I just placed my PicoCalc order, since it’ll be a nice companion for my uconsole. I noticed that my $75 order turned into $108.50, so I looked deeper. In addition to charging 33% for shipping, it seems I was overcharged for tax.
The image above shows either an 8.5% tax for a $100 order or an 11.33% on the $75 order. Both are incorrect:
According to: Internet Sales (Publication 109) “The current statewide sales and use tax rate is 7.25 percent”
According to: Shipping and Delivery Charges (Publication 100) Applying Sales Tax you may only collect tax on shipping in specific circumstances. Since clockworkpi sells directly to consumers and does not deliver the items in their own vehicles, they list “delivery” and not “shipping and handling” on invoices, they do not include delivery in the item price, and they are not charging more for shipping than the item costs, I believe shipping should be exempt from California tax.
To be clear: I think the device is totally worth the money I paid for it and I’m eager to have it. I just don’t want some records to not match when the tax man cometh. Granted the current US administration seems to want to collect money on everything coming from overseas and they’re firing all the “tax men” anyway, so
I just hope you don’t get in any trouble or have a misconfigured server.
I’m not sure if I got lucky or you got unlucky… I’m in Washington state, and although I don’t have a screenshot from the website when I bought mine, the confirmation email matched what I saw on the website. I wasn’t charged any tax.
Also checked back in my email archives and I wasn’t charged tax for the Gameshell (so very long ago), or the DevTerm. I don’t think I was charged tax on the uConsole either, but I couldn’t find that email. (And I ended up cancelling the order and then buying one from someone selling in the forums here later on, so it ended up being moot.)
That shipping felt kinda steep, but I agree that the price of the rest felt low enough that it all evened out. It also kind of fits with the unusual marketing practices Clockwork has, like with shipping time being business days (so 90 days is many, many months, even at best), and so on. But they make cool stuff with solid hardware.
For that tax, you could almost get a Pico 2W to upgrade your kit. (I already ordered a Pico 2W since BLE and Wifi are things I plan to use. It’s a bit odd they decided to ship it with the Pico H, since it’s only a few dollars more to get the 2W, but whatever…)
Idk, have you ever shipped something overseas? I’ve been charged more than $25 to send a much smaller package to China than the one I expect my PicoCalc to come in.
In the USA, shipping is taxable and I think it sucks.
And the shipping rates are high, try shipping it back to them and see how much it costs. The last time I had to ship something back to China, it was like $80 from the USA.
Shipping is taxed by the state, not the country. In California, sales like this should not tax shipping.
Again: I am less worried about the money (the device is totally worth $108.50 to me) but the numbers are all wrong and with certain very not-nice things happening to importers to the United States, I don’t want anyone to accidentally get in trouble.
