In general, California does not collect sales tax on services. Professional services are not subject to sales tax in the State of California. Some products are exempt from sales tax under California law. Examples include most unprepared foods, food stamps, and medical supplies.
Some services also require sales tax to be collected, but it can be complicated. If the service is “inseparable” from the sale of a physical product, that service may also be taxable. Includes services such as configuring, manufacturing, or assembling machines or equipment. If operations are corrective measures to correct a hardware problem, they are repair operations and are considered a service.
A person operates an online service for the purchase and sale of consulting, software and information services. In this scenario, the agreement is only for services and not for services that are part of the sale or lease of tangible personal property. All other services listed that the customer must purchase to purchase the software are services that are part of the sale, the charge of which is subject to tax regardless of whether they are stated separately. Custom software is exempt under section 6010.9 as a service, even when included in the sale of computer equipment without a separate charge detail.
In addition, taxpayer will provide and install software updates as taxpayer releases them for computers covered by a service agreement at no additional cost to customer. A taxpayer operates an interactive online entertainment service that allows subscribers in different geographical locations to use personal computers to communicate with each other. However, charges for services rendered in preparing material for shipment are not taxable pursuant to Regulation 1504 (c). This is because consultation services are a mandatory part of the maintenance contract under which the taxpayer sells tangible personal property, since customers do not have the opportunity to purchase consulting services separately from purchases of upgrades or upgrades.
Taxpayer sells computer hardware and software and charges for related services such as hotline support, miscellaneous supplies, repair parts, employee travel expenses for site preparation, and hardware and software installation. Such a transfer of storage media would be merely incidental to A's provision of the knowledge base development service and not to a sale of tangible personal property. After the first year, when maintenance contracts are optional, taxpayer charges for after-hours support are not taxable if they consist entirely of telephone assistance. Out-of-pocket costs and expenses incurred by the retailer in providing pre-installation support services and installation support services or warranty work are billed separately to the purchaser and include transportation, motel accommodations, meals, telephone charges and mail charges.
However, if the operation involves the development of information or the evaluation of data so that the computer operator is actually creating ideas, information or concepts, then it would be performing a service and would be considered the consumer rather than the retailer of cards or other proprietary materials delivered to the customers. Data entry is considered taxable manufacturing under Regulation 1502 (d) (if such data entry is transferred to the customer in tangible form, such as on storage media) or if the taxpayer performs the data entry on the customer's computer. The law does not specifically mention most services as exempt, but such activities are automatically excluded from the tax base because they fall outside the definition of tangible personal property. .
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