Retail Sales

You owe retail transaction privilege tax if:
You are in the business of selling items to someone who plans to use the items and not rent or resell them. The seller owes the transaction privilege tax to the City of Mesa whether or not the seller added transaction privilege tax to the price of the item sold.

Membership fees of retailers
Membership, admission, or other fees charged by limited access retailers are considered part of taxable retail sales.

Tax rate on retail sales
The City tax rate is 1.75% of the taxable income.  (Note: The Mesa City Tax rate increased to 1.75% effective 07/01/2006)

Collection of tax
You may choose to charge the tax separately on each sale, or include transaction privilege tax in your price. If you over charge any tax to your customers, you must remit the excess tax to the city.

If you include tax in your price, you can use factoring to "back into" the tax included in your gross sales.

Trade-ins
If you take a trade-in for partial payment on an item, you owe transaction privilege tax on the difference between the original selling price and the trade-in amount. Trade-in allowances are not allowed for new manufactured buildings.

Sales to nonprofit organizations
A transaction where the customer is a nonprofit organization is subject to the transaction privilege tax even though the property so acquired may be resold or leased by the nonprofit organization to others. However, sales to a qualifying hospital or health care organization are exempt.

Sales to government jurisdictions
Other than the above sales exemptions to the federal government, all sales to the state, cities, counties, school districts and other political subdivisions are taxable including sales to the City of Mesa.

Retail Exemptions