See what I did there....
This inquiry was received recently.
It's a pretty frequently asked question so I thought I'd take a stab at
it again.
"Do you have any articles that deal with the taxability of janitorial
services for all states?"
Nope, I don't have anything like that and wouldn't publish it anyway. I don't typically write articles with that
level of minute detail. That's what online databases are for. I use Thomson Reuters* as my research tool
(although CCH has the information as well), and I can research janitorial
services for any state in a matter of moments. Well....maybe not "moments" if there are some interesting complications.
Even if you could find such an article somewhere on a free web site, you probably can't count on it unless you're paying for it. Let's say
you find a page where someone has put
together a table about the taxation of janitorial services for every state.
My questions would be:
- How often is it updated?
- Are there citations to specific statutes, regulations and court cases?
- Is the information in the list detailed enough to cover the possible exceptions and gotchas...like the interesting complications I mentioned above?
You're probably going to have to pay for that
kind of reliability.
When we do a state-specific seminar, we re-research the state every
time. We don't just rely on the material we have from the last event. We review our grid on what is taxable or not, change things where necessary, and review any updates to the sales and use
tax laws since the last time we did a seminar for that state. So when we do the seminar, we can feel
comfortable that we're using the latest information.
That's one of the reasons why we don't provide recordings of these
seminars. We don't want people relying on
information that can so easily go out of date.
On the other hand, I frequently find articles written by attorneys and accountants to be useful. They are usually handy for covering a topic that isn't covered as well as I'd like on either the state's web page, or in the databases. But they are detailed, dated and usually well-cited. But I still have my salt-shaker nearby.
*By the way, I'm not
endorsing Thomson Reuters. Inertia keeps me using their service.
Although sometimes I wistfully think it might be more fun with CCH.
The Sales Tax Guy
http://salestaxguy.blogspot.com
See the disclaimer on the right.
Don't forget our upcoming seminars and webinars.
http://www.salestax-usetax.com
and there's more sales tax news and links here http://salestaxnews.blogspot.com
Picture note: the image above is hosted on Flickr. If you'd like to see more, click on the photo.
3 comments:
You can visit some websites who offer tax strategies.
No argument. But that's not the same as getting information on the actual rules - particularly for multiple states. AND, that doesn't mean, by a long shot, that the strategies are correct. Have a large container of salt nearby.
Essentially, I just repeated the last paragraph of the post.
Post a Comment