How can a business charge tax when I use my credit card but not whenwhen I pay cash in NYS is this legal?

Question

I went to the car wash near my house and the sign on the box says that they are required to charge tax on a purchase using a credit card but not on the cash purchases- I think they are driving up the cost to cover the cost of someone using the credit card- I've never heard of such a thing

Answer 1

I suspect they have adopted the rule (not a generally accept accounting principal) that sales paid for in cash go directly into the owner's pocket and do not have to go on the books but sales by credit card do.

Answer 2

No, this is not legal. They are required to charge sales tax on all the purchases, but they illegally omit the cash sales from the information that they provide to the government and illegally tell the government that the credit card sales were the only sales. They have to charge sales tax on the credit card sales because those are too hard to hide and they cannot avoid obeying the law with respect to those sales. They cannot illegally fail to charge sales tax on the cash sales because those sales are easy to hide from the government.

Answer 3

No, if they're saying it's tax, that's not legal. An item or service in a given state is either taxable or not, it doesn't matter how you pay.