Posted on 02/19/2009 11:08:13 PM PST by george76
Massachusetts has ordered a tire chain to charge Bay State residents a 5 percent sales tax on their purchases in New Hampshire in an unprecedented move that could have huge implications for consumers and other merchants.
Town Fair Tire Centers, which is based in Connecticut but has six shops in New Hampshire and 25 in Massachusetts, is fighting back with a lawsuit now before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that accuses the state of violating the US commerce clause.
If Massachusetts prevails in the case, which is likely to be heard next month, it could drive up costs for consumers and retailers such as Best Buy and Sears that sell expensive home appliances and other goods in New Hampshire, which doesn't have a state sales tax. It also could mean millions of dollars in new tax revenue for the Commonwealth as it faces a $1.1 billion budget deficit...
it's a case of "Taxachusetts" striking back at the "Live Free or Die" pride of New Hampshire. The Granite State has long lured Massachusetts residents over the border to enjoy tax-free shopping.
New Hampshire Governor John Lynch has even gotten involved, kicking off a campaign one year to persuade Bay Staters to head north so they don't have to cram all of their shopping in when the Commonwealth decides to hold a three-day "sales tax holiday."
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
violating the US commerce clause.
I mean this is disgusting. This could be a precedent for states taxing every purchase made online that is out of state. States have been drooling over this for awhile now and i am surprised it hasn’t happen yet.
They will try to tax everything.
You are right. They are doing that right now. It Sux
btw, Ron Kirk, Obumma’s new Trade Rep is FOR taxing the internet
Blatant violation of that pesky Constitution.
The Beatles 40+ years ago :
One, two, three, four...
Hrmm!
One, two, (one, two, three, four!)
Let me tell you how it will be;
There’s one for you, nineteen for me.
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don’t take it all.
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
(if you drive a car, car;) - I’ll tax the street;
(if you try to sit, sit;) - I’ll tax your seat;
(if you get too cold, cold;) - I’ll tax the heat;
(if you take a walk, walk;) - I’ll tax your feet.
Taxman!
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Don’t ask me what I want it for, (ah-ah, mister Wilson)
If you don’t want to pay some more. (ah-ah, mister heath)
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Now my advice for those who die, (taxman)
Declare the pennies on your eyes. (taxman)
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
And you’re working for no one but me.
Taxman!
It would hurt a lot of us in TN too. People here that live close to the border with Georgia shop in Georgia a lot because of the cheaper sales tax. I hope they tell Massachusetts to shove it.
If they win on this, the long run implications could mean one purchase could be taxed at least 50 times by every state that wants their cut.
I live here, and this state government is out of control. Being run by Deval Patrick, we are only a harbinger of what is in store for the rest of the country.
Run by racist, socialist, Marxist liberals who couldn’t govern their way out of a wet paper bag. They are all incompetent and corrupt to the core.
Most people around the country, and even around this state seem unaware of the relationship between Deval Patrick and Barack Obama, their campaign styles and methods, incompetency of government and socialist policies.
It makes me sick.
“...If they win on this, the long run implications could mean one purchase could be taxed at least 50 times by every state that wants their cut...”
Yep, agreed. It is what Thomas Sowell calls single stage thinking. Liberals are too stupid to understand the consequences of their shallow, selfish and infantile policies.
If you lived in Oklahoma, you could potentially charge states like New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas for taxes given the idiotic logic they follow. And at that point, why stop with an inconvenient border or distance argument. Then, after you tax all fify states for anything, the Internet comes next when they have finished killing THOSE golden geese. (For liberals, that would be two-fer. Muzzle the Internet and wring more money out of citizens through the muzzling...)
Grrr. Every single day, my government both state and federal, pisses me off more and more. But my fellow Americans are to blame. People like Deval Patrick, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha are who they are. If you listen to them, they are are disguising only thinly who they are and what they want to do, and even the dullest dimwit could discern it if only they were to listen.
But they don’t.
I went into an Apple Store a week or two ago, and there were two young women in front of me gushing with excitement over getting a stimulus check from the government and what they were going to buy with it.
I wanted to say to them: “You FOOLS! This is YOUR money they are giving back to you that they took away from you in the first place!” or “You don’t even make enough money to cover what you have put in via taxes to cover what you are getting! THEY ARE TAKING TAX MONEY FROM ME AND MY FAMILY TO GIVE TO YOU SO YOU CAN BUY IPODS!”
I knew my breath would be wasted if I said the REAL truth: “Don’t you dummies understand that this money doesn’t just get printed and distributed to you. It has to come from somewhere, whether the government borrows money to be paid back with interest or a pound of flesh is taken out of all of us with the hyperinflation that is coming as a result of throwing all this money with no backing into the economy!”
And then, at that that point as I turned it over in my head, it occurred to me: They simply don’t care.
Obama is a racist who spent twenty years listening to anti-American racist pap in a racist “church” and gave large sums of money to that “church”.
They wouldn’t care.
Obama is an associate of a virulent anti-American radical terrorist, a member of a group who killed AMERICANS with bombs, who wished he had done more violence, whose most public moments in print are accompanied by a picture of him proudly and triumphantly standing on top of an American flag, the same flag I and my father served under, and my father was buried under. This man is one of Obama’s principal patrons, who by his own admission is “guilty as sin-free as a bird”, and quite proud of that.
They wouldn’t care.
Obama is corrupt to the core, steered money towards his family (wife) and friends.
They wouldn’t care.
Obama is an avowed socialist who believes in redistribution of wealth.
They wouldn’t care.
Obama thinks higher taxes are the way to fix our problems.
They wouldn’t care.
Obama thinks higher gasoline prices are good for us.
They wouldn’t care.
Obama thinks guns should be banned.
They wouldn’t care.
Obama is a devotee of Saul Alinsky’s techniques as described in “Rules for Radicals”, one of the most disgusting things I have ever read.
They wouldn’t care.
I am disheartened about this past election in ways I simply cannot describe, but most depressing and discouraging for me is that I worked hard as a citizen to understand the issues. I made the effort to evaluate and re-evaluate my stand on issues and make sure they were backed by logic and consistent with what was best for our nation.
My vote was trumped and negated by a damned ignorant idiot who came to the conclusion Obama was going to pay for her mortgage and her gasoline.
These two young women I saw in line at the Apple Store could not care less either. They want a piece of pie, and could not care less who “gives” it to them. They, and many other American voters don’t understand the adage “If something seems to good to be true, it probably isn’t.”
It is time for them to start sucking at the government teat. Which is EXACTLY what people like Obama, Patrick and other liberal, radicals, marxists and socialists in charge want.
I will never understand or underestimate the ability of states to grab sales tax revenue.
I live in New York State. I visited my daughter in Nevada last spring. While there, I ordered a Dell Laptop PC for her. I placed the order while in Nevada, the PC was manufactured in Nevada amd delivered to a Nevada address. A few weeks later, when I got home and got a copy of the invoice, I noticed New York Sales tax had been charged. I called Dell to complain. Dell said that my credit card had a NY address associated with it and since Dell has stores in NY they had to charge the tax. What a rip off.
You’re right; Dell is wrong. I assume they’re charging the New York “Use tax.” File a lawsuit in small claims. Subpeona the head of the treasury in your state and the idiots at Dell. Your suit will tie up at least a dozen stupid bureaucrats and lawyers.
Another reason to pay cash.
Did you see their new gas tax scheme ?
Put GPS on all our vehicles to track us. We get billed by the mile plus big brother can watch us.
Only 20 percent of the money would go to road and bridges. The rest for their other stuff.
Sounds a lot like what North Carolina tries to do with Tennessee (which is also tax free shopping). NC demands that we “report” any big ticket items bought over the state line, though comliance is (more or less) voluntary since they haven’t tried to do what Taxachusetts is doing here....yet.
New Hampshire should be a toll booth on the main highway coming in from Massachusetts. They should charge $175 per vehicle to come to NH from MA. You can drive to MA for free but if you want to come back to NH you pay the fee.
NH has become a West Boston suburb. And paying taxes is what caused all these Bostonians to move to NH while they still drive into Boston to go to work each day. NH can either get rich off of them OR they will remove the incentive to poison the well in NH with people who want a MA lifestyle but with a NH tax level.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.