Two years ago, I had to get a PA sales tax license just to sell my book at an event that was a one-shot thing. This is not the first time I had to get a license. Years ago I got one to sell a product for a business enterprise that my uncle and I operated through mail order that included Pa sales.
Both of these examples are of ongoing for-profit business activities and require the sales tax license because you were selling to the public. York is a private event, and in the member halls the dealing is member-to-member (all private transactions), not dealer-to-member like in the dealer halls (and all the dealers in the dealer halls are required to collect sales tax and have the appropriate tax license). The point is that members in the member halls are not engaging strictly in business activity - it is as much social activity as anything else, and this is why the tax arrangement with the state is what it is now. I, like all of the other member table-holders I know, do not want to give the state reason to revisit the arrangement that the TCA has with them with regards to this meet. If I had to have a tax license, I would not bother getting a table at all, and I would bet money that the majority of member table-holders feel the same way, and I am not a betting man.
Andy
Of course, my selling a book was for profit and for that reason I had to get a sales tax license. But that statement was only offered to demonstrate that it was no big deal to get a license nor onerous to file a return. Would it have been nice to sell the book without having to do so at some "member only" event? Absolutely, but I was not in that position. But that did not discourage me from going to the event and selling the books under those circumstances.
Andy, your explanation is correct as to why member to member sales may be exempt. That benefits those members who sell and those who buy at York. But the issue is not the protection of the existing situation to benefit members, either sellers or buyers. The issue is whether opening-up the event to the general public might increase interest in trains and help augment membership in the TCA. Like I said before, if the price for long term survival of the hobby in opening up the event to the general public is the imposition of sales tax, then that may be what is required. The issue of sales tax will be moot if dwindling membership causes the event to be cancelled for lack of interest. No one wins in that situation, neither we buyers nor the sellers. We have to find ways of keeping this thing alive if we really believe in the future of this hobby rather than our selfish interest for our own limited lifetime involvement.
