Gov. Deval Patrick on August 1 signed legislation enacting a sales tax holiday in Massachusetts for the weekend of August 13 and 14.
DOR has published its Technical Information Release outlining the rules governing this holiday. They are the same as in previous sales tax holidays.
Karen, the Legislature has never included sale of cigarettes in any previous sales tax holiday, and they were not included in this one. The Technical Information Release on the sales tax holiday that appears on DOR's homepage makes that quite clear. As for alcohol, the sales tax on beer, wine and alcohol was lifted effective January 1, 2011, after a referendum vote last November.
Posted by: Robert Bliss | August 15, 2011 at 06:23 AM
Joyce, if you purchased an item from a Massachusetts-based retailer who has a physical presence or nexus in Tennessee, and the store then arranged to send the item to Tennessee,you would be charged the Tennessee sales tax rate. If, however, you had purchased the same item and then sent it via USPS, FedEx or UPS, for instance, no tax would have been due in MA. This is called, in the parlance of sales tax, destination sourcing.
Posted by: Robert Bliss | August 15, 2011 at 06:20 AM
Daniel, Lids is a clothing store, I believe, so unless your purchase exceeded $175, it should have been tax free to begin with since individual items of clothing under that amount are not taxable. However, if tax was charged improperly you should take your receipt back to the store and get the tax returned to you. If that does not work, I would suggested you call DOR's Taxpayer Advocate at 617-626-3235 to get him on the case. The Commonwealth does not want to collect tax that is not due.
Posted by: Robert Bliss | August 15, 2011 at 06:15 AM
Hello, what happens when a retailer, Lids locker room, located in the Burlington Mall does not honor the mass sales tax holiday? And charges sales taxes to their customers. Do they keep the tax revenue? If not, will MA collect it?
Posted by: Daniel Watne | August 14, 2011 at 03:45 PM
i purchased an item in massachusetts but shipped it to tennessee and i was taxed during the aug 13/14 sales tax holiday. why was i taxed?
Posted by: Joyce | August 13, 2011 at 07:29 PM
Yeah! It is sales tax weekend in MA. I went to do my little bit of "back into the economy" thing by buying my cigarettes at a local Walgreens instead of driving to NH. Low and behold, the sales tax applied. Now if that isn't discrimination, I don't know what is!! You don't tax alcohol during this weekend, and that can be just as bad for a person's health as smoke. I can understand boats, cars and the like because you usually cannot register and insure them until the week. But come now, you are targeting a certain group of people and that is definitely discriminating.
Massachusetts definitely has it's head up it's A-- when it comes to certain things. Raising the sales tax is one of those things. Instead of increasing it the way they did, they would have made more money and it would have been less noticeable if they had just kept it a five percent, but put it across the board; clothes, food etc.
If the state politicians couldn't hire people to correctly build the "Big Dig", how can we ever expect or trust them to run the government properly. There are so many loopholes and gaps in our government, that one can only see them by stepping aside or living with them. Massachusetts--get with it.
As for the cigarettes--the federal tax is already built in and stores are allowed to charge what they want within certain guidelines; so thanks for the break--yes, I am being sarcastic.
Posted by: Karen Brace | August 13, 2011 at 06:00 PM