On March 8, 2019, the West Virginia Legislature passed House Bill 2813 which requires all marketplace facilitators to start collecting up to a 7% sales tax on all products. Earlier in the year, the West Virginia Baptist Convention had agreed to a contract with Eventbrite to manage all of their online event registrations. After receiving notification of the new bill by Eventbrite, we were then informed that, as of September 3, 2019, they would start collecting sales tax on all of our events. We then began reviewing whether or not we would also have to start charging sales tax on all of our mail-in registrations.
After extensive research and many lengthy discussions with CPAs, lawyers, and other tax professionals, we have been advised of the following:
- If you register via mail-in registration under the umbrella of your church, you DO NOT have to pay sales tax. However, your church must annually submit their tax-exempt form to the WVBC office in order to be exempt from this tax.
- If you register via mail-in registration as an individual, you DO have to pay sales tax, since individuals are not exempt.
- If you register online, you DO have to pay sales tax. Currently Eventbrite does not have any way of checking whether or not you have tax-exempt status and, therefore, are required to charge sales tax on all events.
On January 4th, the WVBC trustees voted to adopt the above understanding of the new tax law unless otherwise notified. In most cases, the tax amount is very minimal but is required to be collected.
