I have, one week after the Amazon guy came to speak to Rotary (sorry, last week was so busy I didn’t write about it).
I’m pretty sure this is the first one of these I’ve received. But then, I just recently got into ordering stuff from Amazon. Here’s what it says:
Hello from Amazon.com,
As you may or may not be aware Amazon.com LLC is not required to collect sales or use taxes in all states, including the state of South Carolina.
The South Carolina Department of Revenue requires us to provide the following notice to you:
You may owe South Carolina use tax on purchases you made from Amazon.com LLC during the previous calendar year. The amount of tax you may owe is based on the total sales price of the items you purchased during the previous calendar year. The total sales price of only purchases you had shipped to South Carolina in 2011 was $118.96. This is the amount that you may include on your South Carolina income tax return to calculate the appropriate use tax owed unless you have already paid the tax.While Amazon.com LLC does not report this information directly to the state of South Carolina we are required to provide this information to you based on South Carolina law Section 12-36-2691(E)(3).
As purchases from Amazon.com LLC can be made through various sales channels, we have included directly below your breakdown of purchases from the various channels.
Total sales from www.amazon.com $118.96
Please note the following:
- The total sales represent all orders that were shipped to South Carolina during 2011.
- Your purchases are subject to use tax unless an exemption exists under state law or you have already paid the tax.
- A sale is not exempt under state law because it is made through the internet.
- This information should not be used for any federal income tax reporting purposes.
- We are required to provide this notice in accordance with South Carolina law Section 12-36-2691(E)(3).
- Notifications were sent to customers that had purchases delivered to South Carolina. If you are not a resident of South Carolina, the most common reason for receiving this notification is that you may have sent a gift to a recipient in the state.
In addition, the South Carolina Department of Revenue requires us to provide you with the following links that you can use to get more information and pay any taxes due:
Use Tax Page: http://www.sctax.org/Tax+Information/Sales+and+Use+Tax/use_tax/UseTaxHome.htm
How Do I Pay my Bill: http://www.sctax.org/Tax+Information/Sales+and+Use+Tax/use_tax/UseTax+Payment.htm
For more information you may also view our South Carolina Use Tax Notification Page at:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200863730Sincerely,
Customer Service
Amazon.com
Something else to give my accountant when we get ready to do our taxes…
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The fact that a person needs an accountant to do his personal taxes speaks volumes about the ridiculousness of the system.
To expect taxpayers to track their spending in order to pay a use tax is typical stupidity.
If you want my money, collect it from the seller just like you do everywhere else.
I fail to understand why people need an “accountant” to do their taxes. Unless you have several rental properties or businesses it seems like a waste of money. I file in three states and just use TurboTax and two non-resident income tax forms from the state’s website. From start to finish it takes me about two hours, and part of that is trying to locate all the paperwork that I need.
If you want my money, collect it from the seller just like you do everywhere else.
So you’re saying that you will disregard our state’s tax laws because the process as is is not convenient enough for you?
Yup, and we’re going to pay it.
Well, of course you’re going to pay it. It wouldn’t even occur to me to ASK about that…
If the state wants to send me a bill for what I owe, I will pay it. I am not going to keep track of every nickel and dime I spent on the internet over the year.
And what about the items I purchased in states that don’t collect sales tax and brought back to SC? New Hampshire and Montana were two I spent time in this past year. Do I owe for those as well?
The use tax should be eliminated. It would cost many times more to enforce so that everyone paid the correct amount than the tax collects. I would guess you’d have a decent case if questioned on this item to have the Department of Revenue prove they had collected all the taxes from all citizens — if not, then how can you only target some citizens?
And “convenient” doesn’t begin to approach the stupidity of this tax code.
If a private business attempted to have rules like the government, it would go out of business in about a week.
With Steven. I had an accountant years ago, who, it turns out, was a crook, stealing from charities he was the CFO for (because, I presume, he was an accountant). By the time we went to him, turned out he didn’t have his license (how would you know?) and he screwed up our taxes for years, so that we ultimately we hired another accountant who filed a bunch of amended taxes to get back all the money we overpaid due to the crook’s “professional advice”. Turbotax for me, please. I am not so good to get mine done in 2 hours, but 8, definitely.
If an accountant suggested to me that I do my own taxes, I would say, “Why don’t you stab me repeatedly with your sharpened pencils, instead? I would enjoy that more.”
Not. Gonna. Happen.
Save yourself some money and do an experiement, buy a copy of TurboTax attempt to do your taxes and then compare them to what your accountant comes up with? I bet you won’t be that far off if at all.
I’ve used Turbo, TaxAct, and HRBlock software. HRB was my best so far as far as refund.
They’re easy to use and reasonable.
And you can wear your pajamas while doing your taxes. : )
@Doug–The use tax is how they get people who buy cars in Augusta but live in Aiken. I guess I grew up expecting to pay it on cars.
I keep reading where an accountant can save you more than you pay him or her, but I doubt it. We use Turbo Tax…
We have some funds in a Master Limited Partnership. The complexity of that alone is enough to justify our use of an accountant.
My father’s a semi-retired CPA, and he does our taxes for free. I don’t know what I’d do if he wouldn’t. I do my mother-in-law’s taxes though. The IRS gives you the forms and instruction book for free!
The use of an accountant for the vast majority of people is a ridicuolous waste of not just money but probably time as well. There is very little risk in making an error using Turbo Tax. It asks you questions along the way just like a good accountant would. If you have a very complex situation like a farm or other complicated business then maybe a good accountant would be useful. For those of us who make a living via a paycheck, a bit of interest and don’t have deductions other than charity and a home mortgage then a tax software package is both economical and convenient.
Got my email from Amazon. The amount displayed is inaccurate by several hundred dollars. So which number do I use? Or do I have to pay an accountant to sort through dozens of Amazon transactions to determine which ones apply to the use tax?
From today’s article in The State on the Amazon notices:
“Residents have largely ignored the law, however. Out of more than 2 million South Carolina individual tax returns, just over 12,000 declared such taxes in 2009, the most recent year for which data was available.”
Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2012/01/31/2134282/amazon-tax-bills-come-due.html#storylink=cpy
Anyone who pays a tax that 99% of the rest of the taxpayers do not is pretty dumb.
I’m a Federal Employee, I have to pay all taxes owed & must confidently be able to state in a polygraph this is true. I know that SC has a use tax & if I do not report it, this would be illegal.
It might also mean that 99% are pretty dishonest.
Yes, my total from Amazon seemed very low to me — don’t know if that was the case for you, Doug, or not.
I noticed that it says it’s just for orders that were shipped to South Carolina. So if I order something on Amazon and have it shipped to another state, does that mean I don’t owe SC taxes on it?
Oh come on, Doug. You’re only going to report and pay the tax if the state sends you a bill? Is that how you feel about the rest of your income tax return or do you actually file that yourself and pay your tax? It may be difficult to track every nickel and dime spent on the internet, but anyone with a decent personal budget should be able to reasonably estimate. Or at least you could pay the tax on items that you can easily identify. Or you could say, “Gee, I know I spent at least $200 on items purchased on the internet this year; I’ll just pay the tax on that amount.” It’s really pretty simple. It’s no harder than keeping records for your deductions — and I’m guessing you aren’t waiting on the government to hold your hand in identifying those amounts.
Just because you or anyone else chooses to disregard the law, doesn’t make me stupid for — at such a minimal level — choosing to be a responsible citizen. Weren’t you one who had a problem a couple of summers ago with Sen. Kerry avoiding use tax on a boat by not docking it in his home state? At least that was in compliance with the law.
My wife said this morning that she thought our $118.96 was low. I had SORT of thought that, but I have little faith in numbers, and I’m used to being fooled by them, so I put little store in my own impression.
I don’t know. I leave these things to other people. I cannot bear to spend any time in my life keeping track of amounts of money. There are people who are paid to do this sort of thing — accountants, Amazon, whomever.
One of the things I really don’t like about developing my blog into a business is that there is money (small amounts, but money nevertheless) to keep track of, and no one to do it but me. I’m used to that being done by people in a whole other part of the building, at the very least. And they bring me things to sign and I say “What am I signing, Radar?” and then don’t really attend to the reply.
In fact, I sometimes think, “What is my goal in developing the blog as a business?” And the answer sometimes is, “To make enough to pay somebody else to sell the ads, collect the money, keep the accounts and pay any bills that occur, and not bother me with it.” To me, that would be success.
In fact, I can trace the decline of the newspaper business by that same measure of success. When the industry was flush, editors never had to think about money. Then, as the years wore on, we were forced to think more and more about it (mainly, about how to do our jobs with less of it to work with). So is it any wonder that I would associate not having to think about money with success?
I remember when it started, in the early to mid-80s. One day at the paper in Jackson, TN, we had a visit from corporate, and they held a meeting with employees. My managing editor surprised me by standing up in front of everybody and telling the corporate guys that he was hearing altogether too much about money, and that it wasn’t right, because journalists shouldn’t have to hear about that stuff.
The amazing thing about him saying that was that in those days, we didn’t hear about money a tenth as often as we did in the latter years. But Johnny was a purist, bless him…
Instead of finding new ways to raise our taxes, our elected leaders in Columbia, OF BOTH PARTIES should be finding ways to make government more efficient and cut spending.
Why is it that raising more money seems to be the only priority where finances are concerned?
@David
So you want me to guess what I should pay for taxes because the government couldn’t figure it out even if they wanted to? Is that how you handle your taxes? I think I earned X dollars, I think I have Y kids, I think I donated Z dollars to charity.
It’s a farce. Let’s say I spent $500 on the internet last year. What do I owe? About $35-40? Stupid.
Mike, nobody’s talking about “new ways to raise our taxes.” We’re just talking about collecting the ones we already owe. Not only that, but it’s the sales tax, which appears to be the favorite (or perhaps I should say, least hated) tax among tax haters.
And Doug, there’s nothing farcical or stupid about this.
Our state has, in response to this and that group of screaming taxpayers, placed a tremendous part of the burden of financing state government on the trembling back of the sales tax, because lawmakers are cowards and that’s the tax that people complain about the least (NOT, mind you, because it was a good, sound idea).
They did this just at the time when so much commerce was moving to online. There are several reasons why it then becomes important to collect taxes where the shoppers are:
— Whether you believe it or not, the state government actually does important stuff, and this is how we pay for it.
— It’s really not fair for Granny to pay sales taxes at Food Lion, but people who buy everything they can from Amazon manage to skate.
— Letting said e-shoppers skate provides Amazon et al. with an advantage over the bricks-and-mortar businesses in our community that employ our neighbors and pay property taxes and otherwise contribute to our communities. It’s great that Amazon provides jobs, but they’re not going to employ everybody, nor would we want our whole economy in one basket like that.
There was another good reason, but I forgot it while I was typing those.
Is the way we’ve come up with to get people to pay these taxes inadequate? Yep. But that was the price of getting these Amazon jobs, bottom line.
The solution, according the Amazon, is a national solution. They want Congress to pass a law that regulates the payment of taxes through e-commerce. Frankly, I need to get them to explain how that helps. To my thinking, it wouldn’t make their job easier unless you were talking about a single, FEDERAL sales tax. But the sales tax remains a local or state phenomenon, and will vary by jurisdiction.
But that’s what Amazon claims would fix the problem.
Money–it’s for the little people in other parts of the building to take care of–are you sure you aren’t Violet, the Dowager Countess instead of Lord Grantham?
Doug believes that the State Government does importatnt stuff like pass useless voter ID laws that he wants, but doesn’t want anyone to pay for enforcement or the training of poll workers or the software and hardware to verify the id’s properly rather than leave it up to the volunteer poll workers. But looking at your Amazon (because they are pretty much the only ones on-line not collecting sales tax) account for the past year to see how much you spent is a pretty grueling 5 minutes of your life, and any way, it is way better to mandate that grocery stores and small business owners be in the tax-collecting business.
And Brad, Amazon doesn’t want a solution, really, if they are expecting Washington to pass a comprehensive tax reform. its a dodge to keep the “Amazon Discount” going. The real cost of the tax collection by Amazon is probably minimal; the impact would be on sales as they had to compete with other businesses on a level field.
First, no one said they were little people. They can be as big as they like, as long as they deal with the filthy lucre.
And I’m quite sure Lord Grantham leaves such things to his man of business. He’s far too busy for such things. He has to supervise his valet in dressing him, to make sure he gets the Sam Browne belt adjusted just so beneath his epaulets. He has to walk the grounds shooting things. He has to read The Times. He has to look suitably concerned and/or appalled when the butler apprises him of doings downstairs (because, for some reason or other, her Ladyship is unavailable).
I don’t know when you think he’d have time to deal with money. If I were Lord Grantham and someone asked me to deal with money, I am quite certain I’d put my foot down.
I just don’t know why you’d want to bother His Lordship at such a time. He’s still mourning the fact that they won’t let him actually go to the war, while his servants and heir keep going and getting blown up and such, which causes all sorts of upsets in the household. This is a hard time for him.
I can FEEL this, however callous you may be…
By the way, seriously, you do understand that there is a sound, ethical reason why editors were not supposed to think about money, right?
It’s because editors are gentlemen…
OK, now that I’ve given everyone a good laugh — it’s because editors are supposed to do their jobs without regard to where the money comes from (so that they don’t, for instance, give undue favorable coverage to advertisers or some such).
We did manage to keep that bit of innocence intact in my day. Actually, that’s not quite right… I was sometimes aware of it when an editorial position of ours was costing the paper money (I can think of one case in particular where it ran to hundreds of thousands), but no one ever asked me to change our position. And I didn’t.
It did make for some awkward silences in senior staff meetings, though. Someone — say, the circulation director — would innocently ask, “Why don’t we have any advertising from (blank)?” And the ad director would say, carefully not looking at me, “We used to. But they’re withholding their business because of an editorial position of the newspaper.” I would respond by checking e-mail on my Blackberry, or watching the hawk that used to soar around outside the third-floor window. Because it would not have been kosher even to discuss the issues involved with business-side people.
We were very fine in those days. And brave, and tall, and handsome. Me especially…
@Tim
They already check ids at polling places. I shower mine two weeks ago… sorry…I love laws that cost zero to implement and enforce.
Grow up and deal with your finances. It’s a brave new world out there, Mad Man, and you don’t have “people” to do things for you any more, do you?
So what you’re saying is that a piece you wrote or approvfed caused advertising revenue to decline, which caused the editorial staff to be reduced.
In other words, you fired yourself.
Kathryn, they DO seem to have gone missing. No doubt they’ll turn up, though, full of apologies for having run off. And I shall forgive them, for that’s the sort I am.
After all, if I have no people, how am I to set up a meeting to pitch my movie idea? Who’s going to call the other party’s people?
http://www.heraldonline.com/2011/06/05/3122123/john-english-63-or-64-years-old.html
Doug,
any law that costs zero to enforce is not being enforced.
“After all, if I have no people, how am I to…”
The same line spoken by many now bankrupt and broke sports and movie stars.
I’ve never understood why people have to have people around them constantly.
If one doesn’t have people around one, how are the people going to do all the things one needs to have done? I mean, pagers are so demode!
Steven Davis says: January 30, 2012 at 2:52 pmI fail to understand why people need an “accountant” to do their taxes
I like to think of myself as a “job creator,” Steven.
[like] what kc said
H&R Block. We take them papers, they call us a week later, we sign other papers and give them money.
I know it’s done right based on what I give them and the amount of time it saves me is worth the money I pay.
I shopped at Amazon to not pay sales tax. Like hell I’m going to pay if I get a notice.