Since we’re\u00a0located in Los Angeles we get a fair amount of requests to purchase equipment using California’s Teleproduction sales tax exemption (Section 6378). \u00a0If you’re not familiar with this exemption, it basically gives you a 5.5% discount on the sales tax we would otherwise be forced to collect on your behalf. \u00a0All you need to do to take advantage of this discount? \u00a0Simply fill out a form that states:<\/p>\n
Production versus Post-Production<\/strong><\/p>\n There’s one problem with this: It doesn’t\u00a0cover cameras. \u00a0No, really. \u00a0It doesn’t. \u00a0It seems most people don’t understand that this exemption is primarily intended for post-production and specifically excludes production equipment such as cameras. \u00a0Below is an excerpt from Regulation 1532 which elaborates on the teleproduction exemption. \u00a0Here you can see the state’s definition of “teleproduction or other postproduction services”:<\/p>\n (4) “Teleproduction or other postproduction services” means services for film, video, or digital multimedia formats (audio or visual) that include editing, film and video transfers, transcoding, dubbing, subtitling, credits, close captioning, audio production, special effects (visual or sound), graphics, or animation. For the purposes of this regulation, “teleproduction or other postproduction services” includes postproduction services and does not include production services or activities.<\/strong> “Teleproduction or other postproduction services” include the duplicating of film for postproduction purposes. However, the duplication of film to make release prints does not qualify as a “teleproduction or other postproduction service.”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Note the sentence in bold (emphasis ours). \u00a0Despite this, we’ve actually had customers\u00a0get\u00a0angry with us because another local vendor allowed them to use the tax exemption for camera gear, sometimes going so far as listing different vendors that have extended the credit to them as if to insinuate that\u00a0if everyone else isn’t adhering to the law it’s ok for us to ignore it as well. \u00a0Here’s the problem.<\/p>\n Responsibility to Collect\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n In California sales tax is a tax\u00a0you<\/em>\u00a0owe however it is the merchant’s responsibility to collect and file this tax on your behalf. \u00a0You might be wondering why. \u00a0Well, let’s just say most people do a poor job of self-reporting sales tax they owe. \u00a0All those internet\u00a0purchases you make\u00a0from other states and don’t pay tax on? \u00a0Technically you still owe sales tax on those purchases. \u00a0You’re supposed to track and self-report this however hardly anyone does. \u00a0In-state they can force merchants to act as the pass-through since we’re already so heavily regulated. It’s easy to shoulder us with the burden since we’re already collecting money from you.<\/p>\n Some customers will still argue that they shouldn’t pay tax and that if they’re wrong it’s their responsibility to pay. \u00a0Unfortunately that’s not the case. \u00a0It is our responsibility to collect and if we’re wrong the state will come after us looking for the missing money. \u00a0It’s important to understand that we don’t keep a penny of your sales tax. \u00a0In fact, it costs us money to collect it in the form of credit card merchant fees. \u00a0Furthermore,\u00a0it costs us business because people will buy from companies out of state so they don’t have to pay it. \u00a0We don’t want to charge you sales tax any more\u00a0than you want to pay it.\u00a0<\/strong>It’s a pain for us to collect, it’s a pain for us to file, it costs us money, and in many cases it’s a\u00a0charge our local customers were not anticipating.<\/p>\n Bypassing California Sales Tax<\/strong><\/p>\n Let’s say you’re starting with a $1000 camera. \u00a0We have to add 9% state tax onto that\u00a0making your total $1090.\u00a0Chances are you found us from eBay or Amazon. \u00a0We pay these companies hefty fees to sell on their platforms. \u00a0When you buy from us directly you save on average 5% off your item price. \u00a0That means your $1000 item is now $950 and being taxed at $950. \u00a0With tax you’re up\u00a0to $1035. \u00a0If you’re in Los Angeles and can pay cash it only gets better. \u00a0We pass on our credit card processing fees to you in the form of a 2.5% discount. \u00a0Combine that with your 5% discount earned from buying from us directly and your $1000 item is now $925. \u00a0With tax it’s $1008.25. \u00a0So simply buying from us directly and paying cash nets you a $7.5% discount, effectively wiping out almost all of your sales tax. \u00a0Your warranty stays the same. \u00a0Nothing else changes.<\/p>\n At the end of the day it’s important to understand what the tele-production exemption does\/ does not cover regardless of whether you’re buying from us or not. If the state determines that the items purchased do not qualify for the discount it’s likely they’ll chase down both the buyer and the seller and when they do that they like to tack on fees. \u00a0Make sure you’re on the up and up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since we’re\u00a0located in Los Angeles we get a fair amount of requests to purchase equipment using California’s Teleproduction sales tax exemption (Section 6378). \u00a0If you’re not familiar with this exemption, it basically gives you a 5.5% discount on the sales tax we would otherwise be forced to collect on your behalf. \u00a0All you need to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeedeals.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeedeals.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeedeals.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeedeals.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeedeals.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2317"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/monkeedeals.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2324,"href":"https:\/\/monkeedeals.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2317\/revisions\/2324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeedeals.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeedeals.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeedeals.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}