Is there sales tax on inground pools?

In Ohio there is no sales tax on the installation of a fiberglass pool. At least there shouldn't be. In Ohio the builder should be paying sales / use tax on everything that is purchased and used on the installation when the items are purchased for your project.

The same rules exist with building and remodeling real property. The concrete and lumber is sales taxed when it is bought from the suppliers. The home builder pays tax to Home Depot or Lowes etc. There is no sales tax on the final sales price of the home as the sales / value / use tax has already been paid throughout construction.

There are pool builders that DO CHARGE sales tax. They purchase the pool, pumps, gravel, concrete, etc as a tax exempt transaction for resale. They then charge the client sales tax on the ENTIRE sale price including the labor and installers profit.

THIS IS FOOLISH. By calculating it this way the State of Ohio is paid sales 7.5% tax on say $100,000 instead of JUST the material costs of say, 60k. At the end the consumer pays $7500 of sales tax instead of $4200 or $3,300 more! Why? Foolish pool installers with foolish or no accountants at all. By the way, we are assuming that the 'sales tax' being collected by these installers is actually making it to the State of Ohio.

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