Posted on 06/15/2009 11:13:48 PM PDT by Lorianne
Massachusetts wants even more tax revenue—from New Hampshire.___ Should New Hampshire businesses have to collect Massachusetts sales taxes from border-crossing shoppers? That’s the issue in Town Fair Tire v. Massachusetts, a case before the Bay State’s Supreme Judicial Court with ramifications for commerce and constitutional law well beyond New England.
In 2003, a Massachusetts Department of Revenue audit uncovered invoices from three New Hampshire outlets of the Town Fair Tire company (TFT) to customers with Massachusetts addresses. Because Connecticut-based TFT also has locations in Massachusetts—and therefore benefits from various public services there, from police protection to road maintenance—the Massachusetts Appellate Tax Board argued that the company’s New Hampshire locations had an obligation to collect taxes from Massachusetts customers and remit them to Massachusetts. As soon as TFT’s technicians noticed a customer’s Massachusetts license plate and inspection sticker, the board said, they should have informed store clerks—unaccustomed to collecting sales taxes in tax-free New Hampshire—to collect Massachusetts taxes on those purchases. So Massachusetts presented TFT with a bill for $108,947, the state’s estimate of the taxes that border-crossing customers should have paid from October 2000 through April 2003.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
What nonsense. Trust a Democrat government to try something like this though.
Why doesn't Massachusetts just put up border crossings on every road leading to other states and have people declare the items they bought while "travelling abroad"? Next thing you know Massachusetts Democrats will be taking Paris, England and other vacation countries to court and make them remit taxes on money the Communist Socialist Republic of Massachusett's prisoners... er citizens spent on crap there.
Or, they can just build a big wall to prevent their citizens from getting out, and people from other states getting in.
Speaking of people from other states spending money while in Massachusetts, wouldn't this also mean the nutball Democrat government of Massachusetts would have to return all sales taxes charged to non-residents, and remit sales taxes to the states these tourists come from?
Democrats are absolute nuts. We'll be behind the iron curtain before long.
It seems to me that the targeted stores in NH should wait until MA does something proactive to them, like serves them with something, and then they should file a complaint with the NH government against the MA government. This is a war between two states, not between stores in one state and the government of another state. NH should tell MA to go to hell for lack of jurisdiction.
NH should retaliate by making a claim on residents who work in Massachusetts since New Hampshire communities bear the cost of educating and servicing these workers.
Hmmmmmm. I think there is something in our Constitution regarding this: Oh yes! The Commerce Clause.
Problem solved.
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