BH adding state tax now

For some states they are collecting sales tax. I received a notice and for the state of Minnesota B&H says they will collect the tax.

Naturalist wrote in post #18731068
For some states they are collecting sales tax. I received a notice and for the state of Minnesota B&H says they will collect the tax.

The problem is that your local sales tax may be different than the base, state tax. So, the implementation of only collecting state tax doesn't cover full, "local" taxes; if you have city or county sales taxes added to your base state rate, those don't get accounted for and technically remain as a burden on you to remit. It's near untraceable/unenforcea​ble at scale, but that doesn't make it go away.

Got the same notice for WA State the other day.

It will be interesting next year to see what happens when New Zealand will be asking large retailers worldwide to add New Zealand tax (GST) to every online based purchase made by someone in New Zealand.

My guess is a lot of retailers will just say "no thanks, we can do without customers in New Zealand"

Pigpen101 wrote in post #18730994
Had a long, ranting post but deleted it when informed of the "no politics, no religion" rule.

I understand. I had a long, slobbering post typed up similar to your thoughts. Actually deleted one and wrote another...then said "what the hay", and ended of with the short reply. I guess I need to go back and delete my post being as it does pose as a question that could incite some verboten prose.

If a business in Freezurhiney, Minnesota can figure out how to market, sell, and collect payment for a pig-tailed toe-jam scraper to somebody in Swetitoff, Georgia, I feel comfortable that with encouragement from the taxing authorities that they can figure out how to report and pay sales taxes there.

It's kind of confusing, though. I just checked one of the big camera houses and put an item in the shopping cart and calculated the sales tax for my area. The rate came up to 8.5%. We have a 4% state, 3.5% county, and a 2.5% city tax....how'd it end up being 8.5%?

TeamSpeed wrote in post #18730074
All will.... the Supreme Court ruling made it so. it was a terrible ruling, it will complicate matters and people will be taxed incorrectly due to each state's complicated food vs goods vs whatever. States will love it because they can just tell retailers to tax everything and there won't be any oversight as to what is being taxed that shouldn't be. This is an ethical black hole, IMO.

https://www.forbes.com …tail-ruling/#712a2b113e66

You will be happy to know that many vendors have read South Dakota v. Wayfair and a few others anticipated it. Getting the tax right based on location is pretty straightforward. Retailers have been doing it for years in their bricks and crumbling mortar systems.

We don't do politics here, but the State v. Federal revenue question on net taxation is an interesting one.

AZGeorge wrote in post #18733108
...Retailers have been doing it for years in their bricks and crumbling mortar systems.

....

The major difference there is that B&M retailers don't have to charge each person who comes through their door a tax based on where that individual lives; they get to charge one, single tax rate for that individual location. The online ruling means that they have to account for a different tax rate for me, than for my buddy that lives in the next city, county and/or state.

Yes, it'd be tough enough for 50 individual states but the % changes by county. We are @ 6%, the county adjacent is @ 7%.

Snydremark wrote in post #18733268
The major difference there is that B&M retailers don't have to charge each person who comes through their door a tax based on where that individual lives; they get to charge one, single tax rate for that individual location. The online ruling means that they have to account for a different tax rate for me, than for my buddy that lives in the next city, county and/or state.

Exactly right. Just as a business' location is used to calculate tax requirements for all purchases our address is checked against a database and used for the same calculation. For big purchases this will undoubtedly result in some address games, but the process for sellers is pretty simple. It will take a while for the market to settle out but every the smallest operations are or will be able to get the needed tax information at minimal cost.

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Snydremark wrote in post #18733268
The major difference there is that B&M retailers don't have to charge each person who comes through their door a tax based on where that individual lives; they get to charge one, single tax rate for that individual location. The online ruling means that they have to account for a different tax rate for me, than for my buddy that lives in the next city, county and/or state.

Pigpen101 wrote in post #18733425
Yes, it'd be tough enough for 50 individual states but the % changes by county. We are @ 6%, the county adjacent is @ 7%.

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Doesn't seem lie that'd be any problem at all. . Isn't there already software that automatically calculates the sales tax rate when you enter the address and/or zip code? . All it takes is programming. . Nothing complex about that.


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If there were such a thing I would think the governments would implement it. I'm sure they would much rather guarantee their money rather than "trusting" us to pay it willingly every year at tax time. You'd think that if the likes of UPS can calculate shipping depending solely on zip codes, than this could also be controlled?????

If businesses can keep up with thousands upon thousands of SKUs and the details of those items along with the capabilities of billing and shipping those items then it makes sense that they can figure out where and how to pay sales tax. As Tom mentioned above, there's software out there, or software that could be written, to handle this.

I will say this. Alabama over the last twenty years has gone from paper to electronic filing. During this time there were several "ways" of filing...whether paper or electronic. At times there were companies that was handling the filing and payments. At times you sent your returns to the state and other times you sent it to private companies handling the city and/or county sales tax and the state sales tax to the state. Now, all sales tax reporting and remitting in Alabama is done at a single point...at least for my small business that is the case. What I'm getting at is that this is just a single state. Probably other states are in a state of change and possibly have different collection agencies and ways of filing for the different tax divisions. I'm afraid there is no "standard" or "constant" out there where "one size fits all". Thus the companies required to report state sales tax may indeed have a headache with possibly having 50 different forms/procedures to go through in reporting and remitting their state sales tax revenue. Add to that the fact that small cities can elect to have the state collect or a private company. That 50-count goes through the roof at that point.

The issue isn't with businesses with "thousands of SKUs", it is with small businesses who sell far less than thousands of SKUs. Yeah, we're talking about B&H in this thread, but ALL businesses are now this way, not just big ones. So I can either pull my hair out if I am a small business, or I will be forced to pay a go between to collect and remit taxes for me, which will just cause me to raise prices to compensate.

I ordered a large format printer from them and was socked with $75 in taxes. I cancelled the order and reordered from Adorama...no taxes! Huh?

mikeinctown wrote in post #18746697
The issue isn't with businesses with "thousands of SKUs", it is with small businesses who sell far less than thousands of SKUs. Yeah, we're talking about B&H in this thread, but ALL businesses are now this way, not just big ones. So I can either pull my hair out if I am a small business, or I will be forced to pay a go between to collect and remit taxes for me, which will just cause me to raise prices to compensate.

Yes, all businesses are subject to the tax laws...no exemptions due to size.

The small businesses without thousands of SKUs and that have smaller sales revenue will then have fewer tax reports will be fewer than the larger companies. Smaller sale revenue should mean filing with fewer tax authorities and less complexity. But yes, there will still be some hair-pulling...even if a third-party is used to file the reports. And...added expense? Local businesses have had to pay that "expense" for decades...whether they do the reports themselves or hire to have it done. And, while local businesses have had to foot the filing expense they have also had to compete with online sellers at a 10+% disadvantage. Hard for the mom-n-pops to compete with that.

There's no such thing as a "free lunch" but online sellers have enjoyed one for many years.

Not defending or offending the new enforcement of the tax laws, just stating some observations.