As a business, evaluate your risk before voluntarily participating in Colorado’s Sales and Use Tax System. We’re here to help.
The Colorado Sales and Use Tax System (SUTS) portal is supposed to help but use of the portal can carry risk if not remediated before signing up.
The SUTS portal was launched a year ago. It allows businesses selling into Colorado to file sales tax returns for the participating home rule jurisdictions, state, and state-administered jurisdictions, from one convenient online portal at Colorado.gov/Revenue/SUTS.
Additionally, the portal includes a Geographic Information System (GIS), which is a tax rate lookup tool that allows businesses to find the tax rate of any jurisdiction simply by entering an address.
Key features of the portal include:
- Single point of remittance and a uniform remittance form
- GIS tax rate lookup tool
- Taxability and exemption matrix
- Ability to verify tax rates on items where they are sold or delivered
- A record of the history of any changes
Colorado has a unique tax landscape with 223 tax jurisdictions, of which 70 jurisdictions are home rule self-collecting tax jurisdictions. These jurisdictions can establish their own tax base, requiring businesses to file and remit tax directly to the municipality/county.
The SUTS portal is becoming a vital tool in simplifying the collection and remittance of sales tax for businesses of all sizes in the state of Colorado. As of May 4, 2021, 73% of home rule jurisdictions have signed onto or are onboarding SUTS.
Visit www.Colorado.gov/Tax/SUTS-info for updates regarding SUTS.
Help is Here!
As of May 4, 2021, 8,716 businesses had voluntarily registered for SUTS. Signing up, however, carries risk.
Before you join the portal, let us help you determine whether there is any existing liability—and whether remediation is necessary to minimize your costs and risk. Steps to proceed:
- Understand if you already had nexus prior to activating a home rule city in the SUTS portal.
- Determine liability in home rule cities with prior nexus. Decide if remediation is warranted to minimize lookback before joining the portal to reduce late compliance costs.
- Determine how you will collect the tax.
- Activate new accounts in the portal systematically to avoid late charges (i.e., activate in cities without arrearage issues).
- Remediate in high-risk cities.
Reach out to me at jvorndran@taxops.com or a member of the SALTovation team at TaxOps if you have questions about state and local tax issues. Current clients get special pricing and priority.
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