[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.