Target sued in Calif over online sales tax charges

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California woman, claiming that Target Corp charged her "inflated and incorrect" sales tax on an Internet purchase, has sued the discount retailer on behalf of all other Target shoppers to force it to refund the money and to fix its online tax calculations.

The proposed class action lawsuit was filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court by Martha Pile, and seeks to represent claims by customers who bought items at Target.com over the past four years.

Pile claims Target incorrectly included shipping and handling charges in its sales tax calculation for her purchase of a Wahl electric shaver on May 11. Sales tax in California is 8.25 percent.

The suit does not estimate how much excess tax Target allegedly collected from online shoppers, but says the amount was believed to be more than $10 million.

The plaintiff also cited Forrester Research as estimating that Target.com was ranked third among retailers, after Amazon.com and eBay in the number of unique visitors in December of 2007.

Pile wants Target to return "all excess funds improperly collected" from her and "thousands" of other Target.com shoppers.

A Target spokeswoman could not be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Gina Keating; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)