Colorado – Sales and Use Tax Complexity
Colorado has one of the most complex sales and use tax systems in the country, with over 700 individual taxing districts, many with their own sales and use tax rates. Adding to the complexity, local governments in Colorado apply sales tax to goods and services (“taxability rules”) differently from the state. This complexity creates challenges for business – houses or businesses next to each other can have different tax rates and taxability rules, even though they may be in the same ZIP code – and finding a solution to these challenges has been on the state’s radar for some time.
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Colorado – A New Era of Sales Tax Simplification
Colorado’s Sales and Use Tax Software (SUTS) task force was created to simplify sales and use tax for Colorado taxpayers. Their goal was to build a system that would cut through the complexity by supplying accurate, easy-to-use information on tax rates and taxability rules for over 300 goods and services. The system also needed to be accessible by state and local governments to facilitate updates in real time. “TTR makes a complicated system easy,” said Colorado’s Department of Revenue Executive Director Lu Cordova, “We could not be happier with our choice of vendors as they delivered a fantastic product and were wonderful to work with.”
Cordova and the task force explored many options before choosing to engage TTR to provide tax rate and taxability information to taxpayers. The task force had this to say in its recent report on the SUTS system: “From a tax data perspective, as sales taxes change due to the passage of new laws, each jurisdiction is responsible for updating their local tax information. A detailed user agreement has been put in place for self-collecting jurisdictions, and users will be held harmless for incorrect data as DOR has certified TTR as an official ‘source-of-truth’ database of sales and use tax information.”
TTR’s Sales and Use Tax Geographic Information System (GIS)
TTR has worked for over a decade to build a nationwide sales and use tax Geographic Information System (GIS) capable of providing accurate sales and use tax rates for every location in the US – accurate to any given latitude and longitude. Layered on top of this solution is TTR’s taxability content. TTR maintains the most comprehensive set of taxability rules available anywhere. The depth of TTR’s content, combined with its state-of-the-art GIS tax rate solution was a perfect fit for Colorado.
Rep. Tracy Kraft-Tharp, D-Arvada, told the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce during a July 8 webinar: “I’ve seen several demonstrations of the [TTR] system, and I can tell you the [TTR] GIS system (that allows businesses to calculate taxes by address) is amazing.”
TTR’s CEO and Founder Shon Holyfield said: “We designed TTR’s GIS with state and local governments in mind. We knew that a seamless solution for geographic locations tied to tax rates and taxability rules was needed by state and local governments. We’ve spent over a decade focused on building out the most comprehensive and accurate set of sales, use, global VAT, and other transaction tax content. Colorado is the now the second state with TTR’s GIS solution. We look forward to working with other state and local governments for the benefit of all businesses in the US and eventually countries across the globe.”
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