Sales Tax

[Mr. K]

Was in the mall the other day and got an explaination.

It used to be you could order online and not pay tax. Over $50 on the main site and over $100 meant free shipping too.

Now you get charged tax if Oakley has a store in your state.

Was told they changed the policy where you can now return items bought online back to a local store. That is why they changed it and you have to pay tax online.

There goes one benefit of buying online I guess.

Thought I would post in case anyone was interested.

 

[Binary Star]

Any store that has a physical presence in your state is required to collect sales tax for online purchases.

 

[ucdavis4PT0gpa]

What you were told is technically correct...its another way of describing the finding of 1992's Quill v. North Dakota case that found that the presence of an office, store or warehouse in the state the product is being sent to, the BASE state sales tax is collected (not the local add ons). I'm assuming this has always been the case with Oakley.com unless they had a loophole. As it stands if you live in one of 30 states or DC you'll be charged sales tax. Some companies DO negotiate exemptions (the Quill case provided for such power to be left with the individual states) ...the recent deal between Amazon and California is an example of this....Amazon builds warehouses in the state and the state continues to exempt the etailer from assessing tax in return

 

[Mr. K]

All I know is 3 months ago I was not charged sales tax for an online purchase. A week ago I was.

 

[ucdavis4PT0gpa]

Interesting. I too thought that at some point the only place Oakley charge tax was California and another state...there must have been a loophole they were exploiting and stopped. Not sure what that might have been but SO much was going on late last year and early this year with that issue that it wouldn't surprise me if companies started taking a harder line. Amazon is a different story because of their size and the nature of their business (online only).

 

[Thermonuclear]

I believe before Oakley separated the two companies, online and local stores so as long as you were not in CA where HQ was you didn't have to pay sales tax - but now they merged the two so we can do in-store exchanges that we couldn't before, but we lost our tax break as a result! I like paying no sales tax better, but I bet the regular customer prefers in store returns available for online purchases