Vitacost.com out of Boca Raton, Florida but with an distribution warehouse here in Lexington, North Carolina seems to not have a very accurate sales tax calculator. In fact it appears that it is so bad that they are routinely charging upwards of 10.9% Sales Tax for items shipped to Charlotte and over 10% for other various North Carolina zip codes.

Background: Vitacost.com is a vitamin and nutrition supplement online retailer out of Boca Raton, Florida. Vitacost sells national label items as well as items made for their own label using a distribution warehouse built in Lexington back in 2007 with expansion made possible in part by both local incentives as well as $450,000 from One North Carolina Fund in 2010. Listed as VITC on NASDAQ the stock is thinly traded and has remained in the $4.50 to $5 range since it was halted back in December of 2010 after disclosure by the company that it’s financial statements dating back to 1994 were unreliable. Legal action was taken by a group of share holders in 2010 claiming that certain Company officers and directors had “breached their fiduciary duties and unjustly enriched themselves.”

In reviewing a purchase I made with Vitacost I noticed the sales tax rate did not seem to add up and in doing the math I came up with a charge of just over 9%. I then pulled up older orders and found the sales tax rate charged had been incorrect on orders dating back for a year. I emailed the company about the errors and was told that yes they agreed the wrong rate had been charged and if I would provide background information on the orders they would take care of it. I did exactly that but I also stated I was not satisfied with the answer as it appeared this was not a single occurrence and that it looked like the company was charging the incorrect sales tax rates for all North Carolina residents. Needless to say I got no response and didn’t pursue the matter as we were talking about $3-4 so it really wasn’t worth my time. With several months of no response I decided to check their website again and not only were the sales tax rates incorrect but they had gone up to 10.2%! I again emailed the company stating I had pulled the computed sales tax rates for multiple counties in North Carolina and had found not only have they not refunded any money to me but continue to charge an incorrect sales tax rate, of course again I got no response.

So this time I decided to waste a little time and pull some information together for future reference and since I had that info I might as well post it here as well. Using zip codes pulled from Areaconnect.com and Sales Tax Rates from Zip2Tax.com I attempted to checkout using an address based in each of the following zip codes and found the corresponding tax rates being charged by Vitacost.com on a $10 item.

To show I am not just making this up below you will find the checkout form for each of the above zip codes. Does this look like a “math” error to you?

Looks like a group is trying to repeat the game plan of PACE Airlines in applying to bring a charter jet service to Greensboro. Interestingly enough several PACE executives have signed on with the new company called Victory Jet LLC. The primary’s of the new company are  Jeff Erickson and Christopher Barnes however word is a number of former PACE employees have joined on. Those listed were Eric Winberg, Herman Gillis III, Tom Cartwright, Michele Burdick, Ellis Nelson, Barry Blumquist, and James Brown.

The company objective is to take various jets, and outfit them for VIP charter services. The current jet listed is a single 737 outfitted with 64 First Class seats and plans to add a second 737.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of medical records have been found at the home of a Baptist employee. Rather than repeating the limited info already posted on several sites I will just give you the links. This seems to be at least the second time that Baptist has had issues with missing records.

But, police now say a Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center employee, Linda Turner, stole hundreds, possibly thousands, of people’s medical records.

They say she kept the files in the basement of a home she owned. The hospital fired her just last night— this is going beyond a job situation…

Baptist Hospital Employee Charged After Medical Files Found

Wake Forest Baptist medical records found in rental home owned by employee

By now everyone should have heard something about Wachovia admitting they allowed Mexican drug cartels to launder almost FOUR BILLION dollars through their bank. What amazes me is how little this story was covered especially locally and what’s worse is it appears it takes a U.K. paper to tear down the story and present it in a clear timeline of events. Now even more interesting is this video from The Keiser Report. In this video they draw a clear line to the Mexican Drug Money pullout to the banks needing to go to the Feds for cash and thus the beginnings of the financial crises.

PART has asked for Forsyth, Guilford, Davidson, Surry and Randolph County Board’s to approve a $3 per vehicle fee to offset 3.2 million dollar deficit.  The fee would be imposed on each vehicle as part of the yearly tag renewal. The state would be responsible for collecting then disbursing the money collected. PART is also looking at reducing or changing services and routes however put off any decision on that in lieu of asking for added taxes to pay for the service.

Eight Marines and two Sailors were wounded last night during a Live Fire Training exercise at Fort Bragg. It appears a round exploded while in the barrel of a 155mm howitzer sending shrapnel flying. Two of the injured were flown to UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill while the remaining eight were at Womack Army Medical Center. The extent of the injuries as well as the names of the wounded have not been released.

Looks like 4Brothers is going to give BackYard Burgers another try on Lewisville-Clemmons Road.

Expectations were for around 100,000 and I’d say they hit that number if not well above it. This was one huge Saturday in Lexington this weekend, bigger than any prior year by a fair margin. This is a shot from the Kids area looking back downtown. Downtown itself was elbow to elbow. If anything Lexington probably needs to look at expanding the area they use for the Festival, moving some of the music further off main to get the crowds moving a bit more.