[mortenjorck]

Illinois just added a new line to its income tax form in which it is implied "ok, you bought stuff online and didn't keep track of it because you never wanted to pay this stupid tax anyway. So here, just look up your base income on this five-line table and that's what we'll call your use tax for the year."

To my knowledge, California already does this, as well as a few other states. This leads me to believe that the ongoing battle over Internet sales tax may have found a compromise at this point in flat-fee use taxes.

[orijing]

A flat use tax is the equivalent of no use tax at all in terms of purchase incentives.

How does compromise address the competitive discrepancies?

[mortenjorck]

At least in Illinois' case, the competitive discrepancies were second to keeping the state government running.

[ahi]

I actually managed to do my taxes early this year, but I think I remember Michigan giving the option of stating how much you owe, or if you're not sure paying $50. I'm sure a lot of people just put in $0 for how much they owe. I figured it was worth $50 to get rid of the 1 in a million chance that lying came back to bite me in the ass.