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To: techanalyst1 who wrote (8123)	8/2/2001 11:49:59 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57684

Do you have to pay sales tax if you buy on ebay or ubid in your state? There is sales tax that is suppose to be collected from vendors selling on Ebay in my state except for the week in question. Note that vendors out of state never charge sales tax in this state. That brings up an issue that has been bothering the auditors of the PA Department of Revenue. Everyone is aware of the non collection of sales tax and the Use Tax Law requires the local resident to fill out a form and mail to the state of PA a check voluntarily for the amount of the sales tax. Clearly, the auditors can't possibly audit individuals for this because it it would be financially counter productive not to mention difficult to trace for a personal purchase. They are making an effort to audit larger firms for this tax because many of these items are capital purchases and are amortized on the books. The auditors look at the receipts to see if the vendor collected tax. I was just through this in one of my stores last spring. We had a purchase of two Dell computers during the time frame of the audit period. One I bought through their business division which does tax the computer and dell turns that tax over to our state. The other I bought through the personal purchase division due to a better price there from a promotion. The personal purchase division does not collect sales tax for PA sales. The auditors "caught" this and I had to pay the sales tax of about $200.00 on a roughly $3500 purchase. The tax rate here is 6%. I also had to pay a penalty of $15 and interest of $6. This audit took two two PA auditors almost four full business days since it was for a three year period. It is my opinion it cost the state more than about $221 to perform the audit<VVBG> Oh well.....