Answer Wireless outrageous sales tax Schaumburg Illinois
I purchased a phone from a franchise store of US Cellular, Answer Wireless. the phone I chose was 39.99 and an adapter ($9.99) both at this store and the corporate store in the same city and county. This franchise store, Answer Wireless, charged me $40.69 in sales tax! When I question this 100% sales tax the sales agent told me that I was required to pay the sales tax on the actual retail price of the phone which was $357.00 while the corporate store would only charge me 10% sales tax on the $39.99.
I complained to US Cellular about this and they said that it was unfair to their customers to pay this outragous tax and they credited my accout for the differance in the taxes!
Abra
hanover park, Illinois
U.S.A.
2 Updates & Rebuttals
salestaxnightmare
streamwood,Illinois,
United States of America
Sales Tax
#3General Comment
Wed, November 10, 2010
While I am in agreement with the consumer, it does seem per the Illinois Dept. of Revenue that there is a grey area when it comes to this issue. We are currently in Circuit Court as well as another U.S. Celluar agent fighting this. Unfortunately it may come down to the consumer who really suffers. Other states have already gone this way of taxation. California is one for certain.
Rickturco
Richmond,Illinois,
USA
The actual facts on Illinois State Sales Tax on Cellular purchases
#3UPDATE Employee
Mon, February 15, 2010
I am Director of Sales and Operations for Answer Wireless. We charge sales tax in compliance with Illinois State Law. Illinois Law requires that we collect sales tax on the full cost of the phone as we purchase it from US Cellular. US Cellular then provides us with a rebate directly for the activation of that phone to a consumer. Since this rebate is issued to us as basically a subsidy to get the phone retail price down, it is subject to Illinois State Sales Tax. We are currently one of very few wireless retail entities that actually does this correctly and most independant wireless agents do not. US Cellular will most likely not charge this sales tax in one of tehir direct stores because they are buying the equipment from their own internal source at a discount equal to the rebate that we get as an agent. Although this seems very confusing, we have vetted the process completly with independent tax attorneys, US Cellular and the State. We strive to provide 100% consumer satisfaction and take statements like this very seriously. We would never, intentionally or otherwise, attmept to defraud or cheat our customers. It should also be noted that the US Cellular customer service representative who made the derogatory statement to the consumer was reprimanded and re-trained on the issue.