My head is spinning,but, thank goodness I've never tried to sell anything. Believe it or not, I was pretty good in math in HS, but that was sooooooo long ago. Thanks for spelling it out for those who need to know this stuff.

thanks for commenting m&m. I actually thought I was posting this on the Crafts and Decorations forum because there are sometimes discussions there about selling at fairs.
Kathy

I was too far in when I couldn't post a thread on etsy. so I figured it out and did it and now I can confuse even more people!
Kathy

I never deal with coins at a show either - I'm much too busy. I tried that before and had people standing in line and getting upset about the wait. I've found a much easier way to figure this all out. I just use Excel spreadsheets when I get home from a show, just enter the number of items I sold at, say, $2.00, the number sold at $4.00, etc. etc. and it figures it all out for me. Gotta love computers! Also I can change the tax rate depending on the county - just plug in the correct percentage and away I go.

Using Excel is a good idea. The folks in the post at Etsy didn't want to take the sales tax out of the amount they wanted for themselves for the piece.
Some states require that the buyer know what they are paying for the item(s) and how much the tax is, apparently, so you can't just do it at home after the show. Hopefully I'll never find myself selling in one of them cuz it does sound like a pitb.
Kathy

Luvs if you are multiplying the sales tax times the amount of money you collected you are over paying.
Kathy

That's what I do all the time, too, luvs & crete...I multiply the state tax X's the price I sold the item for...it seems much easier than the formula above...but I see what you are talking about crete. Jeanne S.

Kathy - it doesn't figure on the amt. collected. It goes per item - for a $1.00 item, 6 cents is figured on sales tax (our tax rate is 6.25%), for a $12 item, .75 cents is taken for tax, etc. It then multiplies how many $1.00 items, how many $12.00 items, etc. and figures it all out and gives me a total for tax and a total with tax. So for an experiment just now, I multiplied my total by tax rate and yes, it came out more than $3.00 higher than it should have on the tax. So I know that's not what it's doing. HA I'm not very computer smart, my hubby and son set these spreadsheets up for me.

Just for an example, the one I am looking at is 6.75% tax, my total money collected was $803.00 and the tax amount is $50.82, making my show amount $752.18 that is actually mine. Whereas if it multiplied my total times the tax rate the tax amount would be $54.20

Oh this is all so confusing otherwise, but I see what you're saying if you want to list the tax separately on your bill of sale.

Luvs, I can see they set your spread sheet up right

803 divided by 1.0675 equals 752.22

The 4 cent difference between my number and yours is due to rounding since you do it per item.

Jeanne, if you are saying the state tax is included, just divide the price by the 1.statetax
Or even easier just divide your total for the day that number.

State tax 6.75% Total sales including state tax: $1000.00

Correct way to calculate:
1000 divided by 1.0675 equals 936.77
$936.77 is what YOU get, $63.23 is the tax.

Incorect way $1000 times .0675 (which is 6.75%) equals $67.50 which is the incorrect tax. ($4-5 too high)

I guess if $4 or $5 per thousand doesn't matter. But think of all the junk you can buy for $5! Thee state doesn't care if you overpay, I'm sure.

In this day of calculators I think its as easy to divide your total by 1 plus the sales tax as it is to multiply by the sales tax.

I don't mind paying taxes, but I don't want to pay more than my share!

Kathy