New Law Makes West Richland $15k Richer

Did you know? If you go to Spokane and purchase an HDTV, and have it delivered to your home in West Richland, the sales tax you pay goes to West Richland, not to Spokane. How freakin’ cool is that?!? Seems to me that for a smaller city like ours, where retail shopping opportunities are less than plentiful, this law has to be great news for the economy.

In fact, the city finance department tells me that their intake for Q3 2008 from this new law was $15,710. Nice! Here’s how the city finance folks described the law for me:

Under prior law, retail sales tax was collected based on the location from which merchandise is shipped or delivered. On July 1, 2008, Washington retailers delivering goods to customers within the state must start collecting sales tax based on where the customer receives the merchandise-the destination of the sale. This is called “destination sourcing”.

Destination sourcing is a change for businesses that deliver merchandise within the State of Washington. There will be no change to over-the-counter sales where customers take home goods directly from the store location in Washington, and there is no change for sales to out-of-state consumers.

If the business does not deliver goods it will continue to do business as usual. Sales not affected by this change are:

• Wholesale sales
• Most services
• Sales of motor vehicles, trailers, semi-trailers, aircraft, watercraft, modular homes, and manufactured and mobile homes

Very interesting info, if you ask me!

Thank you for reading this article on the West Richland Real Estate Blog. If you arrived here looking for specific real estate information, or would like to speak with a friendly, fun, professional, and low-pressure real estate agent, please contact Cari via her web site or call her directly at 509 – 430 – 5342 and she’ll be glad to help. Thanks again for visiting!