The Great State Shakedown As the Blue State model begins to fail state politicians are getting desperate for additional revenue and looking for the perfect victims: out of state individuals and business who they can tax but who are unable to vote them out of office. Make no mistake - taxation without representation is a key part of the new blue revenue model. New York and New Jersey are particularly egregious offenders with New York demanding full income tax from anyone who works for a NY-based company no matter where they live and New Jersey holding companies trucks ransom for passing through the state. Now this would seem to be a violation of the Commerce Clause but the Supreme Court has repeatedly deferred to Congress to hash out the details. And Congress has declined to do anything about this and so interstate commerce is slowly being squeezed by the grasping hands of failing states. At least with the Articles of Confederation you knew exactly which state had dominion over you and your purse. Stretching the limits of the U.S. Constitutions Commerce Clause to the breaking point, local revenue agents have seized out-of-state trucks simply passing through their jurisdiction, refusing to release them until the firms that dispatched them fork over corporate income taxes. Finance departments have slapped out-of-state businesses with bills for thousands of dollars in corporate back taxes, based on little more than a single worker visiting the state sometime during the year. And tax agents have targeted employees who work remotely for in-state firms, claiming that they owe personal income taxes, even when theyve never stepped foot in the taxing state. Telecommuting can now be a tax trap for employees, too. New York State now considers those working remotely for New York-based businesses to owe income taxes on all their work, whether they visit the state or not. New York employs a convenience of the employer rule to apply these taxes. It holds that telecommuters for New York firms are effectively physically present in the state, wherever they happen to be. A Hawaiian telecommuter to New York, in other words, might wind up paying income taxes in two states-his home and that of his employer. According to congressional testimony by owners of trucking companies and the American Trucking Associations, beginning around 2000, revenue agents from New Jerseys department of taxation began descending on truck stops, weigh stations, and loading docks and waylaying trucks, demanding that the owners pay at least Jerseys $1,100 minimum corporate-franchise tax before letting the drivers proceed. Many of the vehicles-about 40,000 have been stopped-worked for companies with zero connection to New Jersey, other than making a pickup or delivery there. New Jersey was, in essence, charging a $1,100 entry fee into the state. Californias Chicken Law and the Commerce Clause California is essentially imposing a tariff on all out-of-state eggs by demanding the hatcheries they come from meet California chicken coop standards despite the fact that the FDA has stated there is no legitimate reason for discriminating against non-CA eggs. Californian voters approved a ballot measure in 2008 requiring California egg producers to provide additional room in chicken coops for egg-laying hens. The ballot initiative, according to research done by the University of California at Davis, will increase the costs of egg production in the state by 20 percent, putting out-of-state egg producers at a large competitive advantage ...Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing in the Lopez decision, added that regulations that treat in-state and out-of-state businesses the same are still unconstitutional if they overly burden interstate commerce: One element of our dormant Commerce Clause jurisprudence has been the principle that the States may not impose regulations that place an undue burden on interstate commerce, even where those regulations do not discriminate between in-state and out-of-state businesses. According to Missouris attorney general, the law passed in California outlawing the eggs produced under the practices generally used in the rest of the United States clearly offends the Constitution. city-journal.org/2014/24_1_state-tax-grab.html
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 15:04:58 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015