lagasse@biomed.UUCP (Robert C. Lagasse) (09/04/85)
Here's the story: I went to a big name muffler shop the other day and was quoted a price of about 150.00 for a new muffler set-up installed on my truck. I said O.K. , do the job! The job was done nicely and when I went to pay the bill I looked at the itemized list of PARTS which added up to say $ 150.00 and looked on the line for LABOR which nothing was written. The tax on the PARTS was $7.50 (Massachusetts 5% sales tax). The bottom line was for $157.50 . I said to the cashier "where is the labor charge?" and he said "we just charge for parts, labor is free". To which I replied " how can labor be free , ? you are paying your employees a wage for work and you are obviously charging me tax on not only parts, but labor. Your parts prices are super inflated to hide a labor charge and then you charge tax on these "parts" prices" My question is , can they practice this legally? I'm pretty sure that they do not give the full amount of tax charged to the government, but instead pocket this extra fee. Is a tax on labor in Mass. legal??? By the was the muffler chain's name starts with an M and uses a king or something as part of their logo. "Sounds to me like they're a bunch of Bottom-Feeding Sea Crustaceans...........or Filter-Feeders anyway" Bob Lagasse
mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks) (09/08/85)
Bob Lagasse had a muffler installed for $150 parts, $0 labor; tax was charged
on the total, though in his state there would not be tax on labor. He
explains on a couple of counts why he calls it a rip-off.
You had to pay more tax than if they had divided it, and I won't try to
tell you not to be p.o.'d about that. But I don't see the rip off angle.
What makes you say they must be pocketing it? They would have to keep
another set of books, showing that you paid less in parts so they could
pass on smaller tax. That sound pretty elaborate offhand.
Personally, I like the idea of buying something `installed' -- price
includes installation. At least for a standard job that they do all
the time, this makes a lot of sense. And it can work to the consumer's
advantage. If the worker happens to be slow or confused that day, or
if some bracket is bent, etc etc, should you have to pay an extra hour's
worth of labor? I think you save money this way ultimately; but even if
that's not so, at least it has the advantage of letting you know in
advance just what the price will be. No ugly surprises.
A system that you can also see around has features that we both might like.
This is the idea of standard labor charges, or standard times, for certain
jobs. Then you have protection from surprise labor charges, but still
get the breakdown.
--
-- Mitch Marks @ UChicago
...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar