[pc86]

This is one of those things that I question the legality of, but it will never get answered because nobody is going to the Supreme Court over sales tax. I can understand the argument of me sitting at home in State 1, buying something online, and having it delivered to me in State 1, and owing State 1 some sales tax on that.

It is absolutely no business of State 1's what I do when I travel into State 2. Whether or not I buy something and/or the value of that purchase should not enrich State 1 in any way. The only reasonable exception I can think of is if I'm buying things to bring back and resell.

[lovich]

The Use tax is levied when you bring items from State 1 into State 2 and use it within State 2's jurisdiction.

Not State 2 taxing you for using items within State 1's jurisdiction.

As far as I remember from my tax days they are also limited to the difference between the tax you paid for in the originating state and the state you use the item in, much like US federal taxes for citizens abroad.

In practice as well, no government gives a fuck about regular consumer abuse at that level. You get hit for violating the taxes when you either were A: committing other crimes and this was more of them throwing the book at you, or B: are a company or organization abusing the tax difference at large, such as a laundromat in Massachusetts buying 500k of machines in New Hampshire and thinking your'e so clever for tricking the tax man.

[pc86]

> The Use tax is levied when you bring items from State 1 into State 2 and use it within State 2's jurisdiction. Not State 2 taxing you for using items within State 1's jurisdiction.

That's what I understand it to be as well, sorry if that wasn't clear. But to use your washing machine example what business is it of the state where I bought this washing machine? Why does Massachusetts get a percentage cut of this washing machine's purchase price. The electricity is already taxed, the water is already taxed, so hooking up to the grid doesn't seem to be a very good reason.

> In practice as well, no government gives a fuck about regular consumer abuse at that level.

Oh so this is one of those things where the government can just choose to arbitrarily enforce it against entities it doesn't like.

Maybe the government shouldn't be able to pass tens of thousands of pages of law every single year and not enforce them until they decide that you are Bad and, as you put it yourself, "[throw] the book at you." Maybe laws should be like copyright where if the government has a history of not enforcing them, they go away.

[lovich]

> But to use your washing machine example what business is it of the state where I bought this washing machine?

It’s their jurisdiction and they made a law for it. I don’t subscribe to libertarian beliefs so it’s not very hard for me to grok.

> Oh so this is one of those things where the government can just choose to arbitrarily enforce it against entities it doesn't like.

Not for 99% of cases although there are times I recognized it gets abused. It’s not enforced on the smaller violations as a result of it taking X amount of dollars to enforce to only get >X dollars in tax revenue. It’s not a vice tax where they are trying to stop behavior but a revenue generator so there is no reason to waste the money.

You get similar behavior in large businesses accounting departments where under a certain value they will just accept the loss instead of spending the time trying to fix discrepancies in their accounts.

[tzs]

> This is one of those things that I question the legality of, but it will never get answered because nobody is going to the Supreme Court over sales tax

Someone did go the Supreme Court over sales tax on property bought out of state. Henneford v. Silas Mason Co., Inc., 300 US 577 (1937). Text here [1].

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/300/577

[dwaltrip]

What’s the reasoning? If you were a business, would your opinion change?

[pc86]

Going from a high tax state to a low tax state to purchase goods is not substantially different than going from a state with strict anti-abortion laws to a state with very pro-abortion laws to get an abortion. One is economic, one is healthcare, both boil down to "I shouldn't have to tell the government what I do outside of that government's jurisdiction." I'd rather people have the freedom to vote with their wallets and feet.

Even taking states out of the equation, if I live in a city with a city-specific sales tax, that city doesn't suddenly get the right to lay claim to all my economic activity whether in that city or elsewhere.

[tzs]

That tax is a "use" tax. It is basically for having/using things in the state that you didn't pay state sales tax on.

You don't have to tell the state why no sales tax was paid--maybe you bought it in another state but maybe you bought it at a garage sale or from someone on Craigslist or something like that that doesn't collect sales tax.

The use tax is only legal if it is complementary to the sales tax (which means that the total you pay cannot be more than the sales tax rate) so that if you did buy it out of state and paid sales tax in that state your state can only charge you the difference between what the sales tax would have been in state and what you paid to the other state.

That does mean that you will have to tell the state where you got it if you want to get the reduced use tax rate, but as a practical matter most people only pay use tax on items that they have to tell the state about anyway, such as cars, where they will be telling the state that information even if no use tax is owed.