Clueless human, but what stops a company from ignoring these laws from certain states? How is this enforceable if a company doesn't have any infrastructure within that state?
replies(5):
It would be pretty crazy if you could kill someone in Arizona and then just walk over the border to California and not be able to be prosecuted…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_Death_(Yellowstone)
"The Zone of Death is the 50-square-mile (130 km2) area in the Idaho section of Yellowstone National Park in which, as a result of the Vicinage Clause in the Constitution of the United States, a person may be able to theoretically avoid conviction for any major crime, up to and including murder"
>New York governor rejects Louisiana's extradition request for doctor in abortion pill case
cough
That loophole got closed once inter-state data sharing became possible and Oregon merchants were required to start collecting those out-of-state taxes at the point of sale.
The threat of lawsuits.
> How is this enforceable if a company doesn't have any infrastructure within that state?
If you are intentionally doing business in a US state, and either you or your assets are within the reach of courts in the US, you can probably be sued under the state's laws, either in the state's courts or in federal courts, and there is a reasonable chance that if the law is valid at all, it will be applied to your provision of your service to people in that state. Likewise, you have a risk from criminal laws of the state if you are personally within reach of any US law enforcement, through intrastate extradition (which, while there is occasional high-profile resistance, is generally Constitutionally mandatory and can be compelled by the federal courts.)
That's why services taking reasonable steps to cut off customers accessing their service from the states whose laws they don't want to deal with is a common response.
Avoiding taxes. It's different. It was always perfectly legal to travel to another state to buy something expensive and bring it back home. No crimes were committed.
It was a loophole that you could buy in Oregon specifically to avoid $1,000s in sales taxes.
I mean it would be absurd if an anti-death-sentence state started trying to extradite the executioners working in pro-death-sentence states for murder, right?
There is a certain group in the USA that is working hard on undermining the rights of the people of America, the enemies, foreign and domestic, per se; and this is part of their plank to control speech through fear and total control and evisceration of anonymity.
I support controlling access to porn for children, especially since I know people who were harmed and groomed by it, but these types of laws are really just the typical liar’s wedge to get the poison pill of tracking and suppression in the door.
I hope some of the court cases can fix some of these treasonous and enemy acts by enemies within, but reality is that likely at the very least some aspects of these control mechanisms will remain intact.
If it really was about preventing harm against children, then they would have prevented children from accessing things, not adults. But that’s how you know it’s a perfidious lie.
This MS situation is just another step towards what they really want, total control over speech, thought, and what you are able to see and read.
This MS situation is just a kind of trial balloon, a probe of the American people and the Constitution and this thing we still call America even though enemies are within our walls dismantling everything.
As you may have read, in MS they are trying to require all social media companies to “…deanonymize and age-verify all users…” …… to protect the children, of course. So you, an adult, have to identify yourself online in the public square that is already censored and controlled and mapped, to the government so it can, e.g., see if you oppose or share information about the genocide it is supporting … to protect Mississippi children, of course.
Not by the same definition, no, its not, though there is a crime called "murder" in all states, and there tends to be significant overlap in the definitions.
It’s called a ‘use tax’. In practice, nobody pays (personal) use tax, myself included.
Washington has a use tax: https://dor.wa.gov/taxes-rates/use-tax
California has a use tax: https://cdtfa.ca.gov/taxes-and-fees/use-tax/
Idaho has a use tax: https://tax.idaho.gov/taxes/sales-use/use-tax/online-guide/
So, all of those people going to Oregon to shop without sales tax and not paying use tax were technically breaking the law, not using a loophole. I’m not judging them, I don’t pay use tax either :)
I’ve never understood people like you that say anything and everything to increase taxes.
How does it make any rational or logical sense that you should pay higher taxes for something?
So when you go to Delaware that has 0% sales taxes, you make sure to log everything and pay taxes to your home state upon return?
To enforce all this, states can sue companies and they can take steps to ensure companies can't do business in their state (so like maybe force ISPs to block Dreamwidth?).
(It is possible for state charges existing to make other actions federal crimes, though, e.g., there is a federal crime of interstate travel to avoid prosecution, service of process, or appearance as a witness. But state charges themselves can't get "bumped up" to the federal level.)
It was legal to do that. If it was purchased out of state with the intent of bringing it back home, then (assuming the home state was California) California use taxes were always owed on it. Other states with sales taxes also tend to have similarly-structured use taxes with rates similar to the sales tax rates.
They were legally avoiding sales taxes, but also illegally evading use taxes, and, moreover, there is very little reason for the former if you aren't also doing the latter, unless you just have some moral objection to your taxes being taken at the point of sale and the paperwork and remittance to the government being done by the retailer instead of being a burden you deal with yourself.
If you don't, you are technically violating the law. All states with sales tax also have a use tax.
For example, if you are a resident of neighboring Maryland, this is the form you'd need to fill out for purchases you make in Delaware.
https://www.marylandcomptroller.gov/content/dam/mdcomp/tax/f...
Oregon merchants are not required to collect sales tax for any other jurisdictions outside of Oregon. And they don’t, any non Oregonian can go to any merchant in Oregon right now, and you will be charged the same as any other customer who lives in Oregon.
Also, it was never a loophole to buy things in Oregon to evade sales tax. All states with sales tax require their residents to remit use tax for any items brought into the state to make up the difference for any sales tax that would have been paid had it been purchased in their home state.
The situation petcat described is tax evasion (illegal, since use tax is due in lieu of paying sales tax at point of purchase, assuming item is brought back to home state).
Tax avoidance is simply minimizing tax liability, completely legal.
AFAIK it's not that Oregon changed anything, either. It's that Washington passed additional laws that require out-of-state merchants to collect the tax when selling to customers in WA, and said out-of-state merchants complied.
Now, buying a fancy computer or something... but a car?
When I get the time, I'll be hosting a site from my closet that allows anything short of csam and I will reject states like MS and TX. My final act will be to die. But I don't much want to live.
Except for very specific things that are forbidden to the states in Art. I Sec. 10, or where Congress has specifically closed off state action in its own actions under the Interstate Commerce Clause, states retain the ability to regulate commerce in manners that impact interstate commerce so long as they do not discriminate against interestate commerce compared to in-state commerce in such regulations.
I haven't seen it as much in WA, but I used to see a lot of Oregon plates on new vehicles in Northern California where I had reason to believe the driver was a resident of CA. I do know someone who was pulled over for driving like a Californian while having out of state plates, so there's some enforcement that way anyhow. (Changed several lanes from the fast lane to the exiting lane in a continuous motion)
I understand it used to be possible to show ID in store and have sales tax not be applied, but now you need to submit receipts and etc.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-494_j4el.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair,_Inc.
Prior to this ruling, if you were a merchant in state A and you mailed something to someone in State B, you were not considered to have an economic nexus in state B, and hence state B had no jurisdiction over you to enforce sales tax collection.
Previous definitions of economic nexus involved having physical buildings or employees operating within a jurisdiction's boundaries.
South Dakota v Wayfair said that mailing something to a customer established economic nexus in the customer's jurisdiction, hence the merchant now has to register as a business in the customer's jurisdiction and collect applicable sales taxes and follow all the laws of that jurisdiction.
The whole ruling is weird though, because the justification came down to it's messing up the order of things, and since Congress can't be bothered to fix it with legislation, the Courts have to make up stuff to prolong the status quo.
Anyway find a reason to live, unless you're objectively suffering there's quite a few