[S Clark]

   Damn you State of Texas!!!  Sales tax on second hand items!  Ebay started charging tax several months ago, but yesterday was the first time Discogs had taxed me.   Is this just Texas or across the board?

[Samoyed]

Most states have a “use” or compensating tax, as a “sales” tax would likely violate the interstate commerce clause. It is not a distinction without a difference. It means EACH state is free to tax the first “use” of goods therein, new, used or whatever (some states tax leases!).  What is new is the willingness of interstate sellers to start collecting those use taxes as required by law for many years. Thank the Supreme Court.

[thunderbrick]

Goodwill has started that, too.

[blazingsaddlez]

Yep, everybody's trying to get in you knickers

[Mr Rick]

  Damn you State of Texas!!!  Sales tax on second hand items!  Ebay started charging tax several months ago, but yesterday was the first time Discogs had taxed me.   Is this just Texas or across the board?

They hit me hard here in California, eBay that is, and I bought something from overseas!

[Delacroix]

Yep, it's the new era. I got hit with it  buying and selling two guitars on Reverb, had to pay tax on the shipping cost too! Seemed odd to me but it was explained that the tax is on the transaction not the fact that you are buying something used or selling an item on which you already paid sales tax at the time of original purchase. It adds up on some items for sure but we'll all get used to it I suppose, just like sales tax in shops. That 8.25% Texas rate adds a chunk.

[thunderbrick]

Tax on shipping is absurd.  Shipping is always added to the item cost + tax.

[mboxler]

Tax on shipping is absurd.  Shipping is always added to the item cost + tax.

I won an item for one cent. Sales tax ended up being 25 cents.  That was due to the $5.00 shipping cost?

That's just wrong. 

[Elizabeth]

I am of the opposite camp. People whine how bad the roads are. yet scream bloody murder if the 50 YEAR OLD RATE gasoline tax is raised.
Same thing.
I pay my taxes. no problem. For that I get SERVICES I like. Thank you GOVERNMENT.

[SET Man]

  Damn you State of Texas!!!  Sales tax on second hand items!  Ebay started charging tax several months ago, but yesterday was the first time Discogs had taxed me.   Is this just Texas or across the board?

Hey!

  Nope, NY too and so are other states starting to collecting sale tax from online stores.

  I'm not surprised by this but what I'm surprised is that it took them this long to implement this. But is hard to ignored this now a days with so many people buying things online.

   The downside for me is that now I'll have to pay NY's tax 8.875% when I'm buying things online. The good side, well this could give local stores a boot since it is now there's no way to avoid and to save almost 9% by buying online. And with so many empty storefronts in NYC now, maybe this is not a bad thing. I remembered the time here in NYC were there are many audio stores that you could just walk in, check out stuffs there and talk to the sale persons. Not many like that left now.

  Still, now when I buy something online I have to factor in the added sale tax of which could be a lot sometime and that can hurt for something that I can't find locally here in NYC 

Buddy

 

[JakeJ]

Sales tax on new goods, I get that.  But taxing used items is not right.  If I go to a yard sale I do not get charged sales tax.  Likewise if I buy a used item from any website there should not be any tax.  But if I buy an item from Goodwill it has always had sales tax on it, which is wrong because it is not new and the money doesn't got to a manufacturer but is instead a donation to Goodwill just as the item was when they received it.

Tax on shipping is pretty standard, which is a separate service.

It is frustrating because we didn't pay for so long.  The Internet honeymoon is over.

[Delacroix]

Don't want to get into politics but I too think it's ok to pay taxes to provide the infrastructure of a civilized society, so not complaining on that front (though how we spend those revenues in Texas would be its own fascinating discussion). I do think it's somewhat odd to have sales tax on used items sold privately but I'm going with the transactional explanation there (and there's always Craigslist and multiple informal forums like ours where such deals are managed as always). The charge on shipping seems at least in part to address the rather obvious ploy of people claiming a $500 transaction was $10 for the item but $490 for the shipping, so Reverb (at least, presumably E-bay and others too) tax the total final price. 

 I'm just getting used to this, but was still disappointed to learn from Stew's original post that Discogs now levies it also. Now if this ends up sustaining small local stores who seemed to always complain they could not compete, that would be an upside.

[nature boy]

Delaware - home of tax free shopping 😁

NB

[S Clark]

Of course we pay tax to support services.  No problem.  I just hate the idea of an item being taxed every time an item is sold.  Just a personal thing- my wife says I'm just cheap.  She's right.

[Elizabeth]

A used car pay tax. used house, you pay tax. As mentioned Goodwill charges tax. My local used Lp CD stores have to charge taxes for sales. Any sales. The TRADE IN is the one way to avoid some sales taxes. In my state any trade in the value is deducted from the sale before the tax is calculated. For cars this can be a sizable chunk of money. For stereo not so much...
(I do not think homes get traded in?? but the profit can be put into the new home with no tax cost, at least around here.)
The sort of thing new or used has no bearing on the matter. It is a purchase. Hell, even my electric bill I have to pay sales tax... Which I am surprised at.. Since a lot of FOOD is not taxed here.But just about everything else is. (not rent either...)

[mix4fix]

I am of the opposite camp. People whine how bad the roads are. yet scream bloody murder if the 50 YEAR OLD RATE gasoline tax is raised.
Same thing.
I pay my taxes. no problem. For that I get SERVICES I like. Thank you GOVERNMENT.

If the money would actually be used on the necessary functions of government, we wouldn't need so much tax being taken from us.

-----

By the way, 25cent tax on 1cent is 2500% tax rate.

2500%

 

[JakeJ]

Good question M4F!  Actually, the OP did mention that the tax also included the shipping fees.  Agreed about how our taxes are spent.  Things could be a lot more efficient.

Thanks for thinking about this from a larger perspective, Elizabeth.  I forgot about houses and cars.  They get taxed at the time of title change so ther's really no avoiding them completely, just work arounds to help lower the burden.

Man, we are pushin' the politics envelope pretty hard.  No arguing, just discussion is great too, thanks to all.

[mresseguie]

Delaware - home of tax free shopping 😁

NB

 

Ditto for Oregon!
(My son really likes his speakers!)