YOGA STUDIO OWNERS AND TEACHERS MEETINGWednesday, November 12th, 1-3pm8 Limbs Capitol HillAnd be sure to read the invite from the DOR for the November 19 meeting (1:30 in Burien).Here's a note from Anne Phyfe, owner 8 Limbs Yoga & Meeting facilitator:"As many of you know, there is currently an issue at the state level regarding whether or not yoga is taxable (sales tax) or not. This spring several yoga studios south of Seattle were audited for 3 years of back sales tax (that had not been collected).
Three Trees Yoga was one of the studios, and the owners fought back and brought this conflict to light to several studio owners in Seattle. She had been told that there were going to be lots of audits as the Department of Revenue (DOR) had decided that yoga is physical fitness, rather than instructional, and therefore subject to sales tax. Suzy Green-Cindrich, one of the Three Trees Yoga owners, has continued to fight on behalf of other studios, teachers, and yoga, to maintain that what we are teaching is instructional and education in its primary intent, although there is a physical fitness component. We owe a lot to Suzy for spending lots of time on this.
It is now time for ALL of us to get involved and help the DOR to understand yoga and why we believe that it should not be defined as physical fitness. The DOR is spending lots of time and resources on understanding and clarifying this, but they have not come up with the right wording to “draw a bright line”. To me, this is not about avoiding the sales tax, but about yoga being classified properly.
This is a story with a long history going back to the Washington Administrative Code (WAC) 458-20-183 (Rule 183) that began the taxing of physical fitness as well as other “recreation” (including tattoos and escort services!). In 2005 an Excise Tax Advisory (ETA) 2023 attempted to further clarify the definition of physical fitness. Please see the info in the Skakeholder’s Meeting Invitation to learn more.
You are invited to join other studio owners and yoga teachers next week for a meeting to clarify the issues and attempt to unify our stance before the stakeholder’s meeting to be held at the DOR on November 19th.If you would like your voice to individually be heard, please contact the DOR with the following:
- why you were confused (if you were) regarding the excise tax
- why you see yoga as different from physical fitness
Please understand the issue before you call to save their time and to keep our message clear. I have had a somewhat mixed message that they both want feedback and info, and have enough. As you all know, it is hard to describe yoga uniformly, and hard to fit it into the definitions that the law requires. Which is why a few of us wanted to get as many studios together as we could to talk about this in advance of the stakeholder’s meeting."
