Let me tell you how it will be…
There’s definitely a nasty surprise waiting for some Newegg users living in Connecticut. Specifically, those that didn’t pay sales tax on their purchases. Which has, coincidentally, been illegal if the site in question didn’t collect sales tax at purchase for the state. Newegg didn’t do that, so the responsibility fell to the customers to include it on a 1040 tax form.
Naturally, said customers didn’t bother. Which for quite a while, didn’t have any repercussions. Tax authorities were stuck with the choice of having to figure out which customers made purchases the hard way, or trying to convince the sellers to spill the beans. They opted for the latter, however, and that’s where the story begins. While now most vendors collect state taxes, Connecticut wasn’t willing to stop there. They wanted the info on customers who didn’t file taxes for past purchases, or the vendors would have to pay them out of pocket.
Newegg opted to just dump the relevant info and have done. Which seems to fit with their shady business quite well, actually. In an interview with WFSB, a Connecticut CBS affiliate, Michael-Jared Hunter Gillis had this to say:
Newegg threw all of their customers under the bus, frankly, I will not be making a purchase with them ever again.
Gillis, a new father and husband, previously bought some PC parts and a 65-inch TV from Newegg before they dropped a dime on their customers. Which means he now has to pay those taxes, and possibly any fines for not paying. Both Gillis and other customers now have the department of Revenue Services on their heels.
Usually we don’t have the data, but in several cases companies have said… we’ll squeal on our customers and you can beat up on them. The people who sold to them have ratted them out.
– Tax Department Commissioner Kevin Sullivan
Wow, any way you could make yourself sound worse, Kevin?
Source: PC Gamer
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