PRS was gracious enough to host this forum when the plug was pulled on the old Birds and Moons forum. While suppressing sales of used gear is counterproductive to selling new gear because it suppresses used guitar prices, we are PRS’s house. It will interesting to see how suppressed used prices are going to affect new guitar prices. The price of a bog standard CU24 now exceeds what I paid for my MC58 new by a sizable margin and the MC58 is an Artist-grade instrument. A healthy used guitar market props up new guitar sales as the price of a used instrument exceeds 60% of the cost of a new guitar. New guitar sales will be negatively impacted by used guitar sales as long as case queens sell for 50% of new.
That being said, person-to-person sales of used gear have traditionally been sales tax free. I believe that taxing person-to-person sales is unjust as the original purchaser paid sales tax on the item. However, changes in how person-to-person sales occur today coupled with the South Dakota v. Wayfair SCOTUS ruling (I.e., the reason why online sales are now subject to sales tax regardless of whether the seller has a physical presence in a customer’s tax jurisdiction) make it difficult to avoid paying sales tax on a used item.
