>I know many on the list play in groups that have made CDs that they >will sell at concerts/gigs. I'm wondering if anybody knows what the >deal is in the US (New York State, specifically) with sales tax: > >That is, if you're selling your CDs after a concert/gig, are you >responsible for paying sales tax? Or is this one of those things >where the buyer is responsible for it?
The seller is responsible for paying sales tax. Whether you actually collect it from your customers is up to you, but it is your responsibility to pay it to the state. I don't know what the rules are in New York, but here in Washington if you sell any tangible item at all -- like, if I sold an old bookshelf on CraigsList -- technically that is a retail sale and I owe sales tax to the state. And likewise for garage sales, etc. Now, as a practical matter, nobody files sales tax for a family garage sale, and the state doesn't expect them to. But say if someone were in the business of procuring lots of stuff and holding regular garage sales all summer long as a means of earning significant income, then maybe they would. Somewhere in that wide gray area there is a line which is crossed between trivial personal sales and actually doing business, and it's not totally clear exactly where that line lies. (From the state's point of view the line begins at zero, and they have the right to pursue it in any case they choose to, but they choose to overlook cases which aren't cost-effective for them.) Again, I don't know NY law, but here in WA there is a state business operation tax (no WA state income tax for individuals), and sales tax is paid on the same form as regular state business tax. If you've licensed your business, you're already getting the forms (or filing online) and there's a place to report retail sales. If you're NOT licensed and you try to file anyway, you're not going to know what to enter as your state business ID#, and if you send it in without one the state is going to wonder why you aren't licensed. (And if you're filing a return to pay just $22 of sales tax, you're no doubt costing the state more to process a form that its automated system chokes on than they actually collect from you.) I assume NY must have some sort of business filing, so it seems likely to me that you *can't* pay sales tax without getting yourself on their radar as a business. I'd say you need to ask yourself: are you a self-employed musician actively doing business in the state of New York, or are you just a regular wage earner who occasionally has a gig or sells a couple CDs on the side? If you are the former, then you should license your business with the state and do a regular tax filing which will include whatever retail sales you have. If you are the latter, then your scrupulousness is admirable but realistically there's no practical way for you to pay your trivial sales tax and no one expects you to anyway. (In either case, you should still report all your musician income on your state and federal income tax.) mdl (whose day job is in tax accounting) _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
