Cheapo DMM

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That's cool. Your only problem right now is going thru all of them and removing the battery so that it won't leak all over the innnards and ruin them while they're sitting around for the next ten years. ;-)

Yep. Here in WA state, at least the last time I asked the tax authority and to the best of my understanding of their answer, shipping cost is considered part of the total sale price, so it's taxed (give or take a few loopholes that don't generally apply). But then we have all kinds of weird tax rules here.

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Too bad. ;-)

(From a Calif. resident)

They're ok for a cheap meter. 1 meg input impedance. ~4% accuracy. Better than 1k or 10k meter movements but the 9v battery costs more than the meter. GC

I was surprised to find out a few years ago that WI sales tax was also levied on the shipping & handling charges.

----------------------------------------------- Jim Adney snipped-for-privacy@vwtype3.org Madison, WI 53711 USA

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Up until recently, I became acutely aware that other states were doing this. In Calif, it seemed to me that it just makes common sense that sales tax would _not_ be levied on services, such as 'transportation' as the tax code calls it, and any service that isn't actually the goods itself. See, labor (AKA services) is _already_ taxed thru income tax.

Back years ago, _all_ food was not taxable. Then Sacramento came up with what was called the 'Twinky Tax'. Some foods such as those sold in vending machines became taxable. (It sure hasn't slowed people down from eating them! Sunday Morning on CBS this morning had a piece on how everything is being made larger to accommodate larger people. Subway seats used to be 17", now they're in the low 20's. Dress sizes of a certain number have become larger, etc.)

I'm not sure how they draw the line between Twinkies and cupcakes.

Probably to keep vendors from potentially avoiding tax on behalf of their customers by invoicing an item as $0.99 plus $150 'shipping and handling'.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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Well, I don't see that happening. The customer doesn't have to pay ten bucks tax, but the vendor still hase to send tax on 99 cents to the state, so it still doesn't save him anything. And then there's the matter of the state saying that the vendor is attempting to avoid what's due the state, and then the vendor has a legal problem. And it's no skin off the vendor's nose if the customer pays the ten dollars or not. So your scenario doesn't seem plausible. But on Ebay, they seem to do it to avoid selling fees or to lower risk.

Puts her in a competitive situation with other vendors (including out of state) and she saves the credit card percentage on the tax.

He would only have a legal problem if it wasn't legal to do. S&H is fairly arbitrary.

Or both. The latter is particularly insidious, in the case where a vendor may offer a refund minus shipping. It's kind of like paying a tradesman cash so he can cheat on his taxes.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany