Facts The Company, a corporation, owns and operates numerous supermarkets in Massachusetts. Taxes collected by the supermarkets on sales of taxable items are remitted by the Company to the Commonwealth in accordance with G.L. c. 64H. The remaining facts as set forth below are taken verbatim from your ruling request. Under this program, the Company issued an encoded electronically-readable card . When a customer purchases goods at one of the Company's supermarkets, he or she may present the . . . Card for scanning at the cash register.
Purchases made by a customer who has presented a Card are eligible for price discounts . . .
Customers who do not present the Card when they make their purchases do not receive the discounts. . . . In determining whether to discount a particular product . . As a general rule, the regulation provides that cash discounts allowed and taken at the time of sale, and trade discounts allowed and taken on sales by certain customers of a business, are excluded from the sales price upon which the sales tax is based. However, cash discounts after the time of sale are not excluded from the sales price. If a vendor receives no reimbursement for the coupon from any source, the sales price subject to tax is the amount the vendor charges the customer. . . .