New taxes coming on out of state wine purchases

[AKR]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/us/p ... hants.html

[JimHow]

I know the lawyer (George Isaacson) who argued for Wayfair, he practices here on Lisbon Street.
Looks like he's on the losing side. Interesting split among the justices.

https://www.pressherald.com/2018/04/16/ ... -tax-case/

[stefan]

>>
Interesting split among the justices.
>>

Indeed.

This decision might be good for Texas wine drinkers. The state now has less reason to prohibit shipping from out of state retailers. We now can get shipments from out of state wineries as long as they collect Texas sales taxes.

'Course the big distributors will still oppose shipping liberalization by making campaign contributions, but the legislature will no longer tax non payment as an excuse for not allowing shipping. Since out of state wineries can ship, the excuse of minors ordering wine from out of state isn't believed by anyone.

It might seem strange, but many retailers in Texas are in favor of allowing retailers to ship. Since Texas does not allow out of state retailers to ship, it also cannot allow in state retailers to ship out of area. This creates a nightmare for retailers who have a presence in multiple counties.

[AKR]

For me, I wasn't buying much out of state anyways, so it doesn't impact me $ wise.

But I can see this hurting the mail order / internet business of some the larger players who sold a lot of high dollar wine out of state.

The Total Wines of the world are probably pretty happy as it slightly increases their value proposition.

[DavidG]

I hope you’re right Stefan, but the power behind maintaining the status quo is deep-pocketed distributors who don’t want competition. Yes, collecting taxes removes one objection to restrictive shipping laws. But it doesn’t remove the power of the distributors' lobbyists.

[JimHow]

The oral argument:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_argum ... 017/17-494

[AKR]

I realize we're almost into the shipping dead zone due to temps, but if you have lots of wine stranded out of state, and if your merchant took the view that they had to NOW collect tax on wine already purchased, you might want to consider shipping as soon as you get a window. That might not be your merchant being jerky, but rather local state taxing authorities who have been chafing for years on this topic, and those agencies sending advisory memos out to peddlers of Latour and Nikons etc.

[robertnunez]

I have a question for you. Should a winery charge sales tax on out-of-state shipments, for example, if the wine was purchased on-site?

[stefan]

Wineries and retailers I deal with charge taxes based on the delivery address whether I am there or order online.

[DavidG]

Wineries and retailers I deal with charge taxes based on the delivery address whether I am there or order online.

The above has been my experience.

Amazon already charges sales tax since they have facilities all over.

I’ve been thinking about buying a new watch from an out of state retailer. Looks like I’ll lose the enablement of saving 6% MD sales tax. I wonder when retailers will make the change.

[stefan]

Annoying for me is that most of my out of state wine purchases come from Oregon, which has no sales tax, but I have to pay sales tax on the wines since I have no reasonable way to ship them myself.

[DavidG]

I wonder if the difference is enough for someone to open up a shipping business in OR.