Miasmatic Review

Use this!

What is the Illinois “use” tax? Well until today I had never heard about it. Now that I have, it just confirms that governments would rather squeeze every penny they can get out of their citizens. The Illinois Use tax basically means that if you buy anything outside the state of Illinois physically or online and you are charged less then the 6.25% base sales tax, you are supposed to claim that on your annual tax forms and mail the difference to the state.

n Wisconsin, you pay a base sales tax rate of 5 percent on those purchases. Since Illinois’ base sales tax rate is 6.25 percent, you are required to pay Illinois 1.25 percent on all of those purchases when you file your yearly income taxes.

What this means is that if I go on a vacation to states that have a lesser sales tax rate then Illinois, which I think is most of them, then I’m supposed to keep tract of all of my receipts and when I do my annual taxes send that extra money to the state government. When I take my annual pilgrimage to Green Bay to see the Packers play, I’m supposed to send extra money to the State. If I buy something online, and am not charged sales tax or charged a lesser amount. I’m supposed to track it and send it to the state. If I purchase something online and am not charged sales tax over Illinois 6.25%, you got it, I send money to the state. Think I’m kidding? Here’s the State of Illinois official guide to the Use Tax. The most interesting things on this is that this law has been around since 1955,yet I’m just now learning of it.

In the article in the Rockford Register Star, a representative of the state claims;

“It’s a self-reported tax and we realize many people don’t know they owe it,” Klemens said. “We work hard at getting the word out. We send notices to tax preparers to remind them. We have it in our tax booklet. In fact, we project we’ll collect about 10 percent more this year because we displayed it prominently on our cover. We believe 90 percent of the people will pay the tax if they realize they owe it.”

Shyea, right. I’ve always joked that Illinois bureaucrats are on crack, but I never thought I’d get confirmation. The state of Illinois is bleeding its people dry with all the different taxes. What makes them think that these people are going to voluntarily fork over more money? According to a couple of sources online, the only states with a higher Income tax then Illinois are California, Mississippi, New Jersey, Tennessee, Rhode Island, Minnesota and Washington. Alabama and Texas have the same rate as Illinois. I highly doubt that the citizens of the state of Illinois are going to start forking over money because they went on a vacation to any one of the other 40 states not listed and bought a souvenir, gift or anything else to bring home.

First off, who is going to keep all those receipts for a year just to pay extra money? Secondly, who is going to keep all those receipts at all? Hell, when I buy something I generally toss the receipt as soon as it’s out of the checkbook. If I pay in cash, I tend to toss the receipt as soon as I see a trashcan. The chances are that by the time I take my next out of state trip, I’m going to forget this law even exists. The sad thing is that apparently there are a lot of other states that have the same or similar law. So keep that in mind when you travel, especially if you live in one of the states I listed above.