OCR Text |
Show Catalog taxes could be increased Another great American pastime is in danger-border hoping. ' Statehood was probably a pretty, great idea, but it has always encouraged en-couraged as many people to leave the state as visit it. The buses that run daily from Salt Lake City to Wendover, Nev. are not making the trip to show people the beauty of the salt flats. Shopping by mail is another way to leave the state. You can shop at New York's City's Bloomingdale's without ever leaving the pastoral setting of Utah. You can also buy all sorts of skimpy lingerie without ever turning pink in front of a clerk. A small added benefit has been that you don't pay sales tax on these items-a benefit that is usually cancelled out by shipping costs. Now Utah and many other states are trying to enforce taxation" on these simple and sometimes sinful pleasures. They want to impose state sales tax on what you buy from mail order companies located in other states.' The logic of the "use tax" is that even if you didn't buy the product here, you use it here and thus should pay taxes on it here. Three years ago the tax commission commis-sion started including a voluntary Utah use-tax section on the state tax forms. This is where you are supposed to figure the tax you owe on those lifelike inflatable duck decoys you ordered from back East According to Jean Lown, consumer con-sumer educator in the Utah State University College of Family Life, if they really want the money they ought to pass a law requiring tax on out-of-state catalog sales. The volunteer vol-unteer system they have set up now encourages non-compliance. : Lown says border hopping is a problem all over the country. People Peo-ple in the state of Washington drive over to Oregon to buy groceries and clothes because Oregon has no sales tax. As long as you have differences between states there is going to be border hopping. She says taxing catalog sales is going to be inconvenient. The order forms are going to have to include the tax rates for every state. For Utah you would have to multiply the purchase price by .0625. Catalog sales have expanded not because of the loophole in the tax laws, but because consumers like the convenience of shopping at home. Also, I suspect, there are still a lot of people like myself who just think getting a package in the mail is one of life's hide thrills. There is something more exciting about it than just hauling something through the checkout l?ne and out to your car. , |