The Cost of Sales Tax Collection in Tennessee Survey

The Tennessee state legislature has asked the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) to conduct a study of the sales tax in the state, including the cost to businesses of collecting it. Your answers to the questions here can help state policymakers to better understand sales tax collection and what contributes to the costs of collecting it, and your participation is greatly appreciated. The information you provide here will only be reported in the aggregate (that is, totaled or averaged with others' responses); individual companies will not be identified.

For the following questions, please consider only that part of your business that is within Tennessee. If exact numbers are not available, please estimate them to the best of your ability.

If you have any questions, please contact Michael Strickland at Michael.Strickland@tn.gov.

1.How would you describe the main part of your business?

Grocery store, bakery, deli, or other food store

Restaurant, cafe, or other eating/drinking establishment

Gas station/convenience store

Car or other vehicle dealership

Hotel/lodging

Building materials, hardware, or gardening supplies

Other (please specify)

2.For 2023, please provide the totals for:

Taxable sales

Non-taxable sales

3.For each of the items below, please estimate the total annual cost for collecting sales tax in 2023. To make the numbers comparable, please estimate the costs for the full year. For instance, if one staff member is responsible for preparing and remitting the monthly sales tax report, the cost for this would be the number of hours to do this work each month times their hourly pay (or equivalent, if they are salaried), then multiplied by 12 to obtain the annual total. For any one-time purchases or expenses, like for certain software, divide them by the expected number of years of service.

Training personnel on sales taxes

Preparing sales tax returns, remitting sales tax, or handling tax refund claims

Documenting tax-exempt sales

Sales tax-specific software or programming

The amount of debit/credit card swipe fees based on sales tax amounts

Other costs besides those listed above?

4.How many locations does your business have in Tennessee from which you make retail sales?

5.How many employees did your business have in Tennessee in 2023? (If the number of employees varied over the year, please provide an average for the 12 months.)

6.What is the average number of sales transactions per day that you had in Tennessee in 2023?

7.How many types of products (SKUs) does your business sell in Tennessee?

8.What percentage of sales in 2023 were made online and shipped out of state?

9.What percentage of sales in 2023 was paid for with either debit or credit cards?

10.What was the average fee rate your business paid on debit and credit card transactions (what some refer to as a swipe fee or interchange fee)?

11.Optional: Please leave contact information below if you would be willing to answer any follow-up questions.

Name

Company

Email Address

Phone Number

12.Do you have any questions about the survey, comments, or notes about any of your responses?