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Which online reseller's sell Sager/Clevo's and give a student discount?
Xotic?
Eurocom?
Which ones?
Also, Does alienware offer a student discount?
How much % off on each?
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Thanks!
Anybody that knows the exact rates however. Let me know them! -
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I am in US
What about alienware guys!'
Dont wanna make another thread! -
Unless I miss my guess, the sales tax depends on where the system is being shipped to (in which case, you oughta try NYC - 8.75% sales tax if I recollect the tax rate correctly - no, I don't carry tax rate charts around with me, especially not on the weekend ).
That, of course, is just one of the umpteen million reasons why you're generally better off buying a Clevo/Sager from folks like xoticpc or powernotebooks or etc, etc, ad nauseam, instead of from corporations like D'h'ell - xoticpc and powernotebooks don't have sufficient contacts (as far as I can tell) with any state other than their home states (Nebraska and Nevada, respectively) to be subject to the sales tax jurisdiction of any state other than their home states, and thus can make sales without having to collect sales tax for any state other than Nebraska or Nevada, respectively. For that you can thank the Supreme Court for its decision in Quill and Congress for, in one of its extremely rare moments of sanity, the prohibition on the states' expansion of the sales taxation of internet commerce (aka e-commerce). -
$226 is about 8.5% of $2,649 (to be precise: 8.53152...%). Did the price of $2,649 include shipping? Typically, the cost of seller-arranged shipping is also included in the sales tax base (i.e., you pay sales tax on the shipping cost as well as on the cost of the goods).
EDIT: Just went to the horse's mouth, so to speak (if you've ever heard Mayor Mikey speak, he does sound a little like he's braying, in a nasal sort of way ). According to the
NYC DOF (Dep't of Finance), on tangible personal property, which includes computers, the total sales tax rate in NYC is 8.375%, consisting of:
- a 4% NY State sales tax, plus
- a 0.375% NY State metropolitan commuter transportation district surcharge (don't ask me, as far as I'm concerned, a tax is a tax is a tax, but the "wise" elders in Albany and NYC council prefer to play the tax-man's version of three-card monty by calling a tax anything but a "tax" ), plus
- a 4% NYC local sales tax.
Since you paid $226 in NYC sales tax, that suggests that the total bill was about $2,699 (i.e., $226 / 0.08375 = $2,698.5074..., rounded up to $2,699), which suggests that you also paid about $50 (perhaps $49.99) in shipping costs, for a total pre-tax cost of $2,649, plus $50, equals $2,699; and a final post-tax cost of $2,699, plus $266, equals $2,965.
Is that even close? -
I wonder if anyone gives charity discounts for pathetic little vaio owners?
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@Eleron911 WARNING: Another Novel Coming Up!
Not exactly. First off, on what grounds are we "supposed" to pay sales tax on everything we buy? If I buy a pair of shoes in a state that does not impose a sales tax, am I supposed to voluntarily mail in a "tax" payment to that state? Or am I supposed to go running to the nearest state that does impose a sales tax and voluntarily mail in a "tax" payment to that state?
A more precise statement would be something to the effect that "we are supposed to pay sales tax on purchases as to which such a tax has been imposed." If no tax has been imposed, there's no "supposed to" about it - I have no obligation to pay a tax.
More to the point, however, is the question of whether or not a particular seller is "supposed to" collect a sales tax that has otherwise been imposed on the transaction in question. This is the realm of the more appropriately named use tax, which is a complement to the sales tax that states impose on the buyer when they cannot get jurisdiction over the seller.
For example, NY imposes a use tax on its residents that is designed to complement the NY sales tax, and requires that every NY resident report their out-of-state purchases and pay the use tax on those purchases. Of course, NY is not quite as stupid as its Congressional delegation might lead you to believe, so on the annual income tax return there's a little place where the state very nicely assumes that you made a certain dollar amount of out-of-state purchases based solely on your adjusted gross income, and levies a "use" tax on you regardless of whether or not you actually made any out-of-state purchases (and, for lack of proof, most residents end up paying that - just try proving you purchased less than the presumed amount - as we all know, it's almost impossible to prove a negative).
Where the rub comes is when a state, e.g., North Dakota, attempts to coerce a non-resident business into collecting the state's use tax for it. That was the subject-matter of a little Supreme Court case known as Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, 504 U.S. 298 (1992).
Quill Corp. was (and presumably, still is) in the business of selling mail-order office supplies. Quill Corp. had no offices, employees, or other physical contacts with North Dakota; the only contacts were mail and telephone solicitations, and deliveries made by either mail or common carrier (e.g., FedEx). In Quill, North Dakota had sued Quill Corp. on the grounds that Quill had intentionally targetted North Dakota's economy, thereby bringing it within the jurisdiction of the North Dakota courts by means of its intentional use of the stream of commerce (don't worry, it's a technical term-of-art argument usually used in minimum due-process analysis for determining whether or not a defendant has done enough to make it fair to sue him in a particular court). Under a basic due-process analysis, had Quill Corp. committed a tort or breached a contract in the course of its sales and deliveries into ND (e.g., failing to deliver paid-for goods), Quill could have been sued in a ND state court on the tort or contract claim, so there was sufficient due-process contact with ND.
Nonetheless, the Supreme Court stuck by its guns (and its precedents) and applied the rule of law from the earlier Supreme Court case of Bellas Hess, holding that a state, such as North Dakota, could not impose upon a seller the obligation to collect that state's sales or use taxes unless that particular seller had sufficient physical contacts with the state seeking to enforce that collection obligation.
Thus, as a matter of Constitutional law, you are not "supposed to" pay sales or use tax to a seller (more specifically, the seller is not "supposed to" collect sales or use tax from you, the buyer) on a particular purchase unless the seller in question has the requisite physical contacts with the state that imposes said sales or use tax.
As a result, a reseller who does not have physical contacts with your state is not "getting around" some nebulous "supposed to" obligation to collect sales tax when s/he fails to collect sales or use tax from you, s/he is acting within the letter of the law, federal Constitutional law no less, by not collecting a tax s/he cannot be compelled to collect.
The internet makes this subject even messier because, presumably, many states would (as many have) argue that using the internet, particularly if the seller has the bad luck to have their site hosted by an ISP whose servers happen to be physically located in a state that wants to tax the h**l out of everything (like NY ), constitutes sufficient physical contacts with the taxing state.
That, of course, if allowed to go unchecked, would make a tiny little reseller like xoticpc or powernotebooks, or even the little old grannies who run eBay e-commerce sites on the side, subject to the sales and use tax regimes of every podunk locality that happens to impose a sales or use tax. In many cases, this is less an issue of paying the taxes (easy enough to figure out with computers being what they are these days ) but more an issue of the deluge of paperwork that would literally swamp many of these little sellers. If xoticpc had to fill out and timely file quarterly sales and use tax reports for 3,000 different jurisdictions, it would have no time left over to actually do any business and would quickly go down the
gurgler.
With respect to the big companies, like Dell, HP, and etc..., they usually have sufficient contacts with most of the states into which they sell computers that they satisfy the Quill physical presence test and can therefore legally (i.e., constitutionally) be forced to collect sales and use tax. It's not a question of Dell, HP, etc, voluntarily collecting sales and use tax because they're they good guys (unlike the little guys, like xoticpc, as the post necessarily implies), it's a question of those companies being "supposed to" collect sales and use tax under applicable state, federal, and constitutional law.
For example, here's a simple search from www.yellowpages.com indicating how widespread Dell's operations are (n.b., these are just phone numbers, so some may not correspond to physical addresses; nonetheless, the search demonstates that Dell has specific telephone numbers allocated to it in almost every U.S. state and territory).
By contrast, this search for xoticpc from yellowpages.com turns up only one listing, and that one doesn't even appear to correspond to xoticpc.com since it shows a street address in Skokie, IL.
In short, companies like Dell and HP are "supposed to" collect sales and use taxes, companies like xoticpc and powernotebooks are not supposed to collect sales and use taxes, except with respect to sales that are shipped to their home states of Nebraska and Nevada, respectively.
As for "the government" getting around to correcting the situation - that doesn't even begin to adequately portray the state of affairs. To begin with, Congress, in one of its few rare moments of quasi-sanity, has imposed a moratorium on taxing internet commerce (i.e., states can continue to levy taxes they were levying prior to 1998, when the law was first enacted, but cannot gin up new taxes during the time that the moratorium is in effect). Nonetheless, certain states, e.g., NY, are pushing as hard as they can to find end-runs around the Congressional moratorium (which is valid law because it falls under Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce). To put the rhetoric into proper perspective, the only people trying to "get around" the laws, including the Constitution, regarding who and what can be taxed are the states and their voracious appetites for revenue.
Ultimately, there probably will be some sort of multi-state or federal law that subjects some or all internet sales to sales and use tax; however, that regime will be a far cry from the unrestrained revenue grabs the states are currently trying to get away with, and would, (hopefully - I am ever the optimist, despite blatant fact to the contrary ) subject internet-only sellers to no more than one to three different sales and use tax regimes. Anything else would put them out of business, and would essentially kill the golden goose as internet commerce is one of the growing areas of economic wealth.
Which brings out a final point - namely, the supposed loss of revenues the states are suffering. Undoubtedly, tax-heavy states like NY are losing net revenues because they impose both draconian sales/use taxes as well as draconian income taxes, meaning that well-advised internet e-commerce start-ups will neither subject themselves to NY sales/use tax jurisdiction, nor subject themselves to NY income taxation by setting up in NY.
On the other hand, states such as Nebraska and Nevada, which have typically been snubbed by their richer, holier-than-thou sisters in the East (consider this New Yorker Magazine view of the country), are probably seeing a net gain in revenue because (a) absent the internet, almost no one would have physically travelled to Nebraska from outside Nebraska to buy a laptop, a sale that would have been subject to Nebraska state sales tax, and (b) the additional income earned by a company such as xoticpc.com is subject to Nebraska state income tax, income that would not have been subject to Nebraska income tax without the internet.
So, those who complain too loudly about internet-only sellers "getting around" or evading sales and use tax laws, and about the supposed loss of revenue, are perhaps shedding crocodile tears for the self-inflicted wounds of states like NY, and are ignoring the greater benefits accorded to historically maltreated states such as Nebraska (think of it this way, every dollar that xoticpc is able to bring into Nebraska that would not have been there absent xoticpc's business, potentially means one less dollar in federal farm welfare .... I mean subsidies, well, what exactly is the difference?, many of which go to those poor needy "souls" like Archer Daniels Midland or everyone else who bought themselves a hobby-farm).
In short, there's
- no "supposed to" about paying sales tax; either the law says you must, or it does not;
- little or no "getting around" going on involving sales taxes, other than the greedy attempts by the various states; and
- a lot of less-than-honest rhetoric flying around concerning the effects of the internet sales tax moratorium and its supposed effects on state tax revenues, considered on an overall net basis.
P.S. I'm sorry for the two-volume novel presented here, but taxes are one of my little peccadillos and, as has been well-established on this long-suffering forum, I am a complete motor-mouth.
Student Discount's?
Discussion in 'Sager and Clevo' started by Jaycee8980, Mar 2, 2008.
