Your Shop Local Store has a new feature: You can now make a product tax-exempt.
With this update, your store can decide whether or not to charge tax on a product. This is handy, for example, when selling most food online in New York State, where such purchases are tax-empt.
Please follow these steps to access this feature:
Log in to your Shop Local account.
Browse to the product you wish to make tax-exempt.
On the product's Details page, click "Edit product&
Good news for indie stores: Florida will require out-of-state sellers shipping to the state to charge tax. Taxes are a big deal in Florida: since Florida has no income tax, it has a notable state sales tax (6%, compared with New York’s 4%), with Florida municipalities adding up to another 1.5%. The incentive to buy online from out of state 'saved' the Florida buyer about 7.5%.
Now, this Florida law will level the playing field and remove the incentive to dodge taxes as everyone ...
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January 6, 2019
January 6, 2019
Today’s Times investigates commercial property valuations for the purpose of tax collection. The article suggests that brick-and-mortar retailers are gaming the system to unfairly reduce their property value and therefore pay local governments less in taxes. In Michigan, from 2013 to 2017, this may have cost local government $100 million.
While this a fair investigation to undertake, I ask the Times to investigate the harmful tax effects of millions of shoppers buying at Amazon. Should we be ...
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June 26, 2018
June 26, 2018
We can’t win them all. Last week the Supreme Court helped indie retailers by allowing states to charge tax on more web orders. This week, it didn’t help us by siding with American Express.
The end result of these two decisions is that indie stores will likely receive more orders but but still have to pay AmEx its higher interchange fees.
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January 13, 2018
January 13, 2018
Wayfair is hiding behind small businesses in an effort to not charge tax on out-of-state purchases.
South Dakota and 34 other states are trying to stop this abuse since its costing states billions in lost revenue.
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November 16, 2017
November 16, 2017
Today’s Times highlights the current loophole that Amazon uses when charging taxes. Amazon doesn’t charge tax on its marketplace sales, which total in the billions. Third-party sellers such as stores use the marketplace to sell goods and often don’t charge (nor collect) sales tax that they should be.
Side note: the e-commence tax debate goes back to 1992 with Quill Corporation vs. North Dakota court decision.
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August 11, 2016
August 11, 2016
Curious how major online retailers go about charging sales tax--or not charging it? Jet.com is about to charge tax in more states due its being acquired by Wal-mart. For example, a Le Creuset oven will now require $32 more in tax on Jet.com.
Indy businesses: being small is a tax advantage online.
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February 24, 2016
February 24, 2016
Why don't you have to charge tax on out-of-state purchases? Are out of state internet retailers hurting your business? Both answers lie in 1992 Supreme Court ruling. Today's WSJ reports on the debate.