Do I Have to Pay Sales Tax on Those Holiday Gifts I Bought Online?

Question:Do I have to pay state sales tax on items I purchased online through retailers such as Amazon.com?

Answer: Yes. Even if the online retailer doesn't tack on the sales tax to your purchase, you are legally responsible for remitting the appropriate amount directly to your state within a certain time period.

Many states call this a use tax instead of a sales tax, even though the rate of taxation is the same.

Forty-five states and the District of Columbia impose a sales tax, and all of them have enacted similar use taxes, according to a June 2010 policy brief published by the Minnesota House of Representatives.

See more:A Complete List of Sales Taxes By State

Question:So How Do I Remit the Sales Tax?

Answer: In most cases, states allow you to report and pay your use or sales tax through your individual income-tax return.

Of the 45 states with a sales and use tax, 38 also have an individual income tax. Of these 38 states, 23 allow taxpayers to report their use or sales tax obligations on the individual income tax return, according to the Minnesota House of Representatives.

Another seven, including Minnesota, provide information about the use or sales tax in the individual income tax booklets.

Five states levy no sales taxes at all, and if you live there you're in luck. The five states that do not levy sales taxes are Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon.

Question:Why don't online retailers tack on the appropriate sales tax?

Answer: Some online retailers say it would be "horrendously complicated" to tack on sales tax because the states they'er shipping to have different rates of taxation.

The U.S. Supreme Court agrees with them. In 1992, the court ruled in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota that requiring online retailed to collect the sales tax across 45 states that levy it and about 7,500 different taxing jurisdictions would burden interstate commerce.