And unfortunately, honest sellers of NWOT items are paying the price for the dishonesty of others when their listings are presumed to be lying when described as "NWOT."
I find items in stores and outlets where they do remove the tags before putting them on the sales floor. Although I'm mentioning
Coach specifically, I know this statement applies to other retailers as well. Many Coach stores (boutique) and outlets remove tags from their charms and keychains, either because they don't want them resold as NWT or because they think they look nicer on display without the tags but those items are no less "new" than if they had their tags.
Many Coach wallets have tags that aren't attached and are merely inserted into a pocket inside the wallet. These tags fall out, get lost, get re-inserted into different style wallets, etc., but the wallets are still "new" and unused.
Although there are certainly dishonest sellers who sell used items as new as shown in this thread, there are honest sellers who do sell new items that are without tags. And there are even honest sellers who sell items of which they aren't the original owner and list the item as pre-owned and stating that it doesn't appear to have been used. (IMO, that's a very honest way of selling a seemingly unused item that hadn't been purchased directly from a store.)