I am completing the "Untaxed Out-of-State Purchases" section of my state return, and because I am a resident of Allegheny County, PA, which has a 1% local tax, it's confusing me on my Amazon purchases because I was only charged 6%. Some orders were delivered to Allegheny county, and some others were in/delivered to Lancaster county where I go to school, and the tax rate was the same 6% for all the orders. Is this correct, or should Amazon have charged 7% as I am a permanent resident of Allegheny? If 6% is correct then I paid enough sales tax, but 7% means I need to report all the purchases and they were underpaid. I have tried looking up how this process works but it's been really confusing trying to get a definite answer.
Similarly, for Steam purchases, I had 2 that were oddly only charged at a 5.6% sales rate after calculating it, which I assume I need to report as well because that's even below 6%.
Thank you!
The questions that TurboTax asks are there to aid you in calculating any use tax owed. The only information that is reported to the state is the end result of all your calculations. No detail of what or how items were purchased. I'd advise that a good faith effort be made based on your understanding of what should have been paid if you were purchasing the items locally.
However, if you have been notified by a company that they failed to collect the sales tax at time of purchase, be sure to pay that use tax as part of your tax return.
Thank you for the response!
So even if the items were bought online while in a different county than Allegheny, and not delivered to Allegheny county, they should be treated like they were bought locally in Allegheny and should use the 7% rate? That is what is still confusing me, as I also received no notification by a company about a failure to collect.