In article >,
"J. Clarke" > wrote:
> If you want to run a business and stay in business then you will enforce
> the sales tax. It's that simple.
Hah! It's actually even simpler than that. After I read this
discussion yesterday, I looked up a simple FAQ from the California BOE
(Board of Equalization, the government agency that collects sales tax).
They don't care whether the seller collects sales tax or not. It's
completely optional. The buyer doesn't owe any sales tax to the BOE.
The SELLER owes the sales tax:
http://www.boe.ca.gov/sutax/faqpurch.htm
"Although you are required to pay and report sales taxes to the Board,
you may be reimbursed by your customer for the amount of tax you owe on
a sale. For example, if you are required to pay $1.75 in sales tax on a
sale, you may pass that cost on to your customer, provided it is agreed
to as part of the sale."
> we're talking about the sales tax, which _any_ retail business should
> understand.
We have a cheese factory outside of town. We've been going there for
decades. They have a little store there, where they mostly sell cheese,
but they also sell bread, crackers, wine etc. You buy your stuff, they
put it in a bag, and you leave the store. Most people leave the cheese
factory at that point. There are old grungy picnic tables, and it's a
pretty place, so some people eat there. For about three months, before
they would ring up your sale, they would ask if you were going to eat
your stuff on their property, at which point they would charge sales
tax. If you said no, then you didn't get charged. I always said no.
Half the time we hadn't even decided whether to eat it there or take it.
They must have gotten nailed by the BOE.
I got nailed by the BOE, for US$75,000. It wasn't me personally, but
still, that signaled the end of the food coop, for which I was the
treasurer and on the board of directors. Despite the fact that the
people who ran this coop, which had almost a thousand members and gross
sales of about US$1.5 million a year, had decades of experience running
food coops in California, we were all blindsided by this.
--
Dan Abel
Petaluma, California USA