New Yorkers resoundingly ignored a new line on their state income-tax forms asking them to report taxes they owed for buying items online, from catalogs or from out-of-state vendors, officials said.
Out of 7.5 million returns examined by state Taxation and Finance officials as of May 21, only 286,915 answered line 56 on their returns, which for the first time asked whether sales or use taxes were owed.
Taxpayers were supposed to fill in a number, even if it were zero. But 96 percent left it blank.
Those who responded so far paid $11.6 million in sales taxes, or about $40 per return, and officials expect that figure to rise as about 10 million returns have yet to be processed.
State legislators predicted the new sales-tax line would bring in $25 million. “It’s money we would not have otherwise collected,” said state tax spokesman Tom Bergen.
The amount collected so far is already more than that reaped in fiscal 2002 under the old system, in which roughly 3,500 New Yorkers voluntarily filled out a form and coughed up $9.4 million in unpaid sales taxes.