(a) Except as provided in subsection (c) of this section, a seller or certified service provider using a database provided by the Department of Finance and Administration shall not be liable to the State of Arkansas or its local jurisdictions for charging and collecting the incorrect amount of sales or use tax if the seller or the certified service provider relied on erroneous data provided by the department on sales or use tax rates, boundaries, taxing jurisdiction assignments, or the taxability matrix.
(b) The department shall promulgate rules to provide a purchaser relief from a sales or use tax, penalties, and interest for failing to pay the correct amount of sales or use tax if erroneous information on sales or use tax rates, boundaries, or taxing jurisdiction assignments or in the taxability matrix provided by the department has been relied on by the purchaser, the purchaser's seller, or the purchaser's certified service provider.
(c)
(1) If the department provides an address-based boundary database for assigning taxing jurisdictions and their associated sales or use tax rates, the department may cease providing the relief from liability provided in subsections (a) and (b) of this section if the department gave the seller or the certified service provider adequate notice.
(2) If a seller demonstrates that requiring the use of the address-based database would create an undue hardship, the department may extend the relief from liability to the seller for a designated period of time.
(d) (1) If the effective date of a state sales or use tax rate change is less than thirty (30) days from the enactment of the statute providing the rate change, a seller is relieved of liability for failing to collect sales or use tax at the new rate if:
(A) The seller collected sales or use tax at the effective rate immediately preceding the change; and
(B) The seller's failure to collect at the newly effective sales or use tax rate does not extend beyond thirty (30) days after the date of enactment of the new sales or use tax rate.
(2) The seller is not relieved of liability if the seller fraudulently failed to collect at the new sales or use tax rate or solicited purchasers based on the immediately preceding effective sales or use tax rate.