NO! WA State Department of Revenue will go after you for every penny and that don’t care whether they shut down small businesses or not. They are absolutely ruthless! My 2nd audit was worse than the first one. Complete nightmare. You are better off to refuse to sell to anyone in WA State just to avoid their Dept of Revenue.
They have a new tax law starting in Jan 2018 by the way, which is similar to Colorado–another state to cross of your customer list. The new law will require businesses to either collect and remit sales taxes to WA or send notices to your customers, every one of them, annually to remind them to pay the sales tax themselves. If you choose the latter, you are also required to send a complete list of all sales to WA State with your customers name, address, what they bought, subtotal, sales tax if charged, and grand total, plus where it was shipped to. No privacy in this state.

Colorado and WA State found loop holes around the Federal law that prohibits states from charging sales tax to customers outside its state. Complete bullshit. I think if enough companies band together and make it a policy to refuse to sell to anyone in states that have laws like WA and Colorado…it might just tick off enough consumers that they will get tired of hearing people complain and have to reverse their laws.

I don’t know. Sorry. You may want to get more detailed info or help from a Washington state “state” tax expert. BTW, Mark Hugh is someone I know personally and a true expert in this area.

Thanks Anna. And I really didn’t mean to imply that people should disregard use tax. (I just re-read the post and don’t think I say that anyplace… But to be clear: One needs to pay the taxes one owes.)

What I would say, though, is that one should simply make a good effort to comply and then not worry about an audit.

BTW, I don’t think I said this in the post, but I would also say that if you’re a small business, you ought to avoid buying from catalogs and from websites that don’t charge Washington state sales tax. My reasoning here? The small business owner can then skip the headache and hassle of figuring out what their use tax liability is, reporting that on state excise tax returns, etc.