The definition is “ready to eat”. At noon, the hot chickens are ready-to-eat, so taxable. The leftovers, boxed and in the cooler, go back to untaxed groceries.
Similarly, Maine once had a Sunday closing law, with exemptions. Stores could sell sporting goods on Sunday, as a recreation item. So you could buy a bicycle on Sunday, but not a tricycle, classified as a toy. BTW, some countries, like Germany, still have strict Sunday closing laws. My mother lived in a town that banned Sunday supermarkets until the late 80s.
You missed the point. In other countries tax-exempt organisations pay exactly the same price as everyone else when they purchase something, then later claim the tax back from the government.
I once saw a YouTube review of a Japanese capsule hotel that had a bathhouse (instead of just a lockerroom w/ showers) complete with pay washers & dryers. Which is actually sounds very convenient for backpackers; you could literally do all of your laundry at once.
Here in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania the tax exempt buyer has to show their exemption card and then be rung up by a manager who has use of the register keys to override the tax. These are actual, physical keys, like car keys. There is NO tax exempt button on a cash register. At least, not one that can be used without the manager’s keys inserted.
What often happens is the cashier will ring up an entire order (always large) and then the buyer will say, “Oh, wait. I’m tax exempt. Is that a problem?” while fumbling for their card. Much internal swearing occurs while the cashier calls for a manager, the manager voids the entire order, everything has to be unbagged and rerung because NO, I CAN’T SIMPLY PUSH A TAX EXEMPT BUTTON AT THE END OF THE TRANSACTION!
That may be practical when you are talking about tax-exempt organizations - but I’m not sure it’s so practical for individuals who are exempt from taxes in certain situations. And now that I think about it those situations also affect the practicality of tax-included pricing. For example, in some situations if you are a resident of state A and shop in state B, you are exempt from state B sales taxes -but I’m probably not going to remember/bother doing that for frequent small purchases that i made near my job in state B.
Nope. It depends on the exact situation but if I buy furniture in NJ and have it delivered in NY, I will not pay NJ sales tax on it.
If taxable items are sold and delivered to the purchaser out of State, New Jersey Sales Tax
should not be collected. If the property is shipped out of state to a recipient other than the
purchaser (e.g., in a gift transaction), the sale also is not subject to New Jersey Sales Tax
Washington exempted certain non-residents from paying sales tax at the point of sale until 2019. Now they are still exempt - but have to file for a refund, only the state portion will be refunded , the refund request must be for at least $25 and only one request can be made per year. So Washington will probably be collecting tax from a fairly high proportion of technically exempt purchases.
I think that medical billing in the US is modeled after the US tax system. Well it employs millions of people for no real reason, so we have that going for us.
I just remembered a place where the owner included the tax in the sale price. It was Aaron’s Records across from Fairfax High in West Hollywood. We’d drive up there from Culver City, because all new albums (lps – this was a looooong time ago) were a flat $3.00. Used records were less and tax had to be calculated for those. It was nice. But it wasn’t earth shatteringly better. I’d completely forgotten about that.
In most cases you are expected to pay a “use tax” to your state of residence for such purchases:
In Michigan, you’re supposed to do this on your state income tax return. I wonder how many Michigan residents bother to confess their actual out-of-state purchases on which they didn’t pay sales tax at the point of sale.
Yes, but paying the use tax to your state of residence has nothing to do with whether you are exempt from sales taxes in the state where you made the purchase or whether prices should include sales tax or calculate it separately - sure, if I buy furniture in NJ , I’m supposed to pay NY use tax on it and it might not make a difference if I get charged NJ tax at the register . But if I buy furniture in NJ and have it delivered to Delaware , Delaware has no sales tax and therefore no use tax.
Before Ontario ditched their completely separate Provincial Sales Tax system and integrated with federal government’s GST for the new Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) we had these issues.
Now a business just adds up all the HST paid on supplies, subtracts the HST collected on sales, and pays the difference if + or receives a refund if -. No exemptions to worry about and it helps reduce the underground economy.
THANK YOU for a post that’s on topic and isn’t just about taxes.
Me? I want clean, classy trains… everywhere.
Need to go from Buttefuque, WY to Bangor, ME? Well, you’ll have to get a ride to Casper or Cheyenne, but then you can catch the high-speed Empire Rebuilder from San Francisco (with a gourmet dining car) to Chicago, then a choice of a commuter train to NYC then up the coast, or the scenic route (with a live string quartet) past Kalamazoo, Toronto and Montreal…
Toilets with two levels of flush, one for light-duty tasks and one for heavy-duty. I’m starting to see these in the U.S. but I saw them in Italy on my first trip abroad in 1990. Instead of such a common-sense solution to water conservation, the U.S. passed a federal law to limit the water used in a toilet flush.
Not at a dine-in restaurant. In the U.S. the server has to make three trips when you signal you’re ready to pay: one to give you the check, another to pick up your card, another to bring it back. And you give your card to the server and where it goes, nobody knows. I’m not saying it’s common but certainly common enough to be a problem. Everywhere else they bring the card reader to your table, and you punch in the tip yourself, and you’re done in one.
I only see that in a very specific type of restaurant ( Chili’s ,Applebees, Olive Garden) and only in chains, never in an independent restaurant. Although I have been to a couple of independent places where the servers have a device that allows them to process a credit card payment without leaving he table.