[quote name='mightymek']I am surprised, but I had success at my Best Buy. It wasn't as free as others, but it worked for me. I bought a pack of gum too because I felt odd without something else, but I paid $2.76 for the game and gum. The reason is because the manager took $20 off the bottom line as a MFG special coupon or something, so it didn't remove the tax from the game. I wasn't about to complain, still an amazing price. So I paid $1.20 in tax, plus $1.49+tax for a pack of gum. Either way, I'm happy I got in on the deal. I got it for PS3 btw since they were all out of Xbox.[/QUOTE]
This will probably get completely ignored, but there are laws that vary by state regarding how coupons are treated. The general difference is pre-coupon tax state or post-coupon tax state. The post coupon tax states are the ones where you can use manufacturer coupons to do extreme couponing type stuff and get a truckload of stuff for "Free"
The pre-coupon tax states it's not as fun because you'd still pay tax on 20 bucks, which would end up being close to two dollars in some places.
HOWEVER most pre-coupon tax states still function as a post-coupon tax state when it's a store coupon, because it's basically a sale (i.e., if your 3D TV was originally 3000 bucks, and is clearanced to 1000 bucks, you only pay tax on 1000 bucks) -- though some states still tax at that rate, which is crazy.
Anyway, you are probably in a pre-coupon tax state that would have not taxed if the store coupon worked correctly, but since he called it a manufacturer coupon, you got taxed on the 20 dollars of coupon.
You can probably find it by googling something like
[your state] coupon tax "code of state regulations"