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Message:: [QUOTE="-jeffB, post: 2080785, member: 27832"]North Carolina offers an alternative. For "Taxpayers Who Have Records of All Out-of-State Purchases" (during 2014), we can look up the appropriate rate for purchases made between 1/1 and 3/31, purchases made between 4/1 and 9/30, and purchases made between 10/1 and 12/31, and calculate our precise amount owed. (Certain localities changed their tax rates at the boundaries of those periods. Not us; we're pegged at the maximum rate, all year long.) For "Taxpayers Who Do Not Have Records of All Out-of-State Purchases", we get to look up what we owe in a table based on our income. The calculation is "0.0675% of NC taxable income" -- in other words, the minimum state rate, regardless of your locality, times one percent of your income. The form also helpfully suggests that "If you believe the estimate from the table is too high for your out-of-state purchases, you may estimate what you think you owe." So, if you spend more than 1% of your income on out-of-state purchases, it is strongly and legally to your advantage not to keep "records of all out-of-state purchases". Although I truly don't have records of all my out of state purchases, I can add up enough from memory to be pretty sure that my effective tax rate on them is well under 1% -- with 100% legal compliance. The good: this reduces the accounting burden on ordinary citizens, not that governments have ever seemed overly concerned about reducing that burden. The bad: this approach does nothing to remediate the "unfair disadvantage for local businesses" -- once I've determined that I'm paying the calculated-from-income use tax, my marginal tax rate on any further out-of-state purchases is zero, while for local purchases it remains at 7.5%.[/QUOTE]

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