RECORD STORE TALES Part 277: Sales Tax
Early September. Our stores were flooded with students new and returning. This is an exciting time for many. For the students, it’s another exciting year at one of our local colleges or universities. For me, it was meeting and hopefully keeping new customers. Sometimes though, there were some customers that were just never meant to be.
I remember ringing in one used CD for a customer. He was a young guy, a new student in town. If you’ve ever been a young student (Lord knows I once was) sometimes you run into those that “know it all”. I was one of those, too. This guy was one as well.
I rang in his CD sale.
“That comes to $13.79 please,” I said as the computer calculated the Provincial Sales Tax and the Goods & Services Tax. Some, such as people with native status cards, are exempt from PST. Most were not and had to pay the full (then) 15% tax. Yeah, it’s a lot. We Canadians pay a lot of sales tax.
“Is there tax on this?” the customer asked.
“Yeah unfortunately,” I responded.
“That’s wrong,” he answered abruptly.
Not understanding his full meaning I responded sympathetically, “Yeah, I know, but what can you do. The government’s going to take their part.”
“No, I mean that’s wrong, that’s not correct. You can’t charge tax on a used CD.”
Hooboy. I don’t know where this guy came from, but he’d obviously never bought a used CD before. I tried to explain, as a line began to form behind him.
“We have to charge tax on a used CD, because the government’s going to collect it from us whether we want it or not,” I said. “We’ve been selling used CDs in this province for over five years now, and reporting it to Revenue Canada. Believe me, if we didn’t they’d be in here pretty quick with a nice audit.”
He appeared stubbornly stumped. Not understanding the concept of sales tax applied to the end-user, he repeated “That’s not right. A used CD isn’t the same as a used car. You can’t charge sales tax on a used CD.”
At this point I didn’t have much else left to add. “Well, you can certainly check this out for yourself, but every used CD store here in town charges PST and GST on every used CD they sell.” I fibbed slightly; there’s a store in uptown Waterloo called the Orange Monkey that seemed semi-legit at best. They had no cash register, no debit machine, and charged no tax on anything in their store. I don’t know how they did it. Leaving them out of the equation, I continued. “Every used CD store I’ve been to in this province has charged me sales tax on every CD.”
“This is really irregular,” he said frustratingly as he finally paid for his CD.
It might be irregular, but all used CD stores in this province still charge sales tax on used goods. That’s a fact Jack!
mikeladano.com 
When I had my book store I used to get that a lot. “Do you charge tax on the used books?” I always said the same thing. “I don’t charge tax, I just collect it for the government.”
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Yeah, I’d say similar things! When customers would say, “So what kind of deal do I get? No tax, right?” I would always say that it’s not my tax to discount. But if they got a note from the Prime Minister I’d knock it off for them.
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You do get those in college. What is worse is community colleges in the US which are nothing more than glorified high schools. The attitudes of some of those just out of high school is shocking. My only experience of Canada was the airport bar in Toronto but I do remember paying a large sales tax on my beer.
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Yeah that sounds right. Now we’re down to a 13% sales tax, but that’s still really high. I remember going to Alberta in 1990 and paying 0% sales tax. The price on the sticker was the price you paid, it took forever to wrap my head around that concept.
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Whenever I come across a know-it-all like this fellow, for me that only proves how little they know.
If you actually do know a great deal, you realize how much knowledge you have yet to acquire and there’s no way you’d wander around foolishly behaving like you had all the answers!
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Well man, I was as big a fool as they got when I was in ,y early 20’s. I see a lot of myself in these kids sometimes, although I would only really argue with my parents. I really wanted to prove to them how smart I was, by pretending to know something about everything.
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It happens – there’s a Diana Krall song that I liked the idea: “I know a little bit about a lot of things”
I figure it’s like guitar playing though, if you’re solid, you need not advertise!
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I think some, myself included, felt they had something to prove to somebody, somewhere, somehow.
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I used to always tell people who bitched about the tax to ask how they enjoyed all the services, health care and infrastructure in their lives. Sure, it ain’t perfect, we can all think of things we would change about the way things are, but we also have it pretty damn good here and I don’t mind paying a percentage to have what we have.
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I used to tell people, if you don’t like it, vote next time :) (It was never voters that bitched to me, it seems!)
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I loved those used cd shops. Here in Tbay we had a cool one called Disc Go Round…and the guy that ran it was super chill and a nice guy and he would pay a fair price from what I hear.
I don’t know how many times I went in there and he would have a few stacks of discs behind his counter and would let me look thru them before he put them out and if there was anything there I could just buy it…..
Went in one day(about 7 yrs ago) and said he was getting out cuz he could feel the tide changing…..
Miss that store…..
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It’s a shame when all the old stores close. Book stores too, comic stores. Anywhere that you build a bond with the guys and a loyalty.
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Absolutely I mean here in Tbay it’s the walmarts,targets,one HMV(pass) and various pawnshops and iTunes …..
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Anything good ever show up at pawn shops?
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Naaa not really ……to be honest I don’t really check out pawnshops anymore……
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If there’s nothing worth buying, why waste your time. Most of the ones here suck.
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Depends on what you’re after. I can always find treasures in those places, but it takes dedicated digging and a fairly broad range in tastes. NOt a whole lotta special editions of anything, but around here I seem to score some decent local punk, and it’s pretty easy to fill in holes in discographies for cheap…
Me, I like junk and pawn shops. Yes, there’s a lotta crap. But gems too. And cheap! I am King of the Bargain Bins. ;)
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it goes to 11!
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