Buying used

We love to buy things used. Normally, we use http://www.kijiji.com/ or http://www.craigslist.com/ to find what we need so that we can buy good used products without having to pay sales tax.

And of course, we bought our most recent solar panel from http://www.ebay.com/ and got a fantastic deal, so that's another option.

But recently we went shopping at Value Village. I don't know if they have these stores in the US, but here in Canada, Value Village is a chain of second hand stores, mostly clothing. We recently went shopping there. We bought a used electric kettle, a used electric toaster, one pair of jeans and one pair of cargo pants for myself. Total for the four items was around $39.00

However, there was also tax of just over $5 added on to the total.

I didn't think there would be any sales tax, because the government has already collected tax when they sold the goods in the first place. But, welcome to Canada, I remind myself...where apparently they tax you coming and going!

This will make me think twice about shopping at Value Village, despite the good deals. I hate paying our ridiculous rates of taxation, simply because they don't spend it very wisely! I think we will stick to private sellers, and maybe garage sales to find what we need.