State of Ohio Prepaid Sales Tax Receipts

I'd love to be able to answer your question but the truth is that I don't know how these were intended to be used and neither does it appear that anyone else knows for sure. There was no sales tax on purchases of 9 cents or less.

These probably appeared in late 1934 or very early in 1935 when everyone knew that the new sales tax was coming and most of the details about how it would be handled were known but it hadn't yet taken effect. These tokens were not sanctioned by the State of Ohio and likely were the brainchild of token manufacturers who saw an opportunity for increased sales.

Both Doersam's and the Wheel Cafe had been using merchant tokens before passage of the sales tax law so it is conceivable that their vendor(s) produced these in anticipation of possible use. Recall that the Doersam's token exists with "tax pre-paid" obliterated so at some point it became clear that the tokens were not compliant with Ohio's system (which is described at the front of this thread and in the current newsletter  ).

It is quite likely that these tokens may not have been used to include the tax even though they are listed as such. Dean describes them as "sales tax tokens" because previous reference material did so (i.e., Chits, M&D); however, he stipulates that "we really don't know with certainty that any of these actually were used in such a way that any sales tax was ever paid on the tokens by either the merchant or the customer."

I hope this explanation hasn't muddied the waters.