Cleveland Real Estate News

So our County Commishes (is that a word?) gave us an early present this year, in the form of additional sales taxes; are ya feeling the punch as you sleuth around the stores for presents this year? 

And our County Auditor is getting ready to give us another holiday present….our property taxes are probably already all lined up in a row; no sense mailing them until it’s closer to New Year’s Eve, right?  Yeah, bah humbug!

Now we may have dodged the bullet on on line, out-of-state purchases up to now, but Ohio is getting ready (again, they tried before) to get in on this action too.  Yeah yeah yeah, maybe it’s a good idea, maybe not. Currently, if your retail ‘establishment’ doesn’t physically exist where the purchaser lives, there is no sales tax on the purchase. The Pee Dee’s Shaheen Samavati wrote about it on Thursday.

Apparently, in order to be one of the participating states in this group of states who collect sales tax on out-of-state purchases, your sales tax regs have to match up. I don’t know exactly what that means- but it includes what you tax, what you don’t tax, and how the taxes are collected ( so that some retailer in California knows not to tax the Emmenthaler cheese you order, but slap the tax on when you add an expensive wine opener to the mix?)  Anyway, there are 15 states participating in this ‘group’ now.  They said if they can get five additional states to comply with their regs then Ohio will be ‘in.’

In typical tax reg fashion, the taxes collected will be based on where it’s going, not where it came from.  Now, presumably, if I own a vintage t shirt shop in Duluth, I know how to figure out the sales tax for Minnesota.  But if I sell you, Mr. West Park resident of Cleveland a t shirt, then I have to add Cuyahoga County sales tax onto the purchase. Oh and did I mention that sales tax varies in different Ohio counties so…..I guess I need a wall of mammoth US states with counties and the amounts of sales taxes to charge for each.  OK OK, it’s probably not THAT complicated we are in the tech age  . . . Ohio says they are losing about $400 mil a year on sales tax.  So stay tuned, although the article also says even if it all works, it would not go into effect any earlier than 2010. BTW, it’s called the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement.

Don’t forget to start saving for your holiday gift to the IRS too, it IS the end of the year after all    Peace Out – 3C