Back to Business...Amazing Sales, Taxes and Couponing.

I regret that I haven't been able to finish my grandmother's memorial project that I wanted, some technical problems creeped up-but I hope to by week's end. Tomorrow I start a new position as a trainer at work, I'm more nervous than I feel I should be but I just have to remind myself that I always have a hard time with change...it will work out.

Anyway, Having some spare time and a large amount of curiosity, I wanted to know about how Washington taxes apply with coupons. I know some states don't have to pay tax at all if the coupon takes the price down to $0.00. But in Washington we have to pay tax on the pre-coupon amount. I knew from checking out my reciepts that it clearly wasn't off of the pre-coupon amount for both store and manufacturer coupons because I often stack them and it just didn't add up. Here you can find the legal info on the WA government website, but basically it explains that you are taxed on the cost after store coupons but after manufacturer coupons.
Example:
Product on sale for $4.99
Store coupon for $1 off.
Manufactuer coupon for $1 off.
You will be taxed on the $3.99 value.

One last quick mention about Target deals-I am a game a holic and they have some amazing game sales this week (We may have bought some for ourselves and rationalized it by wrapping them up in Christmas paper and labelled them to ourselves from Santa already....).

Example:
Some games such as battleship are on sale for $10 each (Usually over $18).
You get a free Hasbro card game with this purchase (about $6-7 value).
Use a $3 off manufactuer coupon + a $3 off target coupon
Get 2 games ($24.50 value) for $4.

Example:
Some electronic games such as Flash Simon on sale for $15 (Usually over $25)
You get a free Hasbro card game with this purchase (about $6-7 value).
Use a $5 off manufactuer coupon + a $5 off target coupon
Get 2 games ($31.50 value) for $5.

To see the Target ad and check out exactly which games are on sale, go to target.com and see their weekly ad. To print off the store coupons I mentioned, go to their coupon section on the site.

For the manufacturer coupons I mentioned, they were in this last Sunday's paper, or you can print them here.

Happy hunting!