Oklahoma Administrative Code
Title 710 - Oklahoma Tax Commission
Chapter 65 - Sales and Use Tax
Subchapter 1 - General Provisions
Section 710:65-1-6 - "Tax-included" prices

(a) Certain vendors, in an effort to arrive at a sum for the tangible personal property being sold which may be conveniently handled as cash, have calculated the price of the property and collected a "tax-included" amount. In some cases the vendor has made signs, price lists, etc. on the premises advising that the prices include tax; in others no apparent mention of taxes has been made to the public.

(b) Although certainly desirable from an accounting and auditing standpoint, neither the statutes nor Commission rules require a vendor to state the sale price separately from the applicable tax. 68 O.S. 1361(B) provides that sales tax shall be added to the sales price, "and when added such tax shall constitute a part of such price." Under present law, taxes collected as part of a tax-included price, if so charged and collected, may be "backed out" of the total receipts to arrive at the amount of gross receipts or gross proceeds subject to tax. [68 O.S. § 1361(B) ]

(c) Whether the vendor added and collected the tax or whether the vendor truly failed to collect any tax at all, is always a fact to be determined. Such factual determination must be made in light of all circumstances, documents, records and information available. No single factor will be relied on to the exclusion of other evidence. As always in tax matters, the burden of proving that the tax was added and collected is on the vendor. The vendor must keep sufficient documentary evidence, i.e. books, records, price lists, signs, to sustain this burden.