Wed 9 Jan 2008
You might recall my previous post about Dick’s Shenanigans where they gave me grief about returning a Maglite which cost about $13. I had used a $10 gift certificate, but they didn’t want to credit me with that $10 upon return. The receipt looks approximately normal.
Today’s post is related, but different. Yes, Virginia, they’ve found another way to get my attention.
Last night I went to Borders and used a $10 gift certificate (thanks, Mike Moutray!) to buy a $10 book. Here’s my receipt. Everything looks normal.
When you look closely at the receipts, though, you will notice a difference. The Dick’s Maglight, worth $12.99, cost $0.24 cents in tax. The Borders’ book, worth $9.99, cost $0.77 in tax. Dick’s based the tax on the post-gift certificate price. Borders based the tax on the pre-gift certificate price.
OK… Dick’s managed to save me $0.53 cents by doing what they did. But, I’m pretty sure that the state of Illinois, Champaign county, and the city of Champaign wouldn’t be happy to learn that they didn’t get any tax on that $10. If Dick’s is doing this for all of their gift certificates, they are robbing the government from a lot of revenue.
Just some food for thought…
