Sales tax: was Re: Licensed tuners

[Tony Caught]

Hi Doug,

The Government has just introduced GST of 10% in Australia. Same thing
applies, if your gross income is below $50,000 you do not have to pass the
GST on or charge the 10% to your customers.  This puts our price up and the
learner / would be tuner's price remains the same. Lets face it, most of our
customers wouldn't know if their piano is tuned properly or not. We will
just have to sell our selves better and service the customer properly.

Tony Caught ICPTG
Australia
caute@optusnet.com.au

----- Original Message -----
From: <Douglasmahard@aol.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2000 8:53 PM
Subject: Sales tax: was Re: Licensed tuners


> Hi ric,
>
> Exempting ongoing legitimate businesses from collecting sales and use tax
> because they happen to gross under a certain dollar amount is a bad idea
in
> my mind.  This lowers the total cost to the client which gives these
exempt
> businesses an unfair advantage.
>
> In the piano tech world I'm sure we all know of tuners who have full time
> jobs in another field, possibly deriving complete benefit packages from
these
> other occupations.  Their piano tech fees seem to be lower then us doing
it
> full time.  If they aren't grossing over $20,000 and this exempts them
from
> collecting sales tax, this in my mind is making the situation worse for us
> full time techs.
>
> With all this said, other techs lower prices don't worry me, state gov't
> favoritism would rankle me though.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Doug Mahard
>