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Where to buy the new iMac to save on tax?

F

fritzichic

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 20, 2007
8
0
I ordered a new 24" iMac on Amazon and now they have pushed back the delivery date another 2 weeks, yikes! Is there another place that you would recommend to buy that may get the computer here much sooner and still save me the $215 in tax that apple.com wants to charge me?

thanks!

Amy
 
I would imagine any online store that does not have a brick and mortar store in your state would sell it tax free. What about places like Smalldog? I'm not sure where they are based though.
 
If you live close to any sales tax free state, you can always drive there to get your iMac.
 
Mac Connection ships to Canada and I asked them and they id that there will be no sales tax. So will MacConnection be the cheapest way to buy a Mac?
 
No sales tax, but i think you still have to pay for import tax/duty type of thing. You should check with them.
 
Tax Free Macs

Since you don't live in the state of NY, try B&H (www.bhphotovideo.com) or J&R (wwwjr.com) cause they'll both ship to your address tax-free and usually have pretty good deals. B&H always has some different configs (same as the BTO options at the online apple store) so you have more choice.

But the best deal ever is to use an educational discount in one of the tax free states such as New Hampshire or Delaware... Do you know any college student there???
 
I'm not too sure. It varies depending on the product and the country in which it's manufactured (China in this case). Normally, any product that comes in Canada would be charged with GST and PST on top of duty. You can check with Mac Connections and maybe ask them what the final price would be after all the taxes and whatnots.
However, if you have an education discount (or any other type of discount) or know someone who does, then the price would be around the same and it would save you a lot of hassel.
 
fritzichic said:
I ordered a new 24" iMac on Amazon and now they have pushed back the delivery date another 2 weeks, yikes! Is there another place that you would recommend to buy that may get the computer here much sooner and still save me the $215 in tax that apple.com wants to charge me?

thanks!

Amy
Click to expand...

First of all Apple doesn't want to charge you tax, they are required to.
Second, Amazon is probably your best bet.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; en-us) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413 es61)

Hmmmm

i cant get edu discount. I will have to ask a friend if its possible. She is in canada in alberta. So i want to buy a mac. Wat wud be the best way to ahead? Edu disc direct from apple? Or some store in can? Or orderring from the usa? Wat wat wat?
 
fritzichic said:
I ordered a new 24" iMac on Amazon and now they have pushed back the delivery date another 2 weeks, yikes! Is there another place that you would recommend to buy that may get the computer here much sooner and still save me the $215 in tax that apple.com wants to charge me?

thanks!

Amy
Click to expand...

Technically you owe sales tax on anything you purchases, whether the seller collects it or not. The only exception is if the state you live in has a tax-free holiday. There's a line on most state tax returns now that says "Use Tax". This is where you pay sales tax on items that you bought from vendors in other states besides your own.

It's stupid, but true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_tax
 
dingdongbubble said:
Mac Connection ships to Canada and I asked them and they id that there will be no sales tax. So will MacConnection be the cheapest way to buy a Mac?
Click to expand...

Misleading &*^)(ers.

No US tax, sure, but GST, provincial tax and customs brokerage as soon as it hits the border. And because the machine is made in China, there may be duties on it as well since it doesn't fall under NAFTA (there is 3.9% on monitors from China, but I haven't checked Computers)

i cant get edu discount. I will have to ask a friend if its possible. She is in canada in alberta. So i want to buy a mac. Wat wud be the best way to ahead? Edu disc direct from apple? Or some store in can? Or orderring from the usa? Wat wat wat?
Click to expand...

The Apple online store in the USA won't sell it to you. Online merchants in the US might or might not, but you'll still pay Canadian taxes, shipping and clearing, which kills the deal. The Canadian prices have been adjucted for the exchange rate, so it is actually fairly attractive to buy in Canada.

Your best bet though, since you don't qualify for Ed pricing, is the Canadian Refurb store -- as long as you;re happy with last month's machine, you can get some nice discounts.
 
dingdongbubble said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; en-us) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413 es61)

Hmmmm

i cant get edu discount. I will have to ask a friend if its possible. She is in canada in alberta. So i want to buy a mac. Wat wud be the best way to ahead? Edu disc direct from apple? Or some store in can? Or orderring from the usa? Wat wat wat?
Click to expand...

Edu disc direct from Apple will be the cheapest and the easiest. The only way that it'd be cheaper from the USA is if you drive there and buy a computer, and sneak it across the boarder. But if you have Edu disc, it'd only be worth it if you go to a tax free state. So overall, just get if from Apple. And there aren't any stores in Canada that offers you other discounts or is tax free.
 
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