District of Columbia Sales Taxes– Out with the Old…In with the New!

I know your first thought was the Presidential election right?  No, silly, this isn’t a political rant, this is all about the new Sales and Transaction Taxes website!

The District of Columbia has announced a major upgrade that will coincidently coincide with the November election. 

MyTax.DC.gov will become the official Office of Tax & Revenue (OTR) reporting and remittance portal.  The upgrade will begin in November 2016 and will offer the benefits of the current system, along with additional functionality and ease. 

The intial release will only support specific business taxes (not sales and use) and will offer companies a one stop shop to handle the reporting and remittances for various withholding, payroll, franchise, and corporate taxes. 

Sales and Use tax will migrate from the eTSC portal to MyTax.DC.gov in Fall 2017, allowing sales and use tax enthusiasts and compliance guru’s another year to remain optimistic that we weren’t forgotten.  Sales tax always seems to play second fiddle and never ever gets to be first…ever!

In anticipation of the migration to the new MyTax.DC.gov website, the District of Columbia has announced the following service that will be temporaily unavaialble via their website that does impact sales and use tax:

Services Temporarily Unavailable – October 24 through October 31, 2016

FR-500 Combined Business Tax Registration Application: Taxpayers will no longer be able to complete the online business registration using eTSC.  During this transition period, taxpayers who wish to register a new business, must complete the paper form FR-500 available at http://otr.cfo.dc.gov/node/500352. Beginning November 1, all business tax registrations must be completed online at MyTax.DC.gov.

So while we won’t get the opportunity to utilize the new MyTax.DC.gov website for sales and use tax filings until next year, we will get to try it out for new business registrations starting in a few weeks!