Shouldn't you technically be paying a use tax if you buy stuff in NH but use it in Boston? I thought that was also the logic behind requiring online stores to charge tax.
> Example: You purchase furniture for your Massachusetts business or residence from an out-of-state firm and pay no Massachusetts sales tax. You are required to pay the 6.25 percent Massachusetts use tax. The use tax applies because the furniture was not subject to a sales tax in the other state and because it is for use in the Commonwealth.
According to the use tax definition in that link, the vendor has to actually deliver the item to the resident within the state boundaries:
"Sells to Massachusetts residents or businesses and delivers, repairs or installs goods or telecommunications services within the Commonwealth."
Without that stipulation, essentially anything you buy anywhere outside the state for which you didn't pay sales tax, then carried back into the state, is subject to a "use tax". This seems both unreasonable and unenforceable.
Suppose while on a trip you buy a souvenir at a gift shop in NH, or Alaska, or Delaware, or Oregon, where there is no sales tax. Does this law actually require that you are to pay tax on it when you bring it over the border? That sounds like a tariff or customs duty, a power which the Constitution specifically assigns to only the Federal government.
Also, given that the price of the item includes baked-in compensatory taxation such as higher property taxes or income taxes, effectively you would be double-taxed. New Hampshire, for example, has much higher property taxes than does Massachusetts. They have to get their revenue somewhere.
> That sounds like a tariff or customs duty, a power which the Constitution specifically assigns to only the Federal government.
Well I'm no lawyer, but I think the difference is that tariffs apply regardless of the tax you paid overseas, whereas use tax only makes up the difference, if it was originally in your favor (if you pay 8.75% sales tax on an item in San Francisco, Massachusetts won't refund you the 2.75% difference when you bring it back, but they won't charge you extra tax either.)
http://www.mass.gov/dor/individuals/taxpayer-help-and-resour...
> Example: You purchase furniture for your Massachusetts business or residence from an out-of-state firm and pay no Massachusetts sales tax. You are required to pay the 6.25 percent Massachusetts use tax. The use tax applies because the furniture was not subject to a sales tax in the other state and because it is for use in the Commonwealth.