Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!mcnc!ecsgate!ecsvax!utoddl
From: utoddl@uncecs.edu (Todd M. Lewis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: educational discount plan
Message-ID: <1990Jun13.124934.1156@uncecs.edu>
Date: 13 Jun 90 12:49:34 GMT
References: <2034@lakesys.lakesys.com> <28075@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> <4313@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service
Lines: 28

In article <4313@darkstar.ucsc.edu> davids@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Dave Schreiber) writes:
>
>In article <28075@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> molik@acsu.Buffalo.EDU (gregory b molik) writes:
>>
>>
>>The dealer near me called Commodore and Commodore said that people out-of-state
>>do not have to pay the sales tax.
>
>I just called my dealer, and he said that you _do_ have to pay sales tax.
>When I told him about the above message, he was surprised and said he would
>call Commodore.  Can someone from Commodore please post the official policy
>on this?  Thanks.

Two things going on here--state laws and something called reciprocity.
Some states (North Carolina, for example) require sales tax on everything
sold whether on the sales floor or through the mail.  This is the law in
many states, but few people know about it.  Some states have a reciprocity
agreement between them--"you force your vendors to collect our taxes and
we'll force ours to collect yours", thus the "MD,VA,NC,TX residents add x%
sales tax" messages.  Most vendors don't bother with it and most consumers
don't know about it and most investigators are too swamped to deal with it,
so most of these taxes go uncollected.  At any rate, it is the consumer's
responsibility to pay the state and local sales taxes, so they are generally
out of jurisdiction when done through the mail.  Few states are willing to
spend vast resources collecting taxes for other states anyway.  

Summary: Commodore gets to set darned little of this "official policy".
--Todd