When optometrists sell tangible personal property to purchasers for use or consumption apart from their rendering of service as optometrists, they incur Retailers' Occupation Tax liability. This is the case, for example, where optometrists sell spectacles, frames or mountings, without examination or treatment of the eyes, to purchasers for use or consumption, or where optometrists sell such items as sun glasses, cleaning solutions for lenses, barometers, telescopes, field glasses, opera glasses or other tangible personal property to purchasers for use or consumption apart from their rendering of service. (For information about whether these items qualify as medical appliances, see Food, Drugs, Medicines and Medical Appliances, Section 130.310 of this Part.)
Optometrists are engaged in professions and primarily render service. To the extent to which they engage in such profession, they are not engaged in the business of selling tangible personal property to purchasers for use or consumption within the meaning of the Act. Consequently, they are not required to remit Retailers' Occupation Tax measured by their receipts from engaging in such professions, including receipts from both services and tangible personal property transferred incident to those services.
Ill. Admin. Code tit. 86, § 130.1980
Amended at 24 Ill. Reg. 15104, effective October 2, 2000