This is page 2 of the Washington State Sales and Use Tax Form, page 2 is the same for monthly, quarterly and annual reporting. Since our genealogical societies will be paying Use Tax on Live Presentations, this is how it is calculated. (Note while the Department of Revenue still provides the paper form on their website, they require everyone to file online now. ) The cost of the live presentation goes on line 31 for the state use tax of 6.5%. Line 35 is where you calculate the local use tax if everyone was at that location. I used the rate of 2.6% for the City of Spokane. Notice there are lines for more locations and so if you have people on Zoom at different locations you need to calculate how much of the $900.00 went to each location and then calculate the local tax for each location. Now since the Spokane local rate is second highest in Spokane county doing all of the required calculations will probably save some local use tax. So I did a test calculation to see how much money you might save if all the people on Zoom are in different local tax rates. To make the calculations easier I assumed we had 90 people at the October seminar and that 80 of them were in the room with the speakers (actually the speakers were on Zoom also). So a quick calculation:
80 people at Spokane is $800.00x 2.6% is 20.80
3 people at $10.00 each x 1.6% =0.48
3 people at $10.00 each x 2.4% = 0.72
1 person at $10.00 x 2.7% = 0.27
1 person at $10.00 x 2.5% = 0.25
1 person at $10.00 x .015 = 0.15
1 person at $10.00 x .026 = 0.26
All this work totals up to $22.93 local tax which means doing this much bookkeeping saves 47 Cents! For 20 people on Zoom double the savings to 94 Cents!
And you need the addresses of all the people on Zoom so you can calculate their local rate and keep all these records for at least 6 years. Now do we need to keep addresses of our Zoomers for the government? One option they give in their guidelines is to assume everyone is in the same room with the speakers and pay the use tax on that location, or for us the 2.6% local rate. And for saving of 94 cents this amount of bookkeeping is not worth the extra work.
I went to the Department of Revenues website: https://secure.dor.wa.gov/gteunauth/_/ and it has Business lookup to see if you signed up when you became a non profit, and also a Quick Sign up Wizard for non profits that either did not sign up when they became a non profit or signed up over 5 years ago.
I can see a lot of treasurer’s quitting before they would agree to
doing all that work so the state can get a small amount of money. With all the states firing people, who is going to check to see if
you calculated it right and what would be the fine if you were wrong.
And the collection would be a nightmare
Frank I agree, but our state needs the money. Maybe all the genealogy societies need to find a bookkeeper or accountant that does sales taxes for a living. A retired one might be better, I sure hope the societies do not have to pay to get this done.
Am I correct? – After reading the info on live presentations and the RCW mentioned (82.04.299(1)(f) this is what I get. The new law is intended for organizations, and individuals offering live presentation FOR A FEE. This means the person giving the presentation (the speaker) has to pay a tax. And, similarily the organization that is charging its membership a fee for a conference/seminar has to pay a tax. If the organization has contracted with a speaker to give a presentation but does not charge its members to hear the presentation it is simply an educational session and the organization is not subject to a tax. The speaker is but not the organization.
Please verify that I am correct in my understanding.
Think of a Live presentation as a refrigerator, when you buy the refrigerator you pay the store for the refrigerator and add the sales tax and you get the refrigerator. So if when you pay the presenter you add the sales tax to his or her fee, and the society is done, nothing else is needed on that presentation. Problem is many of our presenters are not in Washington and they do not have to collect and pay Washington Sales Tax to Olympia. So our genealogy societies must pay the sales tax to the state of Washington for out of state presenters, the state calls this Use Tax and it is the exact same rate as Sales Tax. What happens if a volunteer gives a live presentation, like what we did on our summer genealogy trip, and does NOT receive a fee for the presentation? No fee means no sales/use tax.
Does it matter if people coming to the presentation are members, are paying a fee for the seminar, or walk in off the street to see the presentation? No the sales tax is on the refrigerator (Live Presentation), not on who is there to see the presentation.