Gov. Scott Walker’s administration plans to expand collection of taxes for online purchases by Oct. 1 as permitted by a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
How it will do so — and whether small retailers might be exempt from having to collect and remit taxes for online sales — remains unclear, because the administration isn’t addressing those details yet.
Walker spokeswoman Amy Hasenberg said “we plan to start collections on Oct. 1” but referred other questions to the Department of Revenue, which oversees tax collections.
Well, the “Tax” part of “Tax and Spend” has arrived….
This is going to kill off all small i-net biz. Imagine having to weed through/program/perpetually update 50 state sales tax regulations to sell a pair of cheap $3.95 sunglasses.
Then, wait for it…..
County sales taxes and city sales taxes (you didn’t think New Yawk City is going to give up it’s 4.5% without a fight, didja? )
Most of my ecommerce purchases have been subject to sales tax anyway, so much so that I don’t even bother looking to see if I need to save the invoice for self-reporting on my Wisconsin return. But that is mostly Amazon, Walmart, iTunes/AppleStore, Electronic Arts, Barnes & Nobles. Subject to tax because they have a retail and/or corporate presence in Wisconsin.
And the sales tax charged is 5.6% – 5% Wisconsin; .5% Washington County, and .1% Stadium tax. So yes, the county and local are already collected. At the retail level, the merchant charges the 5.6% and all of it goes to the State of WI Dept. of Revenue, and the Dept. of Revenue sends the .5% & .1% to the applicable jurisdiction.
There is software that calculates the sales taxes automatically. A small E-biz can subscribe to TaxJar for as little as $17/month for up to 1000 transactions. The program will calculate the tax rate (and keep current on it- E-biz does not have to keep track of tax rates in multiple jurisdictions), and automatically generates reports and payments.