I was our chairperson this past February so I do know about the sales tax. It is new this year and it is because of a new Illinois State law.
I'm not sure if your bookfair is through Scholastic or not, ours was and they made the whole sales tax thing very easy. Although we were responsible for collecting the tax we did not have to submit it - scholastic took care of that. A parent had said since we were collecting it we had to submit it. Not the case because Scholastic actually owns the books and we were selling on their behalf.
You mentioned that your PTO is tax exempt - as are we. It doesn't matter in this situation because the PTO is not purchasing the books, the parents are.
The only problem we had was when kids brought money to purchase books and did not have enough to cover the sales tax. If it was a large order we simply sent a note home to the parents explaining we needed the additional money for sales tax. Everybody sent the money in with their child(ren) the next day.
To make calculations easy, we created a tax reference table so we knew the tax amount to add. Just make sure you use the correct local tax rate. If you are unsure your bookfair rep will be able to provide you with that info.
Hope all this helps you.
I guess the way I said earlier was a little unclear. We don't charge an additional sales tax at book fair the prices include the sales tax. But when we pay the invoice it lists the amount paid in sales tax. It's the same way with our other fundraiser, the sales tax is included in the price listed in the catalog. On the final invoice we receive from the company it lists the sales tax portion. But we're in Michigan, it might be different here.
I have been chairing our Illinois Scholastic Book Fair for the past 4 years and have never paid or been asked to pay separate sales tax. If I'm not mistaken, the sales tax is incorporated in the Scholastic prices. I do everything from setting up the fair to filing the final paperwork with monies due. I always follow up with the company Sales Rep 2 weeks after pick up and have yet to hear any complaints. I hope this helps! [img]smile.gif[/img]
Maybe this is something I should look into. We have never paid sales tax to vendors and we never charge our parents sales tax (catalog fundraisers, world's fines chocolate, fun services, Affy Tapple co. etc.)
Anyone else out there charging sales tax to parents on the fundraisers? Again, I am in Illinois.
Our librarian runs our book fairs. Until this year the money was run through our PTA account and we would keep track of how much money went in and out of that account. This year we decided to have her run all the money through the school district, that way we didn't have to keep track of what was spent and how much rolled over from year to year. We have always paid sales tax. I don't understand it and it has been explained to me more than once and I still don't understand it exactly. By the way, I don't know exactly what you ment by other fundraisers but we always pay sales tax on our catalog fundraiser as well.
Due to a *%$#$@!! librarian at our school - our PTO has turned the book fair over to her. (long story) A flier has come home today (friday) saying that parents will be charged sales tax on the items purchased due to a new state law. Has anyone out there know about this?
I did just get off the phone with a very helpful (not) customer service rep. all she could say was that the state of Illinois is making them do this. Our PTO is 501(c) tax exempt the whole nine yards - and even though PTO is not handling the fair one would think that a public school would also be exempt. Would it be because parents are buying the books? We do not charge tax on our fundraisers. Although, I think that Market Day does - but they are a company who comes in hand handles the money themselves. I don't know - does anyone?
