Sales tax charged on service purchases

[ckphoto]

I own a photography business in California and am required to charge sales tax on the sale of tangible property, ie. prints, albums, etc.   However I also teach and offer classes and workshops. These are products and no sales tax is required.  I understand that when I create a Paypal button for my website I can uncheck the sales tax for that button, however, I also offer these classes thru meetup.com and I cannot create buttons for that website. They run all the websites under meetup.com and if a subscriber wants to charge for an event they can choose between PayPal and Amazon payments. So now all the classes and workshops I offer via meetup are being charged sales tax, when they should not. This means I have to go into each transaction and refund them the sales tax amount.

Is there not a more elegant solution to this?  I do not want to change the settings on my account profile, because then there will be no sales tax added to tangible property sales.

[skier]

It's not clear hear as to meetup.com works.   Can you explain this a bit more?   Does meetup.com allow you to use text or hyperlinks?   If yes, then it's possible to use the hyperlink version of the item button code you need and include the "tax" override variable.

Regards,

skier

[ckphoto]

Thanks for your reply skier.  Although Meetup.com allows for a certain amount of interaction from individuals that adds to the individual subscriber website, I cannot add anything to the site that is not set up by meetup.com to accept input. Some of the input options include scheduling events, RSVPs, comments, photo uploads and an automatic link to PayPal for events requiring payment.

As the organizer (subscriber) I have to input my Paypal account info into meetup.com. The person RSVPing to my event is taken to Paypal, the correct payment amount comes up, but then Paypal adds sales tax to the transaction.  I cannot input any coding, such as a button code.

Although I do have a description field for each event, which I have previously used before I became the official subscriber  to indicate my paypal email address, the nice thing about meetup.com right now is that I can require payment when someone RSVPs "yes". That's very important, because I set participation limits on each class.  I don't want a spot taken up by someone who has not paid. You can see my particular site at http://www.meet.up.com/off-camera-flash/

Thanks in advance for any help or insight you can provide. Also if you have any suggestions I can pass on to the support team at meetup.com that would be of help as well.

Christine

[skier]

Meetup.com needs to be aware of the issue.   If they can figure out how to pass the "tax" override variable back to PayPal for you, that would solve the problem.   Seems you can't be the only one who uses this service with the issue.   It's worth at least contacting them.

Regards,

skier

[ckphoto]

Yes, I am sure you are right skier.  I've contacted them before, but will do so again.

Thanks for your help.