Oklahoma tax man wants use tax money

Oklahoma tax officials decided sooner definitely is better than later when it comes to reminding residents of their state use tax responsibilities.

While shoppers took to the Internet on Cyber Monday to look for holiday deals, the Oklahoma Tax Commission was letting taxpayers know:

Consumer Use Tax is due when you have made a purchase from out of state and you were not charged Oklahoma Sales tax on the purchase. Out of state vendors are not required by law to collect Oklahoma tax if they have no physical presence in Oklahoma, but tax on the sale is still due.

Universal use taxes: Oklahoma is not alone. States that have sales taxes have corresponding use taxes.

They are collected for what the name indicates: Your use of a product in your sales-tax-levying home state. Use taxes usually are the same tax rates as a state's -- and other localities' --  sales taxes.

The various taxing jurisdictions mean that exactly how much use tax an Oklahoma shopper owes depends on where the item is delivered and used in Oklahoma.

All items, note Oklahoma tax officials, are subject to the 4.5 percent state use tax.

Then additional tax may be due for the county and/or city where the item is being used.

NewsOn6 offers some visual details in this report:

If the video gives you an error message or stalls when you first click play, click the play button at bottom left of the video screen. Embedded commercials sometimes hang up the programming.

So, Oklahoma shoppers, if you went crazy yesterday and are getting truckloads of goodies you thought were tax-free delivered to your Sooner State home, think again.

You owe Oklahoma use tax on those online purchases.

And you don't have to wait until you pay your state income tax to pony up for your untaxed out-of-state purchases. You can pay your Oklahoma use tax online whenever you want.

Related posts:

• Will Cyber Monday jump start the stalled
  national streamlined sales tax effort?
• Sales tax collection on online purchases:
  legislation to ease it, lawsuit to stop it
• Sales tax collections stall
• Streamlining various state sales taxes
• State use taxes tend to be useless
• State Tax Departments

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