[Ansteorra-archery] The arrow tax
Doug Copley
doug.copley at gmail.com
Tue Oct 7 11:17:39 PDT 2008
Wow,I was not aware of any of this!! Thanx for the information and the
background on it.
Vincenti
Eadric Anstapa wrote:
> The federal excise tax on archery equipment has been around for decades
> and I never had a problem with it. It was not just for archery
> equipment but also various other firearms and hunting and fishing
> equipment. The tax was traditionally 12.4%. I have never had a problem
> with it because the funds raised from this tax were relegated
> specifically to wildlife conservation an education efforts and therefore
> sportfishing and hunting type items is what was taxed. For instance any
> bow over 30# had to be taxed. Any bow under 30 pounds and any arrow
> under 18 inches did not have to be taxed (unless the short arrows were
> intended for use in a taxable bow i.e. crossbow bolts) (the tax for bows
> is 11%)
>
> If you manufacture and sell bows or crossbows then you have to collect
> and submit the tax else you are guilty of federal tax evasion. The
> statutes defined "manufacturer" to include any person who produces a
> taxable article from scrap, salvage, or junk material, or from new or
> raw material, by processing, manipulating, or changing the form of an
> article or by combining or assembling two or more articles. The term
> also includes a "producer" and an "importer'.
>
> The problem was that there were a lot of people doing lots of hinky
> things to get around collecting the excise tax.
>
> For instance "arrows" were taxable. Many shafts, fletches, nocks, and
> target style points were not (hunting broadheads were not). So what
> was happening is that people would sell incomplete arrows and therefore
> they would avoid the tax.
>
> Every wonder why if you ordered a set of arrows from some place like Red
> Feather, F/S or other supplier they would ship finished shafts, with
> nocks and fletches installed, shafts cut to your specified length and
> with point tapers on them, but the points would not be installed but
> only included in the box? That was so they could say that they had not
> sold completed "arrows" and therefore would avoid the federal excise tax.
>
> Ever see a bow marked as 30xx# rather than 30#? That was partially so
> they could sell it as a 30# bow (untaxed) even it it actually drew over
> 30#. The same would be true for any bow that was marked as 30-35#.
>
> Arrows spined 30-35# people would often avoid the tax by simply saying
> that they were not necessarily intended for bows over 30#.
>
> They then starting taxing all arrow components such as nocks, points,
> shafts, etc. at 12.4% if they were suitable to be shot from a taxable
> bow. But there were people who had creative ways to get around that.
> the would play with the "suitable to be shot from a taxable bow" part of
> it.
>
> So to get people to pat the tax back in 04 to get people to collect the
> tax for arrows they changed it to a per shaft tax. They started off at
> 39 cents and then crept up. At the time a typical good set of wooden
> shafts cost about $2 a shaft. So the that was a pretty high tax equal
> to about a 20% tax on traditional archers using wooden shafts. But a
> high tech modern carbon fiber shaft might sell for $10 a shaft so a 4%
> tax was hardly noticed and even a typical good quality name brand
> aluminum shaft cost about $5 a shaft so a 8% tax didn't seem onerous.
> remember these costs are collected by the manufacturer, they are an
> excise tax and not a sales tax, and since they are a fixed cost they are
> built into the cost out of the factory and most archers and hunters were
> and still are not even aware that the excise tax was even there.
>
> To be sure the 39 cents per arrow shaft that crept up to 43 cents
> unfairly burdened the traditional archer While the modern compound bow
> shooter using Easton GameGetter shafts, or Gold Tip or Carbon Tech
> hunter shafts hardly noticed the increase.
>
> Once they started taxing the shafts they dropped the tax on individual
> components like fletches, nocks, and points. So while your shafts may
> have had a 43 cent tax on them, you effectively should have seen a
> 12.4% reduction in price on points, nocks, fletches, etc. But I never
> saw any reduction in price on those components and those manufacturers
> just seem to pocket that extra 12.4%.
>
> So the low end domestic manufacturers of wooden shafts for children
> complain that they are driven out of business and that their sales have
> dropped sharply. While they did did carry an unnecessarily high portion
> of the tax burden ins the part of the equation here that is not
> considered is that the availability of inexpensive imported composite
> shafts for the low-end and children's market has increased. A big part
> of the reason why the sale of wooden children's arrows has decreased so
> dramatically is that the more people are instead buying fiberglass and
> carbon for the kids since those shafts stay straight and last forever in
> typical use.
>
> Don't get me wrong. I am happy the tax has been modified so that it is
> no so regressive, doesn't place as much of a burden on the low end, and
> doesn't place more of the burden on the traditional archer. the latest
> revision of that tax code was flawed and they are trying to correct that
> but in general I support the tax because those monies were earmarked to
> go do things rather than simply going into the general fund for congress
> to waste as they see fit.
>
> Regards,
>
> -EA
>
> Ulf Gunnarsson wrote:
>> As a reminder, this list is *not* for the discussion of controversial
>> modern world politics. It's about archery here in Ansteorra.
>>
>> So I won't go into my personal opinions of last week's economic bailout.
>> Catch me sometime off-list; I'll fill your ear.
>>
>> The thing about it that is pertinent to us archers is: 43 cents.
>>
>> Tucked into the new plan was something to fix the problems that hit us
>> in 2004 when a flat 43 cent tax was added to each arrow shaft. It looks
>> like that is getting lifted or set back to a percentage (I haven't found
>> out which yet).
>>
>> http://www.oregonlive.com/money/index.ssf/2008/10/an_oregon_arrow_maker_suffers.html
>>
>>
>> I didn't notice a change yet in Rose City's prices, but this could mean
>> lighter weight arrows are going to be affordable again. Rose City's
>> sales have dropped to a tenth of what they were four years ago.
>>
>> I would be interested in hearing any details of the exact change and
>> when it will take effect. We have several archers who shoot 30# bows or
>> lighter.
>>
>> Various organizations have dropped their archery programs due to the
>> increased prices. Namron has children shooters and I know we are not
>> alone. Now would be a good time, in my opinion, for groups to step in
>> to that gap and pull in those kids that would have been shooting if
>> their scout group still had archery. This isn't about the recruiting
>> potential; it's because we all know the good that learning archery does
>> for children, the focus and safety they learn, the social skills they
>> pick up.
>>
>> Master Ulf Gunnarsson
>> Namron
>> ... trying to set aside that 45# recurve for the 32# longbow ...
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ansteorra-archery mailing list
>> Ansteorra-archery at lists.ansteorra.org
>> http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/ansteorra-archery-ansteorra.org
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ansteorra-archery mailing list
> Ansteorra-archery at lists.ansteorra.org
> http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/ansteorra-archery-ansteorra.org
>
More information about the Ansteorra-archery
mailing list