David Marcucci's Doorstep

Here is a little gem from the Massachusetts tax code…

Yesterday I had to buy a new battery for my motorcycle. It’s been a while since I’ve had to buy an automotive battery in Massachusetts. Last time I bought a battery was in New Hampshire for my boat which is legally registered in that state. (I want to disclose this before the Massachusetts Department of Revenue sees this post and comes looking for more money.) Before that was likely when I was in my teens and bought one with a friend or for my old Z28.

I remember paying a “fee” even back then when I didn’t bring in the old battery. I always just assumed this was something the store did and never looked into this “fee” in my youth.  Now, older and more crotchety about the state taking my money, I looked up the “details” around this “fee”.  The summary is below but if you’re looking for the best part scroll down to the bottom.

Summary: The core fee is a sum of money charged on parts that have a “core” that could be reused. It is charged to the manufacturer who passes it along to the distributor who then charges the consumer.  If the consumer provides a “core” to return, in theory to the distributor who passes it back to the manufacturer, then the fee is returned. The fee was put in place to encourage reuse of parts rather then disposal, like a deposit.

Here is the tax code gem. The “core” that you purchase in the part you are buying, in my case a battery core, is taxable so you are charged tax on the battery and tax on the core at our newish 6.25% tax rate.  Some places charge $25.00 for the core fee so that would be just over a $1.50, mine wasn’t that much.  Now when you return the old “core” you can get your core fee back but guess what you don’t get back, the tax. It appears the purchase of the core is a taxable transaction but the return of the core is not a “return”, where you would get the tax back, but a “trade”.  So imagine how many of these transactions happen per day in Massachusetts, and it’s not just batteries.  Anything with a reusable part will have a core fee (and it appears some that don’t if you search the web).  That 6.25% really adds up.

I’m going to see if I can “return” my purchase for a full refund then re-purchase with the core return on the same transaction so I bypass the core fee altogether. I guess I should be happy they don’t tax my core fee when I purchase and return the old core¹.  After all they taxed that money twice already, if you add when I earned it, so is taxing it 3 times really that unbelievable?

¹ This was a sarcastic statement, sometimes it hard to express emotion in text. If you agree with it you may not want to keep reading my stuff. Beacon Hill is a bloated bunch of crooks who steal our money via taxes then give it away to people who keep them in power. There are a few good ones down there but on the whole we could easily do without them.