Complying with sales tax is more than just charging, collecting, and remitting the right amount of sales tax. It’s also about how your business reports sales tax to the tax jurisdiction. Tax jurisdictions have different rules on where, when, how, and how often to file and if you’re not following those rules, you could suffer penalties or attract an audit, even though you might be compliant with sales tax rates and collection. Whether your business is new or you’ve been collecting sales tax for years, checking with your tax jurisdictions on how to submit your filing and how often you need to is something you should do every once in a while.
Different tax jurisdictions have different thresholds of sales tax liability that trigger different requirements. For instance, Tennessee businesses that make over $500 now have to file electronically as of January 2013. The idea behind the threshold is that individuals who are earning less than $500 would be overburdened to file sales tax electronically. Although states might chase after a kid selling raspberries on the side of the road to remit sales tax, they won’t force him to do it electronically. There are also rules for how often businesses need to remit sales tax. In Illinois, if your business has an average sales tax liability of over $20,000 every month, you’ll be required to make quarter-monthly payments on the 7th, 15th, 22nd, and last day of the month every month. However, if any of the filing dates fall on a weekend or holiday, things get tricky.
Keeping up with your sales tax filing deadlines and how you need to file can be tricky. The easiest way to keep up with all the sales tax filing changes is to use a system that’s automated to keep track of it for you. Our sales tax filing software keeps all the dates in order, tells you when the filing deadline moves because of a weekend or holiday, and gives you the correct way to file your sales tax return directly with the tax jurisdiction.
