On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Kostas Kavoussanakis wrote: > On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Bruce Dayton wrote: > > Samys is a good store. I have mail ordered from them on several > > occasions and have had very good luck. If your brother is in CA right > > now, one advantage to using Adorama or B&H is that you will not pay > > sales tax. > > Thanks. Will (or would one expect that) the lack of sales tax make > them cheaper than (for example) Samy's? I am not familiar with the > effects of sales tax, other than that it's a NY (I think) artifact.
Most states have sales tax. This is like VAT in the rest of the world, except that it is added onto the published price instead of being included in the published price. If you mail order items across state lines there is no sales tax, unless the seller also has offices in your state. B&H and Adorama are only located in NY, so you won't pay sales tax if you order any item from them outside of NY. Typical sales tax is 5-8% depending on the state. > Thinking outside the box (and as the present is neither a surprise nor > expensive at $32 from Samy's, so should skip customs easily), would it > make better sense if I ordered it myself? Would sales tax be dropped > then from Ado and B&H? At $32 you would pay more in shipping than you would save in sales tax for mail order. On a *ist D you would save more in sales tax than you would pay in shipping. On the other hand if your *ist D needed to be returned there are much larger hassles in doing returns via mail and the cost savings quickly erode. alex
