Home Depot Denied Refund of NJ Sales Tax

National retail giant Home Depot U.S.A., Inc. (Home Depot) sought judicial recourse to obtain a refund of New Jersey sales tax it collected and remitted between August 1, 1999 and July 31, 2003, based on store purchases made with its private label credit card – by consumers who ultimately proved the inability to pay off [...]

Because It’s Such a Privilege to Sell Into New York

Not only do New Jersey merchants (and denizens in general) get the short end of the cultural stick vis-à-vis their neighbor to the East, right across the Hudson River, but now they’ll have to pay for the privilege of collecting sales taxes for New York. New Jersey businesses, along with several other border states, have [...]

Fiscal 2010 Looking Ugly

As discussed in an April Sales Tax Buzz post, sales tax receipts generally outpace income taxes as the primary food source for state budgets. Noting the dismal Q2 receipts that came off a disastrous Q1 2009, while considering that June closes the fiscal year in a majority of states, fiscal 2010 does not look pretty [...]

Want to Cash In On Your State’s Amnesty Program?

** This post has been modified from its May 4th version (which focused on amnesty in New Jersey) ** The flurry of page views to this blog and dollars received in New Jersey in response to its latest sales tax amnesty program was so extreme that I decided to re-write that original post to update [...]

Tax Amnesty Kicks Off Today In New Jersey

From today through June 15, taxpayers may submit their slice of the $100 million in back taxes, including sales and 38 other kinds of state taxes, owed to the Garden State sans penalty and reduced by one-half the accrued interest. This is the fourth time in approximately 25 years that the state has launched an [...]

Drugstore.com Withdraws Appeal Against New Jersey

***** drugstore.com withdraws its appeal of February 2008 decision & agrees to pay $1.7 million to resolve sales and use tax case ***** What do you do when your local drug store, supermarket, or bodega no longer carries your favorite shampoo, but your hair just won’t behave without it? You log on to drugstore.com and [...]

Digital Downloads Sales & Use Tax Cheat Sheet, circa early 2009

No matter how I try to slice or dice this topic, this one just isn’t easy. What was once tangible has become, or can be, intangible tomorrow, if it’s not already so today. The issues of nexus, taxability, and others keep shifting in the virtual world. In fact, just minutes after this post was published, [...]