Section 131.170  Department Responsibilities

a)         Provision of Databases.  No later than July 1, 2020, the Department will:

1)         Provide and maintain an electronic database of defined product categories that identifies the taxability of each category. The Department will meet this requirement by the provision and maintenance of the Illinois Sales Tax Matrix on the Department’s website.  The Department will provide persons subject to this Part with as much advance notice as practicable of changes in the Sales Tax Matrix.  Failure of the Department to provide notice or failure of a person to receive notice shall not relieve the person of its obligation to remit tax as required by law.  However, persons may petition the Department for abatement of penalties on reasonable cause shown;

2)         Provide and maintain an electronic database of all retailers’ occupation tax rates for the jurisdictions in Illinois that levy a retailers’ occupation tax administered by the Department.  The Department will meet this requirement by the provision and maintenance of the Tax Rate Finder Tax Rate Database on the Department’s website.  Local retailers’ occupation taxes for jurisdictions in Illinois are generally subject to change twice a year, effective July 1 and January 1, and prior to these dates, any such changes are reflected on the Department’s Tax Rate Finder Tax Rate Database.  The Department will, as much as practicable, provide a CSP or CAS with notice of the changes by publishing updated tax rates on the Tax Rate Finder Tax Rate Database on the Department's website at least one month prior to the effective date of any tax rate changes. However, failure of a person to receive notice provided by the Department prior to the effective date of any tax rate change as set forth in this subsection (a)(2) shall not relieve the person of its obligation to remit tax as required by law.  Persons subject to this Part may petition the Department for abatement of penalties on reasonable cause shown; and

3)         Provide and maintain an electronic database that assigns delivery addresses in Illinois to the applicable taxing jurisdictions.  The Department will provide a CSP or CAS with notice of any changes to this database for implementation on January 1 and July 1 of each year.  Until that notification, the CSP or CAS may rely upon the information in the database to correctly remit taxes as required in this Part. (See 35 ILCS 185/5-20.)

4)         Remote retailers using CSPs or CASs and their CSPs are relieved from liability to the State for having remitted the incorrect amount of use or occupation tax resulting from reliance, at the time of the sale, on erroneous data provided by the State in its database files on tax rates, boundaries or taxing jurisdictions. 35 ILCS 185/5-30(b).  The Department will not make reallocations of tax previously erroneously remitted to local taxing jurisdictions based upon errors in the tax rate or address databases provided for in subsections (a)(2) and (a)(3) of this Section.  Errors discovered in these databases must be reported to the Department either by April 1, with the update becoming effective the next following July 1; or by October 1, with the update becoming effective the next following January 1. The Department, however, will make reallocations of tax previously erroneously remitted upon the filing of amended returns, and only to the extent of the amount of taxes which have been erroneously remitted.

b)         Certification of CSP and CAS.  No later than July 1, 2020, the Department will:

1)         Establish uniform minimum standards that companies wishing to be designated as certified service providers in Illinois must meet;

2)         Establish uniform minimum standards that certified automated systems must meet; and

3)         Establish a certification process to review the systems of companies wishing to be designated as certified service providers in Illinois or of companies wishing to provide certified automated systems to remote retailers.

c)         The Department will enter into a contractual relationship with each company that qualifies as a CSP.  (See Section 131.160.)  As a condition of its registration, a remote retailer using a CAS must agree to comply with the requirements set forth in Section 131.165(d).

(Source:  Amended at 46 Ill. Reg. 2697, effective January 26, 2022)