If you are going through the motions of hiring the various wedding vendors needed to pull off the perfect wedding day, there is one thing that you might notice and that’s taxes.

Some vendors will put a tax charge on the amount you hire them for and others do not, so what gives?

Why is this the case and should wedding vendors be charging us tax to begin with?

Today, we’ll give you a little bit of insight on just that! Just a reminder that were not tax professionals and we’re basing information off of the VA commonwealth laws.

It’s a Virginia Thing

Simply put, taxes are a Virginia thing, in fact, different parts of the commonwealth have different tax rates.

The state sales tax rate in Virginia is 4.300%. With local taxes, the total sales tax rate is between 5.300% and 7.000%.

With that being said, taxes are also based on certain goods, tangible ones at that. That means if you hire a company for a product, say catering, your florist, or your venue, for example, they are legally supposed to tax you on the amount you hired them for and the location.

If you purchase a service, a wedding photographer that doesn’t give physical images, a videographer that offers services with no physical media that’s charged, a wedding DJ or officiant are not taxable under the current tax structure.

Where Things Get Tricky

Where things get confusing however is that state law gets a bit muddy when it comes to services that provide something tangible.

Take us for example, we give you a USB keepsake as a FREE gift, however, if we charged you for it, we’d have to tax you on the USB.

Wedding photographers can get even trickier, if they provide albums or physical prints, then they charge you state sales tax, however, if they provide those same images digitally or for FREE, then they don’t. The key is FREE here.

There are some exemptions in this too, take your wedding dress alterations, that’s not taxable, however, your wedding dress is taxable.

Just know that some things you get for the wedding are taxable and some are not.

List of Vendors and Tax

We’ll try to break down vendors types and if they should be charging you tax.

Wedding Venue
- Yes, Both P. D. 89-167 and Tax Bulletin 92-10 state that the total charge for catering an event is taxable. The rental of a banquet room in connection with a catered event is also subject to sales and use tax because it is part of the Taxpayer's total charge for catering services. The banquet room rental charges will remain in the audit.
Wedding Photographers and Videographers
- It depends according to the commonwealth. If they are providing a service without a tangible product, such as a digital download of wedding images or video, then no, they shouldn’t be charging tax.
- If they will be providing you a physical item, a USB, a photo album, DVD, or Blu-ray (which 99% no longer do), then they should be charging tax, but just on the media, not the services.
Wedding Catering
- Wedding catering, according to Title 23 VAC 10-21 0-930(F) is a bit of a mixed bag as well. Services and labor for preparing food, serving the food, setting up the site, and cleaning are all services contracted for by the client and are taxable because they are provided in connection with the sale of tangible personal property. Thus, sales tax is charged on the total charge for catering an event.
Banquet Halls and Tent Rentals
- The rental of a banquet room in connection with a catered event is also subject to sales and use tax because it is part of the Taxpayer's total charge for catering services.
- Tent Rentals are also taxable under commonwealth law.