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Vendor And Yard Sale Clarification Given During Recent Meeting

By Larry Bemis

Sentinel Editor

The Parke County Commissioners, after halting the sale of Transient Merchant’s Licenses (TML) for the 2020 Covered Bridge Festival to effectively cancel it, requested clarification from legal experts on “yard sales,” “rummage sales” and “garage sales,” as there seems to be much confusion on these issues.

The TML, while authorized by state law, is adopted at the local level by counties, and sometimes municipalities, to regulate who can conduct business in their locale and when and where that can happen. A transient merchant is any retailer who conducts his business at a location other than the primary location of his business enterprise. Retailers are required in Indiana to obtain a Registered Retail Merchant Certificate (RRMC) to conduct retail sales, which assigns them an account number to remit sales tax to the state.

Any retail transaction between a retailer and a purchaser who is not exempt from paying sales tax must include a collection of the 7% Indiana Sales Tax. The RRMC permit includes the location of the business; where a business operates multiple locations, a separate permit is issued for each location. Any retail sales conducted at a location OTHER than that (or those) listed on the merchant’s RRMC permit, makes the retailer a transient merchant and subject to any transient merchant license ordinance that may be in effect at the location where he is setting up to sell.

For the full article, see this week’s edition of the Parke County Sentinel.

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