A legislative study committee
is looking at whether the state sales tax should be extended to software that
is accessed remotely. It’s called cloud computing.
And the challenge for lawmakers is to make tax policy catch up with technology.
Gov. Peter Shumlin says he
will sign legislation that imposes the state sales tax on cloud computing
software beginning in the summer of 2013, but he says he will try to persuade
lawmakers next year to drop this tax before it goes into effect.
If the plan were approved, the state would refund taxes paid
over the past several years to businesses that have been paying the so-called
cloud tax on software sold remotely since it went into effect in 2006.