Happens all the time...  Never happened to me, but I see it at work often.

This is a subject that is pretty much universally misunderstood.  God help me, I'm going to explain it again.

A couple decades back the issue originally arose due to catalog sales... you know those things with pages and pictures that arrived in the mail before the Internet?  Catalog companies argued that they could not be expected to keep track of all the sales tax rates and what was taxable in one place and not another.  The Supreme Court ruled that it was an onerous burden and decreed that unless the company had a phyical presence in the state, known as Nexus, they could not be forced to act as an agent for the state tax authorities.  A physical presence need not be a brick and mortar store, but could include a warehouse, distribution center, call center, billing or other office operations.

As a result, states shifted the burden from the retailer onto the consumer and said you as the purchaser are responsible for disclosing and remitting the tax to the state.  This was pretty common with businesses already, but widely unknown to most individuals.  Believe it or not, some fols did know and routinely reported and paid.  With the advent of the Internet and more e-commerce, states began to lose a lot of revenue.  As such, many state legislatures began to mandate that lines appear on tax forms for disclosing use tax owed.  This happened in NY, the Governor vetoed it and the veto was overriden.  Thus we have lines on our personal income tax returns for remitting the use tax.

Enter the original Supreme Court ruling.  What the court hinted at was it would allow states to force merchants outside their boundries to collect sales tax IF a process was put in place to make it less burdensome.  In other words... uniform definitions of what a good or service is, whether that service is taxable or not taxable in your state and uniform rates within a state.  If the disparities could be eliminated, or at least greatly reduced, the Supreme Court would consider removing the Nexus requirement.  This has resulted in the Streamlines Sales Tax initiative.  Eventually this will become reality.

In any event, don't mess with this.  If the state allows you to estimate your liability based upon your AGI... do it!  While paying the taxes suck, if you ever get audited they will require you to provide bank records and credit card statements.  Any avoided tax will end up costing you around two to three times the original liability when interest and penalties are factored in.  I think I pay around $40 a year in use tax through my personal income tax forms.  Thats around $500 in on-line non-taxed purchases.  Guess what, I far exceed that.  However NY allows you to estimate and if you do, and no single item is over $1,000, they are all included in that estimation... obligation met.  Any item over $1,000 is filed on a seperate schedule.

OK, hope that answers your questions.

No, not correct.  States that do have income taxes have seized upon the annual filing of returns because it is a convenient method to cast a wide net since every income earning adult is filing a return.  States without income taxes might well have a use tax, just no means to capture it via a PIT return.  You should check your state tax authorities web site to determine if your state collects it and how it is reported and paid.  New York State had a use tax on the book for two or three decades at least before it made its way to income tax forms.

Quoted: this is about as fucked up as a CORPORATION TAX. Corps if they do X number of dollars in a state then they get billed for a Corp Tax Example, I own a business (trucking) in NC, I deliver  2 loads in CT, 150 miles of  CT roads traveled, I grossed 2000.00 of each load. They billed me for 85 dollars in 2004, WTF IS THIS? I bought nothing in CT, I paid my road tax, no tolls required. Crooked ass mother fuckers

Corporation tax is a tax paid for the "privilege" of conducting business within a state...  Yeah, I know I know... I'm just telling you what it is, I'm not saying I agree with it.

The no tax or duty on articles exported is a prohibition on a state punitively taxing the goods produced and exported from another, specifically to provide advantage to a homegrown industry.  Recently, many states had import restrictions on wines from other states designed to protect local wineries.  The Supreme Court has struke such laws down.  What the founding fathers were attempting to prohibit was states using protectionist trade practices between themselves much as countries do now... i.e. tariffs on steel and certain agricultural products.  Remember, under the Articles of Confederation each state printed its own money, had its own military and there was no order and coordination.  The Constitution was meant to undo some of those hinderances and form a stronger nation comprised of states, but under unified laws, monetary system and commerce rules.