collecting tax

[tenpercentfirearms]

I am talking several hundred here not $36. We are clearly on different pages here so instead of accusing back and forth I will simply thank you for the info you provided.

Several hundred dollars? So you are transfering more than $10,000 at once or even in a year? I am not disputing you are as I had to collect $800 in transfer sales tax on a purchase before. That guy didn't even bat an eye or make a single accusation. I told him to keep his receipt just in case the state ever asked where their money was.

Still the question remains, were you ever paying your use tax? Is $360 even worth a dealer going to prison over? Is there a larger issues of dealers keeping the money?

Or are people just upset they can't cheat on their taxes anymore?

[Brian1979]

Perhaps some of you should run for president next time since you are so perfect and free from cheating absolutely anything?

The mentality I am seeing are from tax recipients and not tax payers so I fully understand the hate being generated here. Enjoy your returns and just know that people like me will keep pushing you along with working hard and earning less because we pay so damn much in tax. Some times it pays to be at the bottom and complain and I wish those of you in this situation the best. Be sure to claim all your online purchases and be sure to only write off EXACTLY what you are entitled to.

[keenkeen]

So you are transfering more than $10,000 at once or even in a year?

For me, yes, way more...I should have never started keeping that spreadsheet on $ spent on guns.

[kemasa]

Perhaps some of you should run for president next time since you are so perfect and free from cheating absolutely anything?

The mentality I am seeing are from tax recipients and not tax payers so I fully understand the hate being generated here. Enjoy your returns and just know that people like me will keep pushing you along with working hard and earning less because we pay so damn much in tax. Some times it pays to be at the bottom and complain and I wish those of you in this situation the best. Be sure to claim all your online purchases and be sure to only write off EXACTLY what you are entitled to.

You original response was interesting.

It seems clear that you don't get that no FFL wants to violate the law for you to pay less sales tax.

You should also know that the CA BOE, not the IRS, is the one collecting it and that the amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar, which seems to happen that you end up paying more to the BOE than you collected.

If you don't like, get people together and thrown the bums out of office and get more reasonable people in and then get the laws changed. Don't complain about the FFLs who are forced to follow the laws.

[Brian1979]

I am not mad at the FFLs. I am mad at the situation and that they are being forced to do this. I am concerned that the way it is setup allows for fraud between what is collected and what is paid to the BOE after the fact.

I would much rather avoid paying the FFL and just continue getting screwed by the IRS and pay them direct as I have every year. It should be up to me to claim an amount and pay what is owed or have the out of state dealers who actually sold the item do what is required if tax is due. Since they obviously arent required to collect tax the BOE was cleaver enough to target an FFL as easy prey and force them to do this which I think is wrong. Amazon fought this and is winning but a little hole in the wall FFL has no money to fight this so they just take it and so do we.

It just seems a few tax Nazis above are drawing their own conclusions about a larger picture which is hilarious. I still call the BS card and want to see a person who claimed every last little thing they ever purchased online and voluntarily paid sales tax on it. This wasnt the question asked by me but rather what my thread turned in to.

[tenpercentfirearms]

I am not mad at the FFLs. I am mad at the situation and that they are being forced to do this. I am concerned that the way it is setup allows for fraud between what is collected and what is paid to the BOE after the fact.

This is the interesting part. You were not concerned when you never paid your use tax and were cheating the system. Now that you can't do that, you are now concerned that someone else might be cheating the system, even though there is zero evidence that gun dealers are cheating the system. It has been laid out why it would be quite difficult and extremely risky for gun dealers to cheat the system, yet you still stick to your claim that there is this big area of "potential" abuse here.

In other words your concern has no merit and is quite contradictory.

I would much rather avoid paying the FFL and just continue getting screwed by the IRS and pay them direct as I have every year. It should be up to me to claim an amount and pay what is owed or have the out of state dealers who actually sold the item do what is required if tax is due. Since they obviously arent required to collect tax the BOE was cleaver enough to target an FFL as easy prey and force them to do this which I think is wrong. Amazon fought this and is winning but a little hole in the wall FFL has no money to fight this so they just take it and so do we.

I don't think you understand the true issues here. First, the IRS is not collecting sales tax. It is the CA State Board of Equalization (BOE). Second, the BOE is claiming that when your retail firearms transaction comes through a retail firearms store in CA, the CA FFL is the final retailer of the firearm. As such, the CA FFL does not have a choice to collect or not collect tax. They must collect the sales tax.

It would be no different than you going to Walmart and telling them that even though their goods came from somewhere out of state, because they are selling it, they should just skip the sales tax and let you pay it at the end of the year. That sounds great in theory, but the BOE considers Walmart the final retailer and the BOE will want that sales tax from Walmart whether they collected it or not. You do understand that BOE Retail Permit holders are not required to collect sales tax from their customers, they are just required to pay the sales tax on the transaction. Whether I get reimbursed for the sales tax is up to me. I choose to get reimbursed by my customer (AKA you pay your sales tax because I don't want to pay it for you).

Where Amazon has a case is they are saying they are just an out of state agent that has some clients that sell inside CA. That does not make Amazon a California company selling items directly to CA from CA warehouses. The BOE (again, not IRS) is claiming that because some of Amazons agents are in CA, that makes Amazon a CA company and they should collect sales tax on any and all sales to CA.

If we were to apply your logic from the Amazon scenario to our situation, then the out of state dealer would have to collect CA sales tax anytime they sent a gun into one of their "CA FFL agents". Do you really want this to happen? If you think out of state FFLs don't like CFLC, guess what they would say about that? Oh not to mention it is against the constitution for CA to require out of state dealers to collect sales tax unless they have a business in CA.

It just seems a few tax Nazis above are drawing their own conclusions about a larger picture which is hilarious. I still call the BS card and want to see a person who claimed every last little thing they ever purchased online and voluntarily paid sales tax on it. This wasnt the question asked to me but rather what my thread turned in to.

Again you side step the issue. Your original concern was that FFLs are stealing money from the state by claiming your firearm purchase was something it was not. For some reason in your mind my collecting your sales tax on an out of state transfer and then stealing it is easier than just doing it for my in store transactions. However, there is no logical evidence it is easier, but quite the opposite. If I claim you gave me a receipt for your $1000 gun that was really $500, I would have to make that new receipt up and there would still be at least two copies showing I am lying in existence; one with you and one with the original seller. Both copies could easily be obtained by the BOE.

I have also brought up how anyone with a modern Point of Sale system cannot just erase transactions. They can be voided, but there are clear paper trails in order to keep employees from messing with the books. That same paper trail would make a BOE audit of one of these mythical tax stealing FFLs very easy.

Again I don't care if you pay your use tax or not. It isn't my concern. I am just wondering what your character is like. Are you the kind of guy who likes the to cheat the system (Quote: "If there is a way around all this please PM me some info"), but then gets upset when other people cheat the system (if that is even happening often or at all)?

For me? I am going to collect and remit sales tax on all retail transactions. I sleep just fine at night doing it as well. Anyone who wants to try and change that and fight the BOE, you are more than welcome to do it. Put your money where your mouth is and fight them on it. I have zero interest in fighting them on it because it is so easy for me to collect and remit it I would be wasting my hard earned money so other people could pay their taxes at their convenience. Even if it were my personal firearms, why get upset a dealer does my tax work for me and saves me from having to do it at the end of the year?

Sorry I would rather spend my money on litigation over unjust firearms laws in this state.

[Munk]

I didslike that the BOE has put the onus of payment for use tax onto the FFL. I think it's wrong for them to put you in that position. It means that if an FFL doesn't have a relatively error-proof system for collection, they could be in hot water from a penalty standpoint.

I spent my own time looking into the BOE's memos on when an FFL has to pay, and if my local store doesn't automatically collect the tax on a transaction that needs such collection, I WILL remind him, because small businesses have a hard enough time hanging in there without having to pay penalties over a clerical error. My 200$ or more savings, while nice, isn't worth getting a store shut down. I'd probably lose that 200$ in gas money repeatedly driving to the next gunstore all the time. (seriously, a one way 20 mile extra trip amounts to 6$ in gas per trip, over the course of a year or so, i'll stop into a store enough time while buying ammo, components, targets, clays, cleaning supplies, and accessories to eat up that savings)

[NytWolf]

Just pay it and shut up. Worry about things you can control. You did your part. It's up to the FFL to do theirs.

If it helps you feel better, know that eventually, you will/should receive a receipt. That's what counts and that's what will go in the record books. The FFL has the receipt to prove how much tax they will pay to BOE. Whether or not the FFL pays that amount to the BOE is none of your business. It is not up to you anyway.

You are overly concerned over nothing.

On your concern regarding the FFL writing a receipt for a lower amount, thus filing less taxes: that's why you will get a receipt. Duh! Sooner or later you will get one. If the amount doesn't match, ask about it. Duh! If you don't, it's your fault. But remember this: usually when something is ordered from the manufacturer, you pay MSRP. In the case of a firearm, the FFL acts as a mere middleman for the transfer. That's why there are distributors.

[kemasa]

I didslike that the BOE has put the onus of payment for use tax onto the FFL. I think it's wrong for them to put you in that position. It means that if an FFL doesn't have a relatively error-proof system for collection, they could be in hot water from a penalty standpoint.

Actually, it is still considered "sales tax". It is really no different than any other business in which items go through the business, except in this case firearms have to go through a FFL.

The real problem is in how does the FFL really know what was paid. I would prefer to not have to collect sales tax on firearms which I did not actually sell. Also I don't care much for also having to collect sales tax on the shipping since I am acting as the agent for the buyer, but it is what it is. The voters can change things, not the FFLs.

As Wes said, it is amazing that some people try to bring up other issues, such as the FFL keeping the sales tax money, but don't have an issue with retail stores, especially when they pay cash. With a FFL, if you try to hide ALL of the paper trail, you would most likely end up in jail since there are many parties involved and many laws you would have to violate. A sandwich place can hide a sandwich sale with little effort, but a FFL can't hide a firearm transfer.