Who is Submitting & Paying State Sales Tax on the New Online Order Processing Fee?

[briantsiv]

Hi,

I have received my first online order charging the customer the $.99 Online Order Processing Fee.  The State of Utah requires Sales tax to be paid for any fee that is not "optional" for the customer.  Is Toast submitting and paying the sales tax on this fee to the State of Utah?  What are the Laws for other States?  As a business this is required.  For example DoorDash, Uber, GrubHub, etc collect the Utah Sales Tax and send it to my account and I report this sale and therefore submit the required Sales Tax to the State of Utah.  This seems to be a very large liability to Toast POS users. 

-Briant

[Kmainoturner]

Toast informed the Mass Rest Asso that the operators are responsible for collecting and submitting the meals tax.  Toast also informed the MRA that Toast would not be covering the credit card fees associated with collecting this additional meals tax that their fee creates.  Toast has said that credit card fees will not be charged on the .99 cents that they take directly daily from our cc batches, but after a week of our guests being charged, our credit card fees remain unchanged and it is impossible to reconcile the accounting on this fee to toast and its accompanying cc fees.  Also reconciling our bank accounts monthly will now be impossible because the batches will not match what comes over from the Toast to R365.  Toast also clearly stated there will be no compensation to operators for cost of the additional the administrative time this new fee adds to operators.  We also are moving to a different online sales platform ASAP.

[SunnyinAZ]

@Kmainoturner   @briantsiv    @corey_akc    We have a zoom call on Thursday to discuss alternatives given Toast's .99 money grab.  Join us.  Email RestaurantsWorkingTogether@gmail.com to get the Zoom link.

[briantsiv]

To follow up.  I spoke with the Utah State Tax Commission on Friday and they confirmed that Toast is required to report, collect and submit sales tax on this fee as it is a mandatory fee that is not being charge by the restaurant nor is the restaurant responsible for this reporting. Additionally they requested that I submit this to their fraud department so that the the Utah State Tax Commission Auditors can begin an investigation into Toast's sales tax collection violation.  Finally they also asked me to follow up with the Utah Commerce Department as they saw this as another potential avenue for investigation.

Much like many of you I came to Toast from Aloha after hearing so many great things from my R365 users group.  I am no longer in contract with Toast and will begin researching other R365 compatible POS platforms.  They way that Toast has decided to implement this fee shows me that they no longer want to support local, independent restaurants.

[au79teahouse]

Hi @briantsiv, how is Toast responsible for collecting and submitting the sales tax on the $0.99 fee since $0.99 is not taxed? Or it a service fee that should be taxed in Utah?
@Kmainoturnergot a very good point. I have never thought about.

[SunnyinAZ]

Join our zoom call on Thursday to discuss alternatives given Toast's .99 money grab from OUR customers.   Email for a link  RestaurantsWorkingTogether@gmail.com