Yes, these items can be purchased as 05-41 due to the fabricated item qualifying for the M&E Exemption. The department will need to provide a comment stating that the items are going into a fabrication and also provide the fabrication tag number.
No for warranties, yes for maintenance agreements. The DOR issued a special notice that specifically calls out warranties as being taxable even if the property is exempt. If the warranty is included in the cost of the total sales price and can't be broken out separately, then it won't be subject to tax because it is considered part of the underlying price. If it is broken out separately, then it is taxable.
Maintenance agreements separate from warranties qualify for tax exemption.
Yes, Definition (15) of RCW 82.63.010 specifically includes software. It states: 'Qualified machinery and equipment' includes: Computers; software; data processing equipment...
Early in the University's adoption of the M&E Exemption, we learned that laptops and other portable computing equipment items would probably not qualify for the exemption under audit. This is due to the items being extremely portable as well as having the ability to be used for many different functions outside of research. To reduce the University's risk under audit, we simply don't allow these items to be purchased under the M&E Exemption.
A pre-populated M&E Certificate is available on Equipment Inventory's Forms webpage. As long as the order has gone through one of the UWs purchasing systems as M&E (so that the appropriate audit trail is collected), it is okay to complete the pre-populated form and send to the vendor. We recommend you reference the PO number next to the vendor name.
Please start your comment in the M&E Statement box. If you can't make it fit (which is preferred), then continue it into the comments section of the individual item so we can see the whole comment while editing the line item.
If it is deemed that an equipment purchase would qualify for the M&E exemption, a statement detailing the type of research to be performed and the desired outcome, is required. Please see examples of acceptable and unacceptable statements on our M&E Statement Examples web page.