A couple of months ago, in our Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Business Formation and Planning Law Blog, we wrote about new sales tax regulations affecting the tax structure of online businesses in the commonwealth.

The new tax is in accordance with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that companies with a physical presence in Pennsylvania, such as Amazon.com, may be be required to collect a 6 percent sales tax. In the earlier blog entry, we noted that the tax regulation would go into effect Feb. 1; the start date has now been pushed back to Sept. 1.

The date has been moved back to allow businesses more time to update their software systems to coordinate with the new Pennsylvania tax.

Under the new regulation, Pennsylvania residents will also be asked to pay taxes to the state for any Internet purchases for which they were not taxed by the company itself. This means that if the company or seller does not charge taxes, it is the customer's responsibility to report and pay the tax to Pennsylvania. For consumers, this year's tax form will include a special line which asks citizens to pay a use tax on the items they purchased over the Internet, in cases when no sales tax was already charged.

Amazon is one of the biggest retailers with a presence in Pennsylvania that has resisted collecting sales tax. However, the new tax will affect local businesses both small and large.

The Revenue Department decided last fall that any seller who operates a place of business in Pennsylvania must collect the sales tax. A place of business can include anything from offices, to distribution centers to warehouses.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal, "Amazon's start date to collect taxes in Pennsylvania pushed back," Frank Devlin, Feb. 1, 2012