Beyond a label, wouldn’t you need a license to ship alcohol, though?
Tax question - so after the recent supreme Court ruling that now makes it so retailers charge tax in their own state (eg ny retailers charge ny sales tax even if shipping out of state) does that mean if you buy in a state with no sales tax you are in the clear in your own state? Or does the new paradigm only apply when you purchase in a state with a nonzero sales tax?
If you can pick it up in Delaware, don’t ask, don’t tell seems like a reasonable policy. Pennsylvania wine buyers have been doing this for years.
Glenn honestly I have no idea. HDH customer support said that it would be perfectly ok because you would be shipping your alcohol to yourself
I’m afraid not. You are supposed to pay use tax in your own state, which you yourself are responsible for remitting (as opposed to the merchant, which would be sales tax)
My last few buys from HDH auctions, I provided my own shipping label as it was much cheaper than what HDH was proposing. I had to pay IL taxes to do so. Label forwarded and the HDH did the rest. Very easy.
BTW, I was also charged/paid CO taxes on the purchase, so I was basically double taxed. If shipping out of Delaware lowers or even takes that tax away with my shipping label, I am for it.
You shouldn’t be double taxed ever. The state owes you a refund. Unfortunately, your case isn’t big enough for my firm to take on
I’ve always been told by FedEx and once by the USPS that it is illegal for individuals, without the licenses available to retailers, to ship alcohol even to themselves. You can of course risk it and go ahead ship it anyway and declare it as olive oil, but there’s a real risk of seizure. Likewise if illegal, you cannot insure it against breakage, theft, or loss.
According to the conditions of sale, the warehouse is at 250 Centerpoint Blvd, New Castle DE.
To be fair I only paid IL taxes on the shipping part, not the whole purchase. I also had to make the label a signed for alcohol delivery like from a winery, maybe since they hold the license it makes it legal to ship? No idea.
As part of the move, is HDH offering to coordinate with a third party shipper for its customers, like many west coast retailers have done in recent years?
Failing that, until the legality of shipping to one’s self is clarified, I’d never buy from an outfit that requires self-shipping via a common carrier like FedEx or UPS.
Looks like I’m going to hit up Longwood Gardens, Panzer, and HDH soon.
HDH directed me to a list of wine movers, including one based in Portland (as am I). I spoke with them, it sounds like they’ll be palletizing auction winnings for clients in Oregon as well as elsewhere in the NW and bringing them out following each auction. In that I’m local, I’ll then just pick up the cases in town, vs my understanding is they’d then ship from Portland to other folks as directed.
In previous auctions HDH has consolidated shipments to Portland Wine Storage (same outfit as doing the above shipping) and then I’ve picked up there… though this has never gone smoothly and I’m still waiting on auction/retail purchases going back into October as of the moment. We shall see, but it sounds like this new approach will be more smooth for me personally.
As far as I can tell, all the boilerplate on the auction website still refers to the auction occuring in IL, with shipping issues related not to DE but IL, still. Might be helpful for them to update that, unless there’s info I’m just not seeing there.
How does shipping from IL vs Del differ. Il. is very restrictive.
That’s what I figured. Though of course the weird part, I think, is that if you buy something in a non-zero-but-low sales tax state, you are set. Unless is the use tax like state income taxes where you still are supposed to pay the excess?
As a resident of WA state, I have been told that, without a liquor license, I would not be able to ship wine into or out of the state of WA, and would not be able to order a preprinted shipping label for such a shipment. When I have sent wines off to auction or consignment, I have had to have the company generate the shipping label and schedule pickup. If you do generate a shipping label claiming the contents to be olive oil, for example, I have had UPS return the package to me undelivered in years past. And of course insuring such a shipment would also be problematic. So, I would assume that unless HDH is referring customers to shipping companies willing to ship their auction winnings from Delaware to various states, customers may find that the process is more difficult than they imagined.
You know honestly this is pretty idiotic. Why do we have to put up with all this neurotic behavior around pleasurable substances? No wonder there is a black market for pot that is still thriving. Can’t we all just grow up about this and just let the free market do it’s thing? I can walk into my local Wegmans and buy Krug 164 next to my fresh salmon but to order the product from someone else we have to abide by the repeal of a law that was senseless and did not work 100 years ago. All to protect the business models of who exactly? Big distributors and liquor companies are making TONS of money on the newest seltzer/craft beer takeovers/bourbon etc. Why does anyone care about a small sliver of auctions sales to a few collectors who are passionate about a product that just happens to contain a bit of alcohol, that is totally legal to purchase in the state where you are
Our priorities are so out of whack sometimes in the US that I am ashamed to criticize other countries for buying stuff like rhino horns because they are delusional about enhancing sexual potency. Reminds me of the controls on regulation of fine cigars. The next demons will be the vaping industry. You know maybe if we all collectively spent more time raising our children well, spent time with them and taught them values, loved them a little more than ourselves then we wouldn’t need layers and layers of expensive government bureaucrats to protect them from the evils of life.
Rant over, I feel much better now… ![[swearing.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/8a0d3f3461d40641d294442fc2be78039bf94d19.gif "[swearing.gif]"){kind=small}
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Very well said Dennis.
Unfortunately … 
You are supposed to pay the difference.
I am not surprised by HDH’s “auction company” move to Delaware, being from Delaware and aware of the incredibly low tax on alcohol that is levied on the front end upon the importers or wholesalers who bring wine into the state. Based upon an email that Domaine sent out last week its apparent that professional wine storage companies that also perform shipping for their customers, will provide the pick up, storage, and eventual shipping of the purchased wines. Or, the customer periodically visits the wine storage facility with their SUV and loads up and drives home. If one crunches the numbers, the cost of having a storage locker or bulk storage with a company and then the eventual shipping costs, could end up being lower when factoring in the sales tax savings. Granted, there are use tax issues, legality of shipping wine into certain states, etc. However, theoretically…no sales tax lowers the cost to the bidder, which means, the bidder can up their bids, which translates into a higher bid and more “potential” profit to the wine auction house. (I expect that a fine wine storage company will soon “spring up” in Delaware and begin operations. There is a huge surplus of low per square footage priced warehouse facilities in Delaware in close proximity to HDH’s pick up location, that could rapidly be converted to refrigerated fine wine storage.)