Use Tax

[asdormire]

I've sat and thought on this for a day, and I still come back to the question "How did Illinois (and now Massachussetts) know you had purchased the Dipper?"

 

 

Obviously, US Customs is giving them the information, but what does the customs form actually say?

 

For the record I firmly support paying any and all taxes that are due, but let's just suppose that the form said "Concertina, value $XXXX". How do they know that the concertina is a new purchase and not a family heirloom sent back to the Mother Country for repairs and restoration? I would imagine that a concertina restored by Mr. Dipper would look brand new when he was done with the restoration, so how can they tell? I believe those restoration services would be exempt from this tax, right?

 

If this catches on with other States, it could become a real issue. Maybe in 5 years people like Barleycorn will be quoting prices broken out into parts and labor-- Instead of quoting a price of $3000, it might be: Concertina $300, restoration of said concertina $2700.

 

 

I'll buy that. When we moved south, we filed federal tax and the Michigan tax we owed from the new Ohio address. Several months later we received a notice from Ohio wanting to know where their tax was, as the Feds had shared with them that we had filed from an Ohio address. Ohio didn't like the arguement that since we hadn't lived in Ohio until January of that year, we didn't owe any Ohio tax. It took a couple years to clear that up.

 

As far as whether restoration would be exempt from the tax, that would depend on how an individual state's tax code is written.

 

Alan

[david_boveri]

If the issue is that you could have bought it in Illinois, show them proof of all the handmade concertina companies being located in other states and countries. Challenge them to find a concertina maker or distributor in Illinois.

[Dave Weinstein]

Use tax is sales tax for items bought from out of the State.

 

The general assumption is "if it would have been subject to sales tax had you bought it in state, it is subject to use tax".