If you were curious to know if pawn shops charge you sales tax, the answer is that in most cases, yes they do. that having been said, there is a way you can get around that. Read this article to find out how.
Thinking about buying something from a pawn shop?
I can’t blame you, it’s a great idea.
You can save a ton of money buy shopping at pawn shops for gently used merchandise.
Typically speaking, their prices are very reasonable and on top of it, in many stores, you can negotiate prices to some degree.
When we really get right down to it, let’s talk for a minute about those prices.
Specifically, “Do pawn shops have sales tax?”
A lot of people wonder this, and I’m not entirely sure why.
Pawn shops aren’t exempt from city, county, state or federal law as it applies to any form of taxation, sales tax being one of those things.
If you happen to live in a city, county, or state where these is no sales tax, then obviously there will be no sales tax for you. However, most people live in these areas.
Unfortunately, there’s really nothing that a pawn shop can do for you to “Exempt” you from this legal requirement…
Well, actually there are a few secrets that I’m about to let you know about – but don’t tell anyone, it’s just between us.
When a pawn shop sells you something, they will likely have to charge you sales tax if that exists in your area. That having been said, there’s a way that you can possibly get around a pawn shop charging you sales tax on the things that you buy from them.
How To Try To Get Around Sales Tax In Pawn Shops
One of the most popular software programs for pawn shops to use is a program known as Pawnmaster, developed by dataage.
In the sales section of this program, there is a little check box that the cashier can check that says “Eat sales tax.”
What this does is reduce the price of whatever you are buying to the point that the pawn shop then pays the sales tax and you walk out paying just the stickered price of the item.
Now, a lot of pawn shop don’t let their employees use this option, and for obvious reasons, but some will.
So, when you are buying something from a pawn shop, you can ask them one simple thing to try to get out of paying the sales tax and pass that burden onto them.
“So, can we do it for $XX out the door?”
XX being whatever the stickered price was for the item. In some cases, you may find that the associate helping you will just say “Sure, no problem.”
However, in cases where that won’t work, there is still something else you can do.
How To Negotiate Around Sales Tax At Pawn Shops
Now, like I said above, not all pawn shops will let their employees use the “Eat sales tax” option because it’s very easy to abuse.
Unfortunately, you will have no way of knowing that beforehand so something you can do is figure out what the sales tax would be on an item beforehand.
You need to know what your city, state, or county’s sales tax percentage is before you walk in. Let’s say it was 5%, just using a made up, round number.
If something costs $100 and you think that is a pretty fair price on it, what you can do is offer the pawn shop associate 10% less for the item than the stickered price.
They may take it, in which case you would be getting it 5% off, plus no tax!
Many times however, the pawn shop associate will counter offer, normally around half of what you’re discounted price was, or 95% of the original stickered price.
In this case, you will end up paying $99.75 instead of $105, effectively cutting the sales tax out of the equation completely.
Top Secret Ninja Tactic
Okay, it’s not really top secret, but if you get the pawn shop associate to agree to either 5 or 10% off of the sticker price, follow that up with the fist question of:
“Can we do that out the door?”
In this case, you may end up saving up to 15% without very much effort at all.
Pretty awesome huh?
