Lowes and the Amish cabinet company are correct. The local shop in incorrect. If you buy the cabinets and installation both from the same company, you should not be charged sales tax. This is because the cabinet is being "installed" in your home (which is "real property"). If you buy the cabinets and install them yourself or have a contractor install them under a separate agreement, you should be charged tax on the cabinets because you are buying them as "tangible personal property". When the contractor installs the cabinets, they become part of the real property. The labor charged by the contractor to install the cabinets would not have sales tax charged.

My house is taxed at 5.3% of the assessed value, which is 35% of the estimated market value. The market value is about 183k which is probably pretty close, within 5k or so. So about 1.9-2.0% of market value. About 60% of the tax is for school; another 10% is specifically for mental illness, mental retardation & developmentally disabled services; another 5.6% for children's services; 1.6% for parks & zoo; 1% for seniors; 5.3% for libraries; & the rest is divided between city, township, & county. Property tax consumes a full 10% of my take-home pay. The fairly quiet (except for the freight trains and jets), clean, conveniently located neighborhood is worth it. I also pay city (2%) and state income tax, and 6.5% sales tax. I really don't remember which tax the trash collection, street maintenance, police & fire etc derive from, but the city provides all. Water is billed separately. Services are really quite good, but streets have deteriorated a bit the past 2 years as the city has had to rip out existing sidewalk curb cuts at all intersections and redo them--someone sued on account of the ADA, said they were too steep, and must have at all intersections. So now we have very gentle wheelchair slopes at intersections without sidewalks, and at the bottoms of steep hills (some of those zigzag to produce the correct grade, and consumed large chunks of front yard), and on residential streets that have steep driveway cuts every 30 feet---and potholes in the streets. They tell us they will likely have to ask for more tax for the schools. Otherwise they might have to lay off the weight room attendents and ask the various coaches to teach a class or two. Or drop the yearbook class for an english credit where your grade depends on your writing skill, rather than on how many ads you sell--

Some places use actual sale prices as the tax valuation, others use an average of sale prices in defined (at least at the tax office) adjusted for amenities (bedrooms, bathrooms, lot area, age of the structure, phase of the moon, whatever method they are allowed to use. Virginia generally requires averaging spread over some method (that the tax office does not want to discuss) but other places use sale prices. One thing that is common in areas that use 'market value' is that they often hold the valuation low enough to avoid a lot of appeals. I have never had a property (VA, NH, and other places) I would sell for the tax appraisal. It makes it hard to argue your valuation is high.

((((HUGS)))) Unfortunately, even on "nice" boards, there are times when claws, or just schadenfreude, come out. :( It's very sad, and I'm so sorry you've felt people being mean to you. I know it doesn't help at all to think "it's about them" when you were looking for a "safe" (or as safe as a public forum can be) place to discuss a delicate subject. ((((HUGS)))) States complain about lost revenue from sales taxes not being recouped, but they don't complain about the amount of commerce in general, even if it's the gas spent by the delivery trucks. When they start discussing this on the Federal level (interstate commerce), and start thinking about levying tax on internet purchase (other than the instate tax that people are used to paying), there's such an uproar, and the constituencies, both sellers and buyers, are so upset, that they drop it. The world is changing, and it's taking some time for people and modalities to catch up. Sometimes it's easier to buy a roll of masking tape online than have to hike around a big box store looking for it. People don't do that to avoid the tax! Still, sales tax is regressive. People with the least money spend the largest portion of their incomes on sales tax. They order out of state, take trips into bordering states that have no sales tax, into bordering countries where they have no tax or give it back, etc., etc. Sales tax is onerous. It's always been the law in most places that collect sales tax that you have to pay it on things brought in from out of state. In my state, it has mostly been enforced on really big items like cars. Unfortunately, a new kitchen is pretty much the equivalent of a car. But if it's in the news about your state collecting on Income Tax filings, and you've received a phone call immediately after, I agree it's probably a scam. And I agree that you would most likely have received a form letter rather than a phone call. In fact, the normal way it should happen is that first you'd receive a form letter from your state's revenue agency telling you that you were obliged to report, and then if you didn't report and they had reason to think you should have, they'd send a reminder of the things you should have reported and an option to pay the back taxes plus interest. Then you'd receive a form letter telling you about a hearing scheduled. And on like that. If your friend received a call, it should have been a recording. Live person calls are too expensive for chasing a pittance (and the amount of tax owed, even if your friend's new kitchen is even nicer than yours, is a pittance to the state coffers). You could check with the department of frauds to see if this is a known scam, and a lawyer to see if it's possibly real.