Best Buy & Geek Squad Policies

[coren]

It's come to my attention that best buy is apparently charging tax on gift card purchases when the gift card comes with some other item (example: buy a 360, get a 20 dollar gift card free).  I'm about 99 percent sure that Best Buy will charge sales tax when I use that gift card.  But when the item is rung up, the "free" gift card comes in at whatever denomination it actually is, and the item is discounted that mcuh.  I'm sure that's a policy to prevent return fraud or something like that.  That's fine, I can understand that - but in turn, that means the gift card is being taxed twice because of how the purchase rings up.  Moreover, reward zone points aren't granted for the gift card portion of the purchase (which, while only 20-50 points in many cases, they're still points the customer should get).  This whole process seems a little shady, but maybe I misunderstood, maybe BB is doing it different than how I described.  I'd be curious to see - do states even allow GC purchases to be taxed?

[CrystalWoW Community Veteran]

The gift card is not taxed in that scenario. Yes it removes from how many reward zone points you get.

[Timmy2000]

They won't taxed the gift card you get free with xbox but they have to taxed the system you purchased. And all stores you have to pay the sales tax if you are used gift card to purchased stuff. And you can still get the rz points if you purchased gift cards for someone but you don't get the points if you used them

[coren]

I appreciate you guys' answer, but in these hypothetical situations, the receipt looks like this:

Xbox 360 (250 gig): 250

50 dollar gift card: 50

Subtotal: 300

Total :330 (I used tax of 10 percent cuz that's an easy number).

So yeah, the gift card would be taxed in that situation.  Moreover, they would only give you reward zone points for the 250 for the xbox - not the 50 for the gift card (even though you won't get any reward points for spending that gift card)  I just saw the receipt of someone this happened to.  This is disappointing

[Timmy2000]

How was the xbox total was 250 I thought they were price at 299

[coren]

They are, but that's what the receipt says, that the console was discounted x dollars.  APparently they also do the same for the 3ds.

[CrystalWoW Community Veteran]

In those situations the receipt looks like this:

xbox 350 250
50 gc 50
subtotal 300
total 325

Yes you only get reward zone points on the 250.
I pulled up a receipt where I got a 10 gc card with a game and that is how it looks on mine with different numbers of course.

[coren]

I literally just saw a receipt where someone was charged tax on the whole purchase, not just the discounted part. I think might be different for consoles than it is games or dvds or soemthing then, not sure.  But you should get RZ points on the whole purchase - you don't get them when using the card, but you do when buying them (or so RZ has told me in the past)

[CrystalWoW Community Veteran]

You do get them when buying them but you do NOT get them for the value of a free gift card received as a package, regardless of how it rings up on the receipt.

[Timmy2000]

My parents purchase of iPod for my sister and they were give away free 30 dollar gift card but they did not taxed the gift card only the product itself