Accounting Articles > Illinois Sales and Use Tax Audit:
What is use tax?
Use tax is imposed on any transaction which would have been subject to regular sales tax, except that the transaction originated outside of the State of Illinois, and the product was delivered to an address inside the State of Illinois.
You are charged for the use of the product inside the state, because your out of state vendor did not, or was not supposed to charge you the sales tax of his individual state.
Use tax can be quite a surprise in many situations. What happens if you declare all of your purchases at customs after traveling to Milan on a shopping trip? They will introduce you to a friendly Illinois Department of Revenue Agent, who will impose the use tax before allowing you to leave the airport.
What if you are an engineer, who has never before filed a Sales Tax Return, and you've just bought a new computer network from someone in New Jersey? Once it is delivered to your local address, you must file a use tax return, because you are the ultimate retail user.
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