Personal trainer feels impact of Ky. state sales tax changes

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) - House Bill 8 from last year’s state legislative session is now active.

Inside the bill is 35 different categories of services that will now be taxed as of January 1. This includes services for massages, tattoos, personal training and many more.

Some small business owners say they are having difficulty adjusting to the new law. While others have their own CPA on standby to handle those issues.

“Our biggest hurdles is the revenue cabinet, quite honestly, in my opinion, did not do a very good job of notifying the people out there who are going to be covered by these new sales tax obligations,” said CPA Dana Overall.

Overall is a CPA in Richmond. He has about 50 clients that provide services like wedding photography, yoga and swim lessons that fall into the new sales tax requirements.

“They’ve never had to collect a sales tax they’ve never had to have a sales tax number,” said Overall.

Overall believes the state’s one-stop business portal website is difficult for small business owners to navigate and to get some of those new sales tax questions answered.

“Some of these personal trainers they are going to have expand their expertise to a little bit of bookkeeping as well,” said Overall.

Personal trainer Brian Leggett is the owner of CSS Wellness.

“so the increase of the six percent does make it harder because you already have to deal with the rate of inflation,” said Leggett.

The charge for a session at CSS Wellness ranges from $20 to $60. If Leggett charges $45 for a workout, he now has to add $2.70 onto the tab for tax.

“It’s kind of passed to our clients, so it does make it harder for us to justify our pricing,” said Leggett.

However, Leggett is not worried about how to calculate the new charges. He has computer software for that, and accountant Evan Baber from Jones and Associates CPAs on standby.

Leggett is letting others do the heavy financial lifting while he continues to motivate his client.

More

Copyright 2023 WKYT. All rights reserved.