Exclusive, NFIB webinar hosts Department of Revenue presentation on the Sales and Use Tax System
With more than 740 governmental bodies, it’s no wonder “Colorado is the most complicated sales tax state in the entire country,” as State Sen. Rob Woodward said in his opening remarks in an exclusive webinar NFIB Colorado hosted for its small-business-owning membership.
But help is on the way in the form of the Department of Revenue’s new SUTS (Sales and Use Tax System) initiative. With intense lobbying by NFIB and others during the 2017 session of the Colorado General Assembly, House Bill 1216 was passed and signed into law, creating a Sales and Use Tax Simplification Task Force, of which Woodward is a member and from which DOR’s new system sprang.
“Our state has really stepped forward with this SUTS system,” said Woodward. “This is going to be a one-stop-shop, a place that you can go to charge folks the right sales tax, easily and more cheaply remit the sales tax, stay on the right side of the law.”
The system is in infancy but 80% of the state’s home-rule cities have agreed to join. Allowing cities, counties, and special districts to establish their own systems “worked fine back in the days when we were just a Main Street state where business took place across the counter from the guy running the cash register,” added Woodward, “but online business delivery has really complicated what that looks like.”
The continuing education of its small-business-owning members on the latest rules, regulations, and technology is one of the prime benefits of NFIB membership, and to that end, Matt Samuelson, deputy director of the Colorado Department of Revenue, and two of his colleagues, Emily Foley and Eren Yar, accepted NFIB Colorado’s invitation to take its members on a SUTS tour. Their presentation begins at 31:25-minute mark.
“SUTS is an additional tool available to businesses to meet their obligations,” said Samuelson, “so it’s not intended to replace Revenue Online,” the department’s portal. “It’s just another option available so businesses can decide what’s the best way for them to fulfill their filing and remittance obligations.”
Click the arrow below to watch the presentation.
