IMPORTANT news regarding the MTC tax amnesty!
The MTC is holding an Emergency Nexus Committee Meeting to determine whether to extend the amnesty deadline.
Make sure your voice is heard! The meeting is open to the public and will give the seller community a chance to express their concerns.
Wednesday, October 11, 2017 2:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
Call-in Information Dial-In Number: 1-719-234-0214 Conference Code: 102826
The Multistate Tax Commission’s Nexus Committee has scheduled an emergency meeting for October 11 to determine whether to extend deadlines associated with its amnesty for online marketplace sellers with so-called inventory nexus.
According to National Nexus Program Director Richard Cram, potential applicants and their representatives have requested that the 60-day application period be extended beyond the current October 17 deadline.
Potential applicants also have requested extension of the initiative’s December 1 deadline for signing and returning voluntary disclosure agreements entered into with any state, and for being registered to collect, report, and remit sales tax by that date.
Participating states moved fast to put the amnesty together, with an eye toward having marketplace sellers register and start collecting sales and use taxes in time for at least part of the fourth quarter’s holiday shopping season. To get sellers on their rolls by December 1, participating states agreed to offer time-limited incentives beyond those in the MTC’s standard voluntary disclosure agreement — most are waiving back tax liabilities for sales and use taxes, as well as for income and franchise taxes, without regard to any lookback period.
However, Amazon.com has indicated that it is not communicating information about the amnesty to any of its potentially affected 800,000 U.S.-based third-party sellers. The dearth of information Amazon provides to third-party sellers led in part to the creation of the Prosper Show forum by James Thomson, a former business head of Amazon’s platform for recruiting third-party sellers. MTC discussions with sellers through Thomson’s Prosper Show, in turn, led to the multistate amnesty.
Paul Rafelson, a former state tax counsel for General Electric Co., in September raised concern that smaller third-party sellers “don’t know tax and don’t have tax lawyers,” and only learned about the amnesty at the same time as the public — near or on the August 17 opening date of the application period.
“It’s totally unfair to expect them to understand what they need to do, and what’s at stake, with just 60 days to comply,” Rafelson said. He asked the MTC to extend the application deadline to February 2018 to give sellers time to understand the issues and get themselves represented.
According to Cram, the MTC had received 130 applications by the end of September, with submissions during the last week averaging 10 a day — a pace expected to further accelerate in the days leading up to the October 17 deadline.
To put those figures in perspective, Thomson said in August that the top 1 percent of “Fulfillment by Amazon” (FBA) sellers in the U.S. are doing $1 million or more in annual sales, which would be equal to about 8,000 qualifying FBA sellers for the initiative — and “if 1,000 signed up, that’d be awesome, that’d be fantastic.”
Rhode Island is a latecomer to the initiative, joining Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
This article, by Amy Hamilton was originally published on Tax Notes.
Make sure your voice is heard!
The MTC is holding an Emergency Nexus Committee Meeting to determine whether to extend the amnesty deadline.
The meeting is open to the public and will give the seller community a chance to express their concerns.
Wednesday, October 11, 2017 2:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
