Shopsmith Forums

Is anyone else seeing that the new website isn't collecting sales tax, or at least lists it as $0.00 when you're on the final page before placing an order? I was pricing some things out, and noticed this just now.

I have not noticed that, but I live in Oregon so no sales tax anyway.

Ohio is having a sales-tax holiday right now, on almost all items under $500. It ends today. I doubt that it is supposed to apply to things shipped out of state, but that could be pretty complicated for a company to deal with. The stuff that I ordered from Amazon this week were tax-free, however, as the sales taxes on interstate sales are paid to the state where the goods are shipped.

Okay, so it might be a short term issue with the system then. I know that for me, living in Texas, if you purchase something from within the state (and are keeping it in the state), then you are paying sales tax. When you purchase something from out of state and have it shipped in, the name of the tax is called a "use tax". I don't know how the law applies to those who drive across state boundaries, make a purchase, and then drive it back across the state line. I don't live close enough to a state line to have done that in my adult life (grew up about 30 minutes from Oklahoma, but there wasn't anything in that part of OK to go buy).

In Texas, state sales tax is 6.25%, and most local municipalities opt to add another 2% to that to make it 8.25%. We also have property tax on our houses, but no state income tax, no yearly vehicle tax, etc. After exemptions, my property tax rate comes out to 1.6% in the last few years.

In KY there is a line on the income tax form to list out of state purchases. Recently online sellers do collect KY "sales and use tax" applicable to shipping costs as well.

I don't know Texas law all that well to know if shipping costs are taxed as well. I know that some sites do charge tax on shipping, while others don't. I feel like it's less common for them to charge it on shipping though. There was a time that I lived just barely outside of a certain taxing jurisdiction so I only paid 7.25% on online purchases, but the taxing authority found out pretty quickly and remedied that.

I do not envy online sellers and the requirements put on them by the 10ks-100ks of municipalities with their own rules around who gets taxed and how much. Keeping that straight would be a nightmare.

In other news, I finally went and purchased a replacement lathe arm for the one that broke on me a long while back. I was wondering, should I try and fill the tooling hole that allowed the stress crack in the first place with something like jb weld putty? I have some extra laying around, and was thinking it might help. Then again, having something hard in the middle of all of the soft aluminum might make it crack even easier.