New Hampshire Fights Back Against Massachusetts Sales Tax Plan (The Border War is on)
Massachusetts is taking a New Hampshire business to court over it’s failure to collect taxes from Massachusetts residents. New Hampshire has no sales taxes and many Massachusetts resident hop over the border to buy big ticket items. Now Massachusetts now wants New Hampshire stores to charge the Massachusetts sales tax when a store sells to a Massachusetts resident.
It looks like Massachusetts can charge their residents a “use” tax on items bought in other states if they are used in Massachusetts but there is no way in hell Massachusetts should be able to dictate to New Hampshire stores how they run their businesses.
Today New Hampshire Governor John Lynch has joined the fight against Massachusetts Govern Deval Patrick and will file a motion in the case.
I think it is outrageous that Massachusetts erroneously believes it can impose its sales tax here in New Hampshire,” Lynch said. “We have chosen not to have a sales tax here in New Hampshire and we are not about to let Massachusetts impose its tax on our businesses
Said Attorney General Kelly Ayotte about Massachusetts’ new tax scheme:
on behalf of the state to ensure that New Hampshire businesses will not become agents of Massachusetts tax authorities.”
New Hampshire is going to fight back against Deval Patrick’s money grab using the commerce clause in that little document called the United States Constitution. We have seen in the past that Massachusetts legislature and courts do not care about the state constitution and observing what the state court has done in the past there is a high likelihood that this will head all the way to the supreme court.
Massachusetts has an unenforceable tax law and now they are looking to extend their tax policies over the border into a sales tax free state. If Massachusetts want to charge their residents for items bought across state lines than they can enforce the law themselves. If they can’t enforce the law perhaps they should repeal the law.
If the state of Massachusetts is in dire straights financially, which they are so is New Hampshire, maybe the governor should consider cutting state spending. What a foreign concept that is to any state government that is nowadays.
It has taken awhile but finally, in his third term as governor, John Lynch is going to take a position on an issue that I agree with. It is time for Governor Lynch to step up to the plate and tell Governor Patrick where to go and he is doing that.
The border war is on!
You can read my previous posts on this issue here and here.
America's Watchtower 
I was just thinking about this. It is possible that Massachusetts is taking a page from New York’s forcing of Amazon and other online retailers to collect sales tax for referrers residing in New York. The logic there is that since the person who put the ad on their web page is in New York gives Amazon a presence in New York and thus Amazon is required to collect tax.
To use an analogy in the brick and mortar world, it would be like forcing an out-of-state company to collect sales tax because they put an ad in the New York Times.
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The Commiewealth of MA is already pursuing the “voluntary” taxation of Bay Staters via internet entities.
Mass. needs to cut and rethink it’s positions o governance otherwise it as a state will never be out of the red.
MP in your title you have WAS when I think you mean War
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I wasn’t surprised at all when Governor Lynch stepped into the fray. Taxachusetts has stepped way over the bounds. There is no way they will win this war, no way! New Hampshire might be a blue state, but that does not mean we are a liberal state. More liberal than we were a few years back, but not anything like our southern neighbors, even though a lot of them infested our territory. We are, after all, damned yankees up here!
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Alfie is right Terrant, Mass. has already started looking into taxing people for internet sales so yes, it is entirly likely that Massachusetts is taking a play form the NY playbook.
Alfie thanks for pointing out my typo, i have corrected it. I am positive that your spelling of Commiewealth was fully intentional. 🙂
Joe, I think that Mass. will win this battle in their supreme court, but the war will carry on right to the supreme court where I can see no way that they will prevail.
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Holy crap. This is one of the worst written pieces of text I’ve ever seen. It’s actually one of the few pieces I’ve read that’s managed to write “than” instead of “then” (the error is normally in the opposite direction).
While I appreciate the information, it’s so hard to digest as to be almost useless. Please proofread what you post.
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I have to say that you are correct. I just read through this piece and you are right, I didn’t properly proof read it. This piece has several errors that you didn’t mention, however it is late and I am too tired to correct them now. Maybe tomorrow.
I trust that your misspelling of the word “diploma” in your name was done intentionally as another shot at me otherwise you would be off base to critisize me on my use of “than” instead of “then,”
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