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Michael J. Rodrigues Escapes the Taxes He Helped Impose

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  September 4th, 2009 at 02:51 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

This is great reporting.

A Westport lawmaker who voted to hike the state sales and alcohol taxes was spotted brazenly piling booze in his car – adorned with his State House license plate – in the parking lot of a tax-free New Hampshire liquor store, the Herald has learned.

Ad yes, this is worth a front page post. Rodriques voted to raise taxes on people in what amounts to a blue collar tax. He can afford to and does drive across state lines to avoid his own handy work.

Typical.

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  • yoyo

    It is illegal in Mass to shop in NH?

    From the last line in the news story:

    …Authorities have also cracked down at the border, targeting Bay Staters seeking to avoid paying state taxes by crossing into New Hampshire to shop.

    You have to be frickin kidding me….

  • illinois

    Obama tax cheats: Geithner, Daschle, Rangel, etc. Simple: rules don’t apply to them! They just make them for the rest of us low lifes.

  • From ME to You

    It’s the same here in the People’s Socialist State of Maine!

    You are allowed to buy and transport into the state limited quantities of certain taxed items (like cigarettes and booze) without paying the sales and/or excise tax.
    Maine allows two cartons of cigarettes and 1 gallon of liquor (I could be wrong on the alcohol amount,but there is an acceptable limit) to be brought in per trip/per person without being taxed. Anything over that and you will be fined if caught.

    Note that you don’t have to be a resident of Maine to be fined!!! Vacationers could be fined if found with excessive amounts of either of the above mentioned items!
    If you purchase “big ticket” items (TVs, refrigerators, etc.) and don’t pay the equivalent state sales tax on your income tax return you are in violation of the law and subject to prosecution, again, if caught!

    I’m not sure about the laws/limits in Massachusetts but I’m sure the laws are similar.
    Idiotic policies like sales taxes put border businesses at a disadvantage, especially when the tax rates differ substantially.

    Living within a 1 hour drive from the border can make a shopping trip to “tax-free New Hampshire” quite lucrative! In the smaller towns along the border there are many convenience stores just on the other side of the border that do landmark business.

    I worked for a chain for a few years and was aware of one store in NH that had less than a third of the square footage, located in an area that had a quarter of the population but was only 100 feet across the border from Maine and did almost 4 times the business in “beer and butts” than we did! Location. location, location!! If you can save $15 by driving a few miles the incovenience is worth it!

  • Skanderbeg

    Actually, states have been playing games for some time on this sort of thing.

    In Vermont, you are expected to report any out-of-state or online purchases for which you didn’t pay any sales tax (retail-wise, this is targeted specifically at New Hampshire) and report it on your income tax return – and kick in the usual 6% sales tax as a “use tax.”

    Rule of thumb when buying in NH – pay cash. The creeps in Montpelier have some way to get the credit card issuers to squeal on VT residents who shop over there; people buy things, and then later get a bill from the state.

    That and the last line you quote – you really have to wonder how this would test in court with the Interstate Commerce Clause and all that….

  • Skanderbeg

    Back in the 1980s, Massachusetts came up with a business-marketing slogan for the state of “Make It In Massachusetts.”

    Retaliatory bumperstickers soon appeared across the line in New Hampshire:

    “Make It In Massachusetts, Spend It In New Hampshire”

    It sounds like Mr. Rodrigues was following that admonition.

    But this disparity in sales tax rates (0% in NH) has been a sore point for a long time; way back in the 1980s, Tip O’Neill (remember him?) berated Massachusans who crossed the border to shop as “selfish.” GFY, Tip, wherever you are now….

  • From ME to You

    The same applies here in the P.S.S. of Maine. Forgot all about that! HMMMMM, need to check on my online purchases!

  • Skanderbeg

    If you can’t spell my ethnically-important nom de plume correctly, you deserve the taxes!!!! 8)

  • http://thefallenworld.wordpress.com/ wayneinnh

    Liberal Democrat Senator Martha Fuller Clark seems to feel the same way.

    Sen. Martha Fuller Clark, D-Portsmouth, said she does not think what Rodrigues did was wrong. States often have to make difficult decisions to raise revenue, she said.

    “It seems to me that we as individuals –are allowed to make our own choices about what we purchase and where we purchase it,” Clark said.

    This is just unbelievable.

  • http://thefallenworld.wordpress.com/ wayneinnh

    Martha Fuller Clark is a NH state senator. She is a huge proponent of a state income and/or sales tax, of which NH has neither.

  • From ME to You

    I am quite aware of ethnic spelling challenges!

    Having a French name with three consecutive vowels it is amusing to watch people try to spell it and even more amusing listening to them try to pronounce it! :) )

  • http://thefallenworld.wordpress.com/ wayneinnh

    Massachusetts just sued a tire company operating in NH to get them to collect taxes from Mass residents who come to NH to buy tires. They ultimately lost, but it was a brazen attempt anyway.

  • The_Rebel

    In Massachusetts, it is easy to catch them and this is how they do it. An unmarked state cruiser with a plain clothes officer is writing down MA license plates of customers at, say, a liquor store, on or near the border in NH. He radios this info down to another trooper on the highway and bingo, you’re fined and taxed on the spot. But not that state rep. No trooper is going to risk his career radioing his license plate number.

    I’m sorry to tell everyone, but Rodrigues will most likely be re-elected in 2010, notwithstanding this hypocrisy.

  • From ME to You

    Shouldn’t that be a clue that she has no clue????

  • The_Rebel

    it’s only a metter of time before they vote for that NH income and sales tax. They have already turned a solid Republican state into a Democrat one.

  • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister
  • The_Rebel

    nt

  • Skanderbeg

    Noted. Absolution granted. 8)

    Well, I got my undergrad degree at Bates – and my French-speaking abilities survived the sub-dialect of French known as Lewistonese….

    French uses more letters for less sound than any other language known to man….

  • From ME to You

    there are a lot of back roads that wend there way from Maine and NH! They would have to post hundreds of troopers at all the crossings.

    The difference between Maine and NH excise taxes + sales tax for cigarettes adds up to about $9.70/carton. If that makes economic sense because of your proximity to the state line then most consumers would go for it. With the limit of two cartons per person, 4 people in a car could legally purchase 8 cartons of cigarettes with a savings of $77.60. If you used 2 gallons of gas (60 mile round trip) the group would have saved over $70.00!

    There are “bus tours” that go to the NH Shopping Malls just to take advantage of the sales tax-free shopping! If you know a smoker, just pick up 2 cartons and have your co-riders each pick up two cartons and you can resell them and make a few bucks per carton! Happens all the time!

  • From ME to You

    Can anyone please invent a working liberal repellent???

    I’d pay to have the state sprayed or even do it myself! :)

  • From ME to You

    Bates?? Did it change at some point??

    Lewiston and Auburn have always been a bastion of Democrats ever since the mills came into being. Same here in Biddeford!

    A few years back we had a Republican Mayor but that came as a fluke! The Democrats chose to run one candidate but another popular Democrat also decided to run. Together the two Democrat candidates polled about 60% of the vote but the other 40% went to the Republican…he won!

    I had gone to sleep expecting the normal Democrat victory and nearly had a coronary when I saw the news the next morning!

    BTW Franglais is much spoken here! (That’s Frenglish for you Anglos)

  • http://www.ssce.net/Web-Articles/Web-articles-indexed-authors.html#authors-l JLenardDetroit

    was worthy of an email alert IMO lol and yet idiots will re-elect this moron.

  • mbecker908

    Buying booze and big ticket items to avoid sales tax in MA has been going on for at least 30 years.

    I used to live about a mile from the state liquor store pictured in the article and the MA Staties were up there in plain clothes all the time. It really ticked off everybody in NH. One particular weekend – it was a “big booze” weekend of some variety or another – they had several state line liquor stores staked out and were stopping cars coming back into MA just over the border. The Salem town police showed up at the liquor store in question and arrested the MA cops. Took ‘em back and fingerprinted them, booked them (I don’t recall what for but as I remember it was a low grade felony) and tossed them in jail for the weekend until they could be arraigned and bail set.

    There were no Staties in NH for a LONG time after that.

  • mbecker908

    Meldrim Thompson, Governor of NH. In terms of driving lefties – and ESPECIALLY Massachusetts lefties – into a suicidal rage he made Sarah Palin look like Susan Collins.

    I recall when he put a huge state liquor store right on the border, along the interstate, at an exit, with a huge sign. The parking lot was always full and full of MA plates. The pols in MA screamed to high heaven (or should that be low hell) and Thompson said something typically inappropriate like “stuff it”.