KEN KIRSCHENBAUM, ESQ
ALARM - SECURITY INDUSTRY LEGAL EMAIL NEWSLETTER / THE ALARM EXCHANGE
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More about sales tax
October 14, 2020
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More about sales tax
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Ken
            The sales tax question from yesterday was from a dealer who provides services and collects money directly from its subscribers.  What about central stations?  What sales tax obligation does a central station have to collect sales tax?
Anon
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Response
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            Central stations have their own tax issues and other than income tax passes those taxes on to the dealer.  This is on top of any charges that a particular jurisdiction may charge, or try and charge, as a permit or other charge.  Revenue raising options can be quite imaginative.
            Regarding sales tax, asked Mitch Reitman to address this issue.  Here is his response:
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Ken,
            If he isn’t providing the service to the end user, i.e. the Alarm company (his customer) is billing the actual customer for the monitoring, then he has no responsibility to collect or remit tax.  He must, however, comply with the requirements of each state regarding obtaining resale certificates from each dealer and, just to be safe, for each state that the dealer does business in.  If he does this, it becomes the dealers’ responsibility to connect and remit taxes.  If his books aren’t in order, he may run the risk of the auditor looking to him for the taxes.   Many interstate providers believe that they do not have to worry about sales tax if they aren’t actually in the state.  In 2018 The United States Supreme Court clarified all of this in South Dakota v. Wayfair (585 U.S. (2018)).   Wayfair, an internet seller of home goods and ready to assemble furniture, was not collecting or remitting taxes on South Dakota sales because they had no physical presence in the State.  The Supreme Court ruled in favor of South Dakota stating that …the physical presence rule creates cross-border “distortions” because it discourages out-of-state sellers from having an in-state physical presence and encourages customers to buy from out-of-state vendors. 
            So what are the chances that an auditor from the State of South Dakota will hop on the Amtrak and ride out to New Jersey to look at resale certificates?  Zero, but remember that most states have field offices in other states and, all fifty states have an office in New Jersey.  As we speak an auditor from the State of California is sitting in my conference room auditing a Texas central station that does business there.  Luckily my client has all of the resale certificates and the audit will be over quickly.  She spends most of her time at large Texas businesses like Arco, J.C. Penny, and Dell Computer but she lives here and it’s a short drive to come by. 
Mitch Reitman 
Reitman Consulting Group
817-698-9999
http://www.reitman.us
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Ken Kirschenbaum,Esq
Kirschenbaum & Kirschenbaum PC
Attorneys at Law
200 Garden City Plaza
Garden City, NY 11530
516 747 6700 x 301
ken@kirschenbaumesq.com
www.KirschenbaumEsq.com