State: Pay Your Tax On Items Bought Abroad
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WBBM) -- One of the side benefits of travel abroad is about to disappear – buying and shipping items home absent any sales tax.
As WBBM Newsradio 780's John Cody reports, the Use Tax Law has been pretty much ignored since passage in 1955.
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But the State of Illinois is hurting, so now it really does want to know what you picked up out of state or out of the country, and had shipped home.
"If you buy a lamp in Venezuela and have it shipped back to the States, to your home, then you owe the use tax on it, and that would be 6-and-a-quarter percent of the amount of the purchase," said Illinois Department of Revenue spokeswoman Sue Hofer.
Hofer says this is the first time you'll see a use tax line, asking you to calculate 6.25 percent on whatever you had shipped home from out of state since 2004, or you can just estimate $3 per $10,000 gross income.
The line is now on the tax form, and it's voluntary – at least this year.
