With the South Dakota vs. Wayfair SCOTUS ruling, we now have to pay sales tax on vexrobotics.com. I live in AZ, so I think I’m tax-exempt. How do I get a tax exemption form to send to [email protected]? I am ordering V5 on Tuesday, and I don’t want to spend an extra $50 on tax.
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You’ll want to talk to your school adminstration (if applicable). In talking to ours, we don’t think are we are tax exempt, even though we’re a public school, but it will likely vary from state to state.
I’d imagine if you’re registered as a 501 ( c ) non-profit organization, you may be exempt; in that case you’ll want to consult your account/lawyer.
Really sucks, cause the sales tax on our order was $316.
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I’m ordering with my money for myself. Not to do with school.
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Hawaii already has this as anything we order online is now taxed. So we already know how this feels.
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I don’t imagine you would be tax exempt in this case
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Without being a tax-exempt 501c3 organization, or ordering through a school who is, you’re kind of stuck. Virus is a community team, but we have a relationship with our community college to act as our fiduciary to receive corporate donations and grants, and order stuff. Technically, most of our equipment then belongs to the college, but we’re ok with that. Are you completely unaffiliated with a school, or could you try to set up some relationship? Getting a 501c3 is $600 plus hours of work, or more $$ to a laywer to do it (not to mention a year’s process).
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There is now a form 1023-EZ that only costs $275 to file if you qualify. Less paperwork and lower cost than when I did this 10 years ago. I spent about a month researching and preparing the 1023 form. I had a determination back in less than 2 months. A local team we’ve been working with filed the 1023-EZ in the fall and hadn’t heard anything. They did not get a friendly response from the IRS when trying to find that status of their application and have refiled. If you do file the 1023-EZ make sure you have something that shows when you filed.
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So we now are a 501(c)(3) organization as of December of last year. With the Sales Tax ruling, should my non-profit apply for that Tax-Exemption so we don’t pay taxes on the parts we order?
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You should probably do that if you want to put the work into it.
So, I could ask my school to order it and give them money?
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If your school is tax exempt yes. (Note they would have to apply for tax exempt vex ordered with vex themselves before this could happen)
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Wow that really sucks. Were you buying v5 for multiple teams?
I mean, it was a $6000 order, so I understand. It was V5 for 5 teams, plus bonus aluminum, plus star screws for everyone.
In California, even as a school we have to pay tax on all orders. I get a bill to my club ASB account from the school district for the tax I didn’t pay (through out of state online orders, etc.) every 3 months
That stinks. It’s obviously a state-by-state case about who has to pay sales tax. It also may vary by type of school, too.
It’s all state-by-state. In Washington, EVERYONE pays sales tax, even schools and government agencies. In some states, this is not the case.
Robot Mesh charges tax, right? I have a friend who could buy from cali
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With the Supreme Court ruling, this is all up in the air now. Please send an email to [email protected] for the latest information. We charge sales tax wherever the law requires us to.
Sent an email
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Only five states do not have a sales tax: Alaska , Delaware , Montana , New Hampshire , and Oregon .
So you can always move your robot teams to there.
In Pennsylvania some entities do not need to pay sales tax (like schools). To do that they need to get a tax-exempt form from PA-Department of Revenue and then file it with the people they are buying from. It’s a super huge pain.
Add to that there are places with a state sales tax, a county sales tax and a city sales tax. So the sales tax rate across places in the state can vary from zipcode to zipcode. There are companies that will help manage sales tax stuff. You send them the amount and zipcode and they send back what the tax should be. Again a super huge pain.