[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I'm no tax accountant either, but it seems to me that the location of your
dropshipper is irrelevant. He is not the one selling the product to your
customer. He is selling it to you. And you don't have to pay sales tax
to him because you should have a state resale certificate, making you
exempt from having to pay sales taxes. And, IMO, the location of your web
server is meaningless. I've never heard of that being an issue.
So, the only transaction that could possibly be taxable is between you (in
Michigan) and the end customer (in California). Unless Michigan law
requires you to collect sales tax on something sold to a person in
California, and I doubt that is true, no sales tax gets collected at all
here.
Again, IANAL, but from what I read that may not be correct. The "sales tax" is
considered to be a tax on the added value (which is in some places it is
called value added tax). And vene besides that, the shipping of goods is also
a sale of services. So what at least should happen is if any sales tax is to
be collected the tax from the shipping location (that is where the customer
buys the shipping service from) and the tax from the sales location are to be
applied. The supplier (manufacturer of the piece of jewelry) charges the
seller the applicable tax since that sale happened before the end-user made
the purchse. Leaves the only question where the location of sale is when
buying on the web. Is it where one of the parties involved is located, where
the server is located offering the product, or where the server is located
that is used for conducting the money transaction?
That is why one hires accountants and at least one lawyer that makes sure that
the accountant doesn't screw up. Depending on how much budget there is, hire
another lawyer to take care of the other lawyer. Or just pay the sales taxes,
whatever is cheaper.
David
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