Gary Coffman wrote:

snipped

Yep, they operate at arm's length so the mailorder part won't be subject
to every state and local sales tax where they have a retail presence. The
state and local tax folks are squalling about this, but so far I've been able
to avoid the 6% sales tax by ordering from the catalog instead of driving
3 miles down the road and buying at HF's storefront.

I'm not being critical, and definitely not holier than thou Gary, but it
would suprise me if the state you live in doesn't have a law on the
books saying it's *your* responsibility to "fess up" and pay the
equivalent sales tax to your state yourself.

Starting (I think in 2002) my current home state of Taxachusetts added a
line to the personal income tax return form for reporting those untaxed
out of state purchases, with instructions on how to compute the tax and
pay it with your income taxes. It would be fun to learn how many folks
complied.

Since Beantown is only about 40 minutes away from several New Hampshire
shopping malls, and there's no sales tax in New Hampshire, you can
pretty well guess where lots of folks do their weekend shopping. (New
Hampshire's state motto, as emblazoned on their license plates, is "Live
Free or Die.")

I quit smoking about ten years ago, but some of the folks I know who are
still hooked admit to smuggling "coffin nails" across the border for
friends and coworkers, because of the dramatically lower prices in New
Hampshire.

The Boston Globe ran a piece last week about our Attorney General suing
several web cigarette shops (and I think maybe UPS too.) for violating
tobacco and sales tax laws.



IIRC Dennis Kozlowsky (The toppled Tyco tycoon.) started having his art
purchases delivered by truck to his New Hampshire summer home to avoid
the 8.5% New York sales tax and then sneaked them back to his Manhattan
abode. Later on he got greedier and had empty crates shipped; the
paintings just stayed in New York. "Once a crook, always a crook"

http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/tyc...ki60402ind.pdf

The continuing rise of web based businesses is probably going to make
the minions of the sales tax laws find more effective ways that just our
consciences to make us render Caesar's due to him.

Just my .02,

Jeff

--
Jeff Wisnia (W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"My luck is so bad that if I bought a cemetery, people would stop dying."