Answer Wireless outrageous sales tax Schaumburg Illinois

While I am in agreement with the consumer, it does seem per the Illinois Dept. of Revenue that there is a grey area when it comes to this issue. We are currently in Circuit Court as well as another U.S. Celluar agent fighting this. Unfortunately it may come down to the consumer who really suffers. Other states have already gone this way of taxation. California is one for certain.

I am Director of Sales and Operations for Answer Wireless. We charge sales tax in compliance with Illinois State Law.  Illinois Law requires that we collect sales tax on the full cost of the phone as we purchase it from US Cellular.  US Cellular then provides us with a rebate directly for the activation of that phone to a consumer.  Since this rebate is issued to us as basically a subsidy to get the phone retail price down, it is subject to Illinois State Sales Tax.  We are currently one of very few wireless retail entities that actually does this correctly and most independant wireless agents do not.  US Cellular will most likely not charge this sales tax in one of tehir direct stores because they are buying the equipment from their own internal source at a discount equal to the rebate that we get as an agent.  Although this seems very confusing, we have vetted the process completly with independent tax attorneys, US Cellular and the State.  We strive to provide 100% consumer satisfaction and take statements like this very seriously.  We would never, intentionally or otherwise, attmept to defraud or cheat our customers.  It should also be noted that the US Cellular customer service representative who made the derogatory statement to the consumer was reprimanded and re-trained on the issue.