Re: installathon update

["David O. Torrey, Jr." <tj@xxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004, Andy Zobro wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-10-13 at 12:17, David O. Torrey, Jr. wrote:
> > Technically, if a purchase is made on behalf of the university with
> > the expectation of reimbursement, you shouldn't pay sales tax.  There
> > are cards that we use with the university's tax-exempt number on them.
> > How the actual transaction is handled depends on the vendor and their
> > bookkeeping system.
>
> If the lug wasn't given a card then we have no proof.  And thus we'd
> have had to pay tax.
>

Correct.  But to play devil's advocate for a minute...  if the
university's policy is to not reimburse for sales tax, it really doesn't
matter whether or not you had proof at the time of purchase.  If you
didn't, you ought to postpone the purchase until you had the necessary
documentation.  If you decide to go ahead anyway and pay the sales tax,
that's your choice and you don't have grounds for reimbursement.

The real argument I think you want to make is that you didn't know you
shouldn't pay the tax, and not that you had no choice.

See what USG says... I would expect the reimbursement process to be a
little different for students than for employees -- it isn't necessarily
true that most students are familiar with what is normally an
employment-related policy.

Thanks,
Dave

+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| David Torrey                     Sr. System Administrator/Programmer   |
| tj@xxxxxxx                       East Engineering Computing Network    |
| (906) 487-1405 voice             Michigan Technological University     |
| (906) 487-1620 fax                  Houghton, MI 49931                 |
| http://www.cee.mtu.edu/~tj/                                            |
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