State lawmakers have introduced bills to eliminate the policy, and the Retailers Association of Massachusetts is calling for cellphone buyers to be taxed on what they are charged at the register.
“In reality, people get these phones tied into a contract, and that’s the price of the phone,’’ said Bill Rennie, vice president of the retail association. “The easiest thing to do is to treat these transactions like any other item.’’
In Worthington’s case, she was charged the state’s 6.25 percent sales tax on her iPhone’s actual value, $650. “That just drove me absolutely nuts,’’ she said. “If I go in to buy a washing machine that’s on sale, I don’t have to pay sales tax on the full price.’’
The state issued its first policy on taxing cellphone sales in 1993. The thinking then was that since phones were essentially being treated as giveaways by companies to promote lucrative long-term service contracts, they were undertaxed.
Robert Bliss, the Revenue Department’s director of communications, compared a discounted cellphone to a used car that is sold for $1. The buyer, he said, would still have to pay sales tax based on the vehicle’s real value, not the bargain basement price.
State policies vary widely when it comes to cellphone taxes. But only Massachusetts and Rhode Island base cellphone sales tax on the higher price of the phone, not on the lower bundled cost, and tax wireless service throughout the contract, according to an analysis from KSE Partners, a Montpelier consulting firm that specializes in government affairs.
Last spring, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue clarified the cellphone tax rule after it found many wireless phone sellers - from major carriers to small independent stores - were not collecting full-price sales taxes, as required. The state does not calculate how much money it collects through the tax, Bliss said, but he estimated it totals millions of dollars annually.
