13 Sep Can I get a refund of wrongly charged sales tax?

Q. I ordered a product online and it offered free shipping. But I was charged $4 shipping, plus sales tax, in error. When I contacted the company they said they would refund the shipping cost. But what about the sales tax? Do they keep it? Or does it get sent to the state? It’s just a few cents, but multiply that by the number of orders and it could end up being big dollars. It doesn’t seem fair to me to pay tax on something I shouldn’t have paid for to begin with.
— Shopper

A. We’ve seen this happen before.

The company should have refunded that to you also.

When a company tallies up what it needs to hand over the states for sales tax, it’s unclear whether your pennies would show up because the cost of the shipping was refunded to you.

We’d hope the company’s accounting would be accurate.

But either way, you can get the money back.

You can ask the state for a refund.

The claim for refund for New Jersey, Form A-3730 must be filed with documents, such as invoices, receipts, proof of payment of tax, the state says.

Is that worth it for a few pennies? On principle, perhaps.

Or perhaps you’ve just donated a few cents to the state’s coffers.

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This story was originally published in September 2026. 

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