Merchant Advisory: New Colorado Tax Law

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by Jennifer Farwell

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Monday, March 22nd, 2010

The following information is provided as a courtesy to our merchants. The tax law information may not be an accurate description of Colorado tax law requirements and, as such, should not be relied upon as advice on how to comply with tax laws. Merchants are urged to seek their own counsel on this and all tax matters. The intent of this article is to provide our merchants who are subject to the new Colorado tax law with technical instructions that may facilitate merchants’ compliance with some of the requirements of the new law.

Recent legislation in Colorado places new obligations on companies that do not collect Colorado sales tax. Certain exceptions do apply. For detailed information about these requirements, merchants should consult with their tax advisors. Merchants may access a copy of the new regulation on the Colorado Department of Revenue web site. A recent article from E-Commerce Times provides a summary of the new requirements.

Among the new obligations is a requirement that merchants provide notice to certain customers of such customers’ obligations with respect to sales tax. In connection with this new obligation, our merchants may wish to include the notice during checkout, either on the Billing Information page (the Shipping & Billing Information page for merchants using a single-page checkout flow), the Order Review page, or on the Order Confirmation page. To add this information:

1. In the Page Configuration section of Checkout Manager, select the tab for the page you wish to add this notice to.
2. Enter the required notice information in the Page Message field. Please consult with your tax advisor and see the Colorado Department of Revenue web site for details of the information to be included here.
3. Save your changes, and publish your Order Settings.

If you do not wish for this notice to appear to all customers, you may instead wish to add JavaScript code to your pages to detect a Colorado billing address, and to display this notice only upon a Colorado billing address being provided.

For more information about adding custom information to checkout pages, please see the Customizing a Specific Page section in Checkout Manager help.

Also among the new obligations is the requirement that merchants distribute annual information statements to their Colorado customers. In connection with such annual information statements for Colorado customers, Merchant Solutions Standard and Professional merchants who use Order Manager may wish to export their orders to search or sort orders by state. Merchants who use third-party order processing solutions may wish to use export, search, or sort capabilities available within the application being used.

Yahoo! Small Business recommends that you consult with your tax advisor with respect to the new law. We hope that the information we’ve provided here is helpful to those of our merchants who are subject to the new Colorado tax law. For more information on the new Colorado tax law, please read the E-Commerce Times article and visit the Colorado Department of Revenue web site.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business
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