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Anti-Mass. tax bill to sail through NH Senate(The Daily News of Newburyport (Newburyport, Mass.) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Feb. 25--CONCORD, N.H. -- Signing onto a bill that prevents Massachusetts from forcing New Hampshire businesses to collect sales tax from their Bay State customers could be one of the most popular bills three-term New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Wood Hassan has ever written. With just a glance at Senate Bill 5, it's obvious it will sail through the Senate; 23 of Hassan's 24 fellow senators signed on as co-sponsors. Of the five House members allowed to jump on a Senate bill as sponsors, they include House leadership members from both Republicans and Democrats. This is a popular, if not necessarily easily won, battle in the Granite State. When officials and residents learned the Bay State was coercing Seabrook's Town Fair Tire to collect a 5 percent tax from its Massachusetts customers, they were incensed. New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch called the move "outrageous," vowing to work to shut the door on the Massachusetts Department of Revenue interference north of its border. Attorney General Kelly Ayotte stepped into the lawsuit the tire company launched against Massachusetts. And, Hassan, an Exeter Democrat whose district includes Seabrook, sat down to find a way to put a halt to the notion that sales tax-free New Hampshire should end up being a tax collector. "This issue is much bigger than Town Fair Tire," said Hassan, who is chairwoman of the Senate Commerce Committee. "This in not just about Massachusetts. It's about any state that wants to do this. But we can't just write a bill that just says New Hampshire businesses won't collect sales tax because there are the United States Commerce laws." Those laws do give some credence to states collecting sales/use tax for other states, Hassan said, and there's a court case that partially supports the premise. So New Hampshire's new law has to balance the rights of Massachusetts under federal commerce laws with the rights of New Hampshire businesses. "Our businesses would have to collect more information from their customers than Massachusetts businesses in order to collect the sales/use tax for Massachusetts," Hassan said. "That's an unfair and undo burden on New Hampshire businesses. The state of New Hampshire has a vested interest in ensuring there isn't undo burden on our businesses." In the Bay State it's easy for business to extract sales tax from their customers, she said, all they have to do is a mathematical calculation adding 5 percent to the purchase price of any taxable item and charge their customers. Outside the state, however, that becomes a different story. Massachusetts residents would pay use tax to their home state on an item purchased outside its borders only if they intend to use or store it in Massachusetts. If the item will be used or stored in New Hampshire or elsewhere, Massachusetts has no claim on a tax, she said. With that caveat, the questions come quickly: How do New Hampshire cashiers know at the cash register if the customers before them live in Massachusetts? How do they know where the customers are going to use the product purchased? Hassan said the quandary is if the refrigerator sold at Seabrook's Home Depot is intended for someone's Newburyport kitchen or his or her Seabrook summer home, and who's going to decide if the truth is being told? "No New Hampshire business should be forced to inquire if someone lives in Massachusetts or where they're going to use their purchase, and then decide if their customers are telling the truth," Hassan said. "That's a clear and undo burden. This type of aggressive tax collecting forces New Hampshire businesses to pry into the minds of their customers." If Massachusetts wants to tax its citizens for use of products they buy in other states, Massachusetts has to find a way to collect that tax from their citizens and not force New Hampshire businesses to be private detectives or mind readers, Hassan said. For more information on Senate Bill 5, go to www.gencourt.state.nh.us/ie. Click on "quick search." Type in SB5 under "bill number," then click on "bill text" for a copy of the bill. To see more of The Eagle-Tribune or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.newburyportnews.com/. Copyright (c) 2009, The Daily News of Newburyport, Mass. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |