Any word on how they plan to track you down?

OY...but really, how do they plan to enforce that?

Don't know. But I've been in this state long enough to know they think they have a way. Problem is it'll probably cost them as much or more to track people down as they'll recover. But you can be sure they'll be touting how much they've put into the state coffiers with this program!!

Even *I* don't know what I've bought over the internet over the last six years, let alone the last six months... I'd be thrown in jail for sure! That is just crazy!

Really?? I only pay sales tax if the vendor charges me - don't take it upon myself to calculate tax if I'm not charged and submit it to the state. Have you had some kind of law for the past six years saying you're supposed to do that? It sounds like something they'd do in my state - Minnesota - another high tax state. I don't see any way they could ever enforce that. What are they doing from this point forward to collect?

Supposedly there HAS been a law on the books-- just that no one's heard of it till now. Go figure. I don't know what they're going to do to enforce it, but you can bet they'll try. It's just a real good thing I don't do much business on the net. The ones I feel sorry for are those in here from Maine, who've gotten all their fixtures, or appliances, custom knobs and pulls, tile, granite, etc. all on line, and there are several. That would be a hard nut to swallow.

Maine (since 1951) and Mass. both have USE taxes (in fact all states that have a sales tax also have a use tax). If you bought it an use it in the state you have to pay the use tax if you didn't pay sales tax.

Mass. and Maine both have a spot on their state income tax forms asking you if you owe any use tax. I imagine it is tax fraud to say no, which is what pretty much everyone does as far as I know.

They are apparently targeting businesses and individuals with income in the top 10%.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2006/07/25/maine_moves_to_collect_use_tax_on_out_of_state_purchases/

Here is a link that might be useful: Info on Maine Use Tax

In NY (the highest taxed state in the nation, but then, we NYers are so competetive...!) we now have the "option" of paying a pre-determined amount of use taxes for out of state purchases, based on adjusted gross income, or we can go to the trouble of itemizing and declaring what we did buy if we think it is less. I think we have had use taxes for a donkey's age, but now there is separate line on the tax form calculations for it. I guess too many folks just kinda went along and skipped over the use taxes on out of state purchases, for too long.

My impression is that this year many people just claimed they had NO out of state purchases, including some high state officials, which seemed dubious at the time, but who knows? I think we just anted up the scheduled amount and it go at that.

Molly~

I actually read an article in the paper this morning that said NY is going after I don't know how many peope who bought cigarrettes from some internet site (minus taxes). The on-line store went under, and the Attorney General got all the purchasing records (IP addresses, etc) from them as part of some settlement. They are expecting to recover over $7million in fees and taxes.

$7 million, unfortunately, seems like such a drop in the bucket for us...like Bill said, it probably end up costing more getting the information.