TED Magazine - February 2017

CURRENT / LIGHTING UPDATE
22 the ELEC TRICAL DIS TRIBUTOR • Feb. 17 www.tEDmag.com
The connected lighting trend promises to make building lighting networkable, programmable, and highly flexible and responsive. In fact, the DOE has forecasted that by 2035, one-third of LED energy sav- ings will be from connected lighting and lighting controls. Meanwhile, the industry is excited about the potential of IIo T—and that potential is aided by ubiquitous LED luminaires, which provide the physi- cal infrastructure for deploying sen- sors, cameras, controllers, and, poten- tially, wireless signal boosters and net-

In mid-December the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case that challenged the legality of the “use tax notification” law in the state of Colorado. The law is aimed at out-of-state-based companies and their websites that sell products to residents of Colorado but don’t collect Colorado sales tax on the transactions.

Colorado’s law requires
businesses that don’t collect
those taxes and make a mini-
mum of $100,000 in total gross
sales each year to do three
things: inform their Colorado
customers that they may be
subject to the Colorado use
tax; send an annual purchase
summary to those Colorado
customers if they bought
more than $500 in taxable
goods for the year, in ad-
dition to reminding them of
their obligation to pay the
use tax; and provide Colo-
rado’s Department of Reve-
nue with customer informa-
tion for the year.

The bill calling for the use
tax in Colorado was passed
by the state legislature in
2010. It was then challenged
in court by the Direct Market-
ing Association—and has
been in the courts ever since.
During that time Colorado
hasn’t enforced the law. With
this most recent decision,
many out-of-state businesses
that sell taxable products
and goods to Colorado may
have to begin planning to
comply with the tax notifica-
tion requirement in 2017.
When sales tax isn’t col-
lected by a retailer, custom-
ers are supposed to remit the
use tax to the state. Yet com-
pliance is low, and enforcing
the rule has proven difficult.
It may be left to Congress
to pass legislation that would
ensure a level playing field
when it comes to use or sales
tax collecting by brick-and-
mortar as well as online
businesses.
In recent years bills such
as the Marketplace Fairness
Act and the Remote Transac-
tions Parity Act have been
debated but haven’t been
passed into law.
There is a growing aware-
ness that it would be fairer
for businesses selling online
to be subject to the same
taxes as brick-and-mortar
merchants.
But there are others in
Washington that waffle as to
whether such legislation
would level the playing field
or would be seen as govern-
ment levying an additional
tax.
Congressman Bob Good-
latte (R-VA), chairman of the
House Judiciary Committee,
has been working on the lat-
est legislative attempt at
addressing this, the Online
Sales Simplification Act,
which could come up for con-
gressional hearings and even
a vote this year.
Ed Orlet, vice president of
government affairs for NAED,
has been watching and dis-
cussing this issue.

“When the dust settles for the 2016 holiday shopping season, one fact will rise above all other headlines: Total retail sales will be up between 3% and 4%. Online sales will be up double digits,” he said. “This is a trend policymakers have ignored for years and now state governments are starting to take matters into their own hands because they’re feeling the pinch of lost sales tax revenue. Congress needs to act to level the playing field between online sellers and brick-and-mortar shops.” ;