nsomnac

Because the marketing around Playboo as being a "new business to solve the tax problem" doesn't necessarily seem to trigger - hey I'm going to give you a discount if you pay via our preferred financier. The initial email announcement around this just seemed to make it feel like some kind of shell game.

IMO, Now that details are out, the way it is positioned, standing up a whole other line of business/partnership for the sole purpose of providing a credit line in addition to what amounts to a < 10% discount for most purchases seems rather odd. It makes be wonder why they needed to do this since I thought they already had existing in-house financing options. My only guess is Synchrony is offering them a major incentive (more than the roughly 10% sales tax on each order) to change their internal financing option.

Unless a vast number of orders are currently financed, I don't know how Synchrony makes money on this partnership unless there's a disproportionate amount of folks that don't pay off their purchase via this Payboo immediately and incur interest charges - which would reduce the "sales-tax savings" as a reward. If there's already a lot of "financed purchases" - that "sales-tax savings" is just part of the introductory rate on a purchase via Synchrony and just translates into even more shared revenue between B&H and Synchrony.

Why would you think that? That would mean the first buyer would have to be from an tax-exempt state to begin with. Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, or Oregon.

Also that would potentially create problems with Warranties. Equipment purchased from an unauthorized reseller often comes without a valid warranty.

I'd be more inclined to think that they cooked up some solution so it becomes a Product as a Service - since you don't pay taxes on service in most places.