Have You Noticed Shipping Tax On Your Online Orders?

More than before people are shopping online, but it could cost you.

Like everyone else, I too, am shopping online. Trying to get just basic things like shampoo, paper plates, and batteries. I was shopping online at Target today with a cart full of stuff that cost more than I wanted to spend, as always. But when I look over to the breakdown of the fees I noticed something new: delivery tax.

I was having this package shipped to the 12601 Poughkeepsie area code. I don't know if this is a new thing, a New York thing, or an all-over thing. I just noticed roughly 40 cents of delivery tax was added on to my order. Have you noticed this on any of your online orders for deliveries? This was the first time I had noticed it.

I did some digging to find out more information about delivery tax and what was going on. According to an article written in 2015 and updated in 2017 on Tax Jar, delivery is absolutely taxable. It's not taxable if you are shipping a non-taxable item, like groceries. That didn't quite satisfy my thirst for an answer so I went to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance for more information. Here is a direct quote from the website:

Sales tax is not imposed on transportation services. Therefore, if a delivery service is sold independently from the sale of the taxable property being transported, the charge for the delivery service is not taxable. For the sale of the delivery service to be independent of the sale of the property, the customer must have arranged for the transportation and the customer must be charged for the delivery on a separate invoice.

I don't know about you but I still wasn't totally clear on what that meant. Thankfully, they had an example to clarify what they mean:

A customer purchases taxable products from a seller. The customer separately contracts with a common carrier to transport the products from the seller’s place of business to the customer. The customer receives one bill from the seller for the taxable products and another bill from the common carrier for the delivery service. The bill from the common carrier is not taxable, since the bill is only for transportation.

Have you had a delivery tax on any of your online orders? If so, comment below or on our Facebook and let us know.