple of years) that the ecommerce sales tax moratorium (if you can call it that) had been extended yet again. Is that still the case?
- smackfu 16y ago"Sales tax or 'Sales and Use tax 'SUT' is the responsibility of the customer not the vendor." Wouldn't that imply that a vendor could just not charge sales tax and not be fined for it? Which doesn't seem right.
- Bricejm 16y agoI'm not quite sure what makes the difference. I'm sure there are laws for large corporations vs. a small business. All I know is when our corporation isn't charged sales tax on a non-exempt item, it's our responsibility to pay the sales tax, even though we were the customer.