Buying an iPad in the USA

[Paul_Sengupta]

Indeed, but you can buy it from their shop in Lakeland and also not pay the tax if you sign a form to say you're exporting it and show them your passport.

Or that's how it always used to work in the old days.

[mo0g]

When I was trying to source HWMBO's ipad I looked into all this.

Bottom line is that you cannot buy an ipad without paying the sales tax, or reclaim it. They closed the "buy out of state mail order" loophole a couple of years ago, for Apple in any case. I bought myself an ipod touch 2 years ago when in FLA, and ended up buying it from a WalMart (or BestBuy can't remember).

I did buy myself a headset, and had it shipped to NY, minus sales tax, but I don't know if their price was just that bit lower (like the "no VAT" prices we get in duty free shops), or that aviation headsets are treated like work equipment and therefore the sales tax rules are different.

[Rotorboater]

The rule is that if the company has a sales outlet in the state you are buying in then you pay that state tax even if its sent from another state, obviously Apple have an outlet in every state so you can't get away with it but smaller aviation suppliers with only 1 branch don't have to charge state tax if mailed to another state.

The other answer is go to a state with no sales tax as follows:
The front runners are the states with no state or local sales tax, which are Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon. Alaska comes next with an average local sales tax rate of 1.11%. Rounding out the top ten states with the lowest sales taxes are Hawaii (4.35%), Maine (5%), Virginia (5%), Wyoming (5.17%) and South Dakota (5.22%).

[Paul_Sengupta]

Oregon

Calling Skyhawk...

[mo0g]

The rule is that if the company has a sales outlet in the state you are buying in then you pay that state tax even if its sent from another state, obviously Apple have an outlet in every state so you can't get away with it.

Not quite - there were a couple of non-apple mail order stores from which you could do this - buy an ipod/ipad/iphone and have them shipped to NYC (or other states with sales tax). That was because of the rule you mentioned. You cannot do that any more, I just wasnt sure whether it was simply written into the distribution contract by Apple, or it was a federal law which was changed - if the latter, as I bought my headset tax free out of state, they either changed the law by industry or maybe for these general purpose distributors like Walmart and best buy.

Knowing Apple they probably wrote it into the contracts, though I don't really know what they get out of clamping down on it.