Curious Why Money Is Lost On Returns After 90 Days

You probably do it a lot. Return things you decide you don't want. Well if you wait too long to do that, there's a state law you probably don't know about that will cost you money.

Someone with the nickname "Tax Burdened" brought it to our attention by asking on our Curiosity Web site:

"Why does the state keep my tax if I return something after 90 days?"

CUSTOMERS QUESTION SALES TAX LAW

Gayle Edson of Wakefield was rehabbing her back porch and bought a new light fixture. But after letting it sit on the shelf for a while she decided it wasn't right and returned it to the Home Depot in Reading, where she got a surprise.

"At the register I was told they would only refund me the amount of the lamp itself, not the sales tax," she says.

That's because she was making the return more than 90 days after she bought the fixture. The store wasn't cheating her. It was just following state law.

"Why wouldn't they give me the tax money back? I paid it. Who gets it and where does it go?" she wonders.

STATE KEEPS SALES TAX AFTER 90 DAYS

Those are all good questions. Who gets it? The state. Where does it go? To pay for all those state programs. Why won't the stores give the money back?

We went to the state Department of Revenue to find out. Navjeet Bal is the Revenue Commissioner. She says stores can return your sales tax after 90 days, but they'll lose out.

"They can certainly opt to do that, but they wouldn't be entitled to a refund of that amount from us," she says.

So that means the stores would lose that money, so that's not going to happen. It's all because of an older state law that says the Commonwealth gets to keep the sales tax after 90 days.

"It's just an ability to give the state some certainty as to the revenues that have come in," says Commissioner Bal.

The Revenue Department says it doesn't know how much the state profits because of the law.

"I guess I'd rather the state get it than the store," says Gayle Edson.

But even though she only lost a couple of dollars on her return, Gayle would rather she got the money.

"I would be really irritated if I bought a hot tub or some big, expensive item and lost a hundred dollars in tax," she says.

Your best bet is to make the return, with a receipt, before 90 days, then the law works in your favor, and you're guaranteed to get your sales tax back.

You might think a lot of stores won't even take returns after 90 days, so why bother. Well we found a lot of the big ones will. Besides Home Depot, we called Walmart, Lowes, Costco, Target and Sears. They all said they would take a product back after 90 days if you had the receipt.

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