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New Member
posted Jun 7, 2019 4:03:56 PM

Form 540: Use tax must be entered. If there is none, enter 0 (zero) or check one of the line 91 checkboxes to indicate no use tax is owed or the use tax obligation was paid directly to the CDTFA.

1 5 19097
5 Replies
Level 13
Jun 7, 2019 4:03:57 PM

I am not sure what your question is.

A "use tax" is a tax in lieu of sales tax, that is collected from you, the taxpayer, on items that you purchased from out-of-stat (typically over the Internet), but which you use, give away, store, or consume in side of California. That is, California is collecting the sales tax that you would have paid had you purchased the item inside the state of California.

Many states now impose a use tax on their residents.

The question is asking for the dollar amount of purchases you made outside the state that were used or consumed in California.

Please the following for California's Use Tax page for individual filers - https://www.ftb.ca.gov/individuals/use-tax.shtml

New Member
Jun 7, 2019 4:03:59 PM

I call this the scroll screen of death. Have none. followed all the directions. Even checked, No use taxes owed. clicked continue and guess what? Back to the same screen again...so I okay. Tried again and again scrolled back to same screen...(tired of wasting my valuable time ) Turbotax needs to fix these glishes as I'm not using thier software ever again. They made me file last years taxes late for state and was fined $250 for my Corporate taxes because the state update was late. This will be my final year of using intuit products (including NOT SO quickbooks) as the software engineers are horrible.

Level 2
Jun 21, 2019 7:52:13 PM

It seems Turbo Tax forgot to add the above-mentioned CA Use Tax question into its Easy Step questionnaire, so now it is left to the consumer to figure out this out on their own even though they paid for Turbo Tax to make sense of it for them.

New Member
Apr 14, 2022 6:17:53 PM

And here we are two and a half years later and it is still not fixed

Level 1
Apr 18, 2022 3:00:47 AM

2021 is the first time this error appears to me... Am I supposed to track all CA taxes I paid online? Makes no sense... I think something is messed up in my return. If this was common, this page would have 100's of complaints...