Digital Goods are non-taxable in my state, but iTunes collected anyway...

Gee, thanks. Could you be less helpful?

We really need a non-helpful button here - I'd like to penalize people who only answer just to get a higher post count.

I didn't ask whether Apple's legal department was huge and infallible, I asked how to get my 6% non-sales tax back when the law as described by more than one tax authority site online currently claims it's not legal for Apple to take it for my State.

I'm assuming it was taken by mistake and am giving Apple the benefit of the doubt. Telling me that I'm wrong would've answered the question, if you can back it up with a reference that proves that Digital Goods are, as of August 25th, 2010, currently taxable in Pennsylvania.

In fact, anything confirming or denying whether Digital Goods are taxable in Pennsylvania would be relevant to this question. Pointing out how large and smart their lawyers are, does nothing towards this confirmation. Ask yourself whether Microsoft's equally sizable and astute legal department ever did anything illegal, knowingly or unknowingly.

If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong, and I'll walk away having paid the 6% already. But if I'm right, I want to know how to get it back, and how to stop it from happening in the future. If you don't have anything relevant to say regarding the question asked, kindly go elsewhere. You're not needed here.

I understand the helpful concept quite well, thank you. I ALSO understand that a snarky response talking down to me is very UNhelpful and does not deserve to be marked as helpful. I think it would be nice to be able to punish responses such as this in such a way that it hurts the poster's rating - maybe they won't be inclined to make such unhelpful answers in the future.

That said, they eventually did post a helpful response, among others. From what I've found so far, PA (supposedly) has a distinction between purchases of a physical item (games/music with disc) and purchases that do not have a physical item (ie: digital, no media), where only the physical items can be taxed if the store has a physical presence in the state. I don't remember where I saw that, though, so I will probably have to check with my state.

You weren't the one I was talking about. That honor belongs to the first person who replied to this topic, and as I mentioned previously, that person proceeded to actually make a potentially useful comment after being called on it.

As for my not understanding physical presence meant sales tax: I was (and still am) aware of that concept, however, it was also my understanding after researching the issue that these laws only covered physical items, such as discs containing programs and/or music. Non-physical items (meant by the phrase "digital goods") require changes in the law to allow them to be taxed. Several states in the US have made that leap already and have explicitly made digital goods (ie: non-physical items) taxable under these laws, but as far as I've been able to find Pennsylvania is not one of them, nor does it seem inclined to do so. Yet.

Obviously we are understanding two different things. If my understanding on this is incorrect, then please feel free to point out to me where I can confirm the correct information.