Sex sells, but it doesn’t always pay its taxes.
The Museum of Sex is practicing safe sales after getting slapped with an $82,192 lien in February for failing to pay sales tax since 2011, state records show.
The Flatiron museum — which features kinky art installations and other displays of sexual content — has paid back $17,000, but still owes $65,307 and is chipping away at it with monthly payments, according to museum spokeswoman Lisa Hanock-Jasie.
The museum charges sales tax on its $17.50 admissions fee, as well as on gift-shop items like its $199.99 Fun Factory Stronic Zwei Vibrator and $35 Fetish 101 Kit with Bondage Rope.
Last year, more than 180,000 people visited the space, which opened in 2002.
Hanock-Jasie said the for-profit museum will pay off the balance within the year. She blamed third-party vendors like Groupon and Living Social for not tacking on the 8.875 percent sales tax on admission deals the discount sites offered.
At least one of the past deals included a $9 Groupon voucher good for an $18 admission to the museum, which 5,000 people bought.
“We believed they [third parties] were responsible for paying sales tax that occurred since [the] transaction was being tenured by them,” Hanock-Jasie said. “All we received was a commission of sales.”
She continued, “It was a big misunderstanding of the clients. We thought they paid the sales tax because they made the sale.”
Businesses that utilize daily-deal sites like Groupon aren’t responsible to collect the sales tax until the voucher is redeemed, according to New York State Department of Taxation and Finance spokesman Geoffrey Gloak.
Gloak declined to comment on details of the department’s audit of the Museum of Sex.
Other city museums — including the Museum of the Moving Image, the Morbid Anatomy Museum, the Museum of the City of New York and the Museum of Chinese in America — use Groupon services, but do not have tax warrants with the state, records show.
Groupon and Living Social did not return messages seeking comment.
Additional reporting by Lia Eustachewich