Revenue Finds Taxpayer's "Five or Six" Sales a Year were not "Casual Sales"

Taxpayer is an Indiana business that manufactures trailers.Taxpayer also rents and sells trailers. Taxpayer was audited by the IndianaDepartment of Revenue ("Department"), and based upon that audit theDepartment issued proposed assessments for sales and use taxes for the 2009 and2010 tax years. …
In a letter to the Department, Taxpayer states that itmanufactures trailers, and was told by the "license branch" thatTaxpayer was "not a dealer" and thus could not "charge salestax" on Taxpayer's sales of trailers. The Audit Report describes thesituation thusly:
The audit revealed untaxed sales of trailers during theaudit period. Three of the trailers were sold to Indiana customers, and one wassold to a [out-of-state] customer who purchased and picked up the trailer inIndiana. Exemption certificates were unable to be provided prior to theconclusion of the audit. The taxpayer disagrees with the audit findings for thesales of the trailers. It is the taxpayer's position that he receivedconflicting tax information from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles regarding thecollection of sales tax and, based upon this information, quit collecting andremitting sales tax on the sale of trailers. The taxpayer maintains theposition that he should not be penalized for following instructions provided byanother state agency.…
Taxpayer is a retail merchant and is required under IC §6-2.5-2-1 and IC § 6-2.5-4-1 to collect and remit the sales tax. AlthoughTaxpayer stated at the hearing that Taxpayer sold up to five or six trailersfor each year at issue, the sales are not casual sales under Sales TaxInformation Bulletin 20 (October 2009), 200911 Ind. Reg. 045090898NRA.
Taxpayer argues that he did not collect sales tax becausethe BMV told him that he is not a dealer and that Taxpayer should not collectsales tax. As the Department has noted above, Taxpayer is a retail merchantmaking a retail transaction. Further, the Department notes that any adviceTaxpayer may have received from another state agency is not binding upon theDepartment (45 IAC15-3-2 states how a taxpayer can receive a binding ruling from theDepartment). Therefore, Taxpayer is responsible for the sales tax and interestowed on his trailer sales to customers in 2009 and 2010.
http://www.in.gov/legislative/iac/20120829-IR-045120482NRA.xml.html