Sales Tax:
New York State:
If you have to deal with sales across New York State, you are well aware of the joys of filing the quarterly NYS Sales Tax Return. Most of the forms and publications are available on-line at NYS Department of Taxation and Finance website. New York State has what I like to call a multi-part sales tax. The state itself charges 4% while allowing the counties across the state to add their percentage and sometimes an individual city may add a percent (or fraction thereof). A useful guide to get started is Publication 750: A Guide to Sales Tax In NYS.
A Quick Reference Guide that has proven useful to post on your bulletin board is Publication 850.
Registered NYS vendors who do business outside of their county definitely have to review all mailings received from NYS to keep tabs on changes in some of the local rates. I recently found a new feature NYS added to their website which allows you enter a street address and zip code and have returned to you the municipalities total sales tax. Bookmark this web page: NYS Lookup Service. If you know the county your customers city is located in, this is the publication which will give you the rate quickly (print this and post on your bulletin board also): Publication 718.
I haven't seen nor heard anything from NYS about any on-line sales tax filing program (I know for a fact the NJ and PA offer on-line filing). They are just starting to get into accepting estimated income taxes on-line so I'm hoping that they will soon allow the sales tax filings on-line. The most commonly used NYS Sales Tax Forms are as Follows:
More to come as time permits...