I've read on reddit that the letters have gone to people with $2000 or more total over those years, if anyone sees one for less I'd be curious to know how much it was for.

I've bought stuff on Newegg and haven't received a tax letter, but I didn't spend $2000.

Only sounds like a problem for people who want to break the law.

It's a stupid and relatively unknown law.

Stupid, yes, unknown, no. Every piece of tax software I've used has asked "Did you make purchases online without paying state sales tax?", and in saying "Yes", will ask you how much you spent. Now, obviously, I don't keep receipts, so I just estimate, but paying an extra $30-50 at tax time just to ensure that it looks good to the IRS, -and- if something like this happens it looks like I paid, is worth the piece of mind.

The IRS doesn’t care about state sales tax. Your state agency is probably called something like the Dept of Revenue. Overpaying taxes “just in case” seems like an odd strategy to me.

It’s hard to believe anyone doesn’t know they are responsible for paying their own sales tax on out of state transactions. It’s on the state tax forms, the tax software asks about it, your tax preparer will ask about it, etc. It was also big news when the states were going up against Amazon for collecting sales tax. Besides that, ignorance of the law is never an excuse for breaking it.

Anyway, NewEgg has to have known that some consumers were purchasing from them to avoid sales tax and that this will lead to reduced sales.

> It’s hard to believe anyone doesn’t know they are responsible for paying their own sales tax on out of state transactions.

I really wish you were being facetious. I get the feeling you'd be very surprised to learn about your fellow citizens and their knowledge of American tax laws.

> Ignorance of the law is never an excuse for breaking it. I disagree. From the perspective of someone who doesn't know the law, how are they supposed to follow it? Even an intelligent and competent person doesn't know all the laws, especially in America. I would wager that every person in this forum has broken at least one law without knowing it.

I wasn't making a moral/ethical argument. Ignorance of the law is generally not a defense you can use in court.

Hey can you tell me how to spell "pedantic"? Thanks.

Or, put another way: who needs trust and privacy when you do nothing wrong?