🚀 go-pugleaf

DC> == David Chesler <chesler@shore.net>

 DC> What's this?  Those sales are already illegal, and wouldn't be
 DC> reported?

Well, if you add in legalization...then it would depend on how high the
tax rate is.  Cigarette smuggling flourished when Canada raised the tax
rate high enough to make it profitable.  However, I bet the store down the
street pays sales tax on the cigarettes they sell.

 DC> Anybody think those same drug dealers might also use illegal channels
 DC> to buy their other goods?

Yeah, I keep hearing about black-market hamburger stands that haven't been
charging the 5% meal tax; I bet all the drug dealers go there.

It would be very difficult to spend *all* your money on the black market.

 DC> Massachusetts collects sales tax on what a car should have sold for,
 DC> even if it actually sold for less, or for a nominal dollar.

Massachusetts is messed up in a lot of ways.  MacConnection stopped having
a booth at the MacWorld Expo because the MA Dep't of Revenue said they'd
consider that enough of a presence in MA to require MacConnection to
charge MA tax on *all* sales to MA.

So now instead of collecting their 5% on the sales MacConnection made at
the show, they collect nothing.  Good move, guys.
-- 
Christopher Davis <ckd@kei.com> <URL: http://www.kei.com/homepages/ckd/ >
"I conclude that the CDA is unconstitutional and that the First Amendment
 denies Congress the power to regulate protected speech on the Internet."
                               -- Judge Stewart Dalzell in _ACLU v. Reno_