Today I heard a radio broadcast wherein the host mentioned that he cannot patronize state-owned liquor stores in New Hampshire (where he lives), for reasons that I won’t get into here. If he were to drive to a bordering state and buy his hooch, would he have a (even hypothetical) tax liability when he crossed the border back into NH?
In Utah, it is technically illegal (misdemeanor) for a private citizen to bring ANY alcoholic beverage into the state, and there is no legal option of bringing it in and then offering to pay taxes on it to make it kosher.
So when you go to Europe for a month and bring back your allotted amount of booze that the USA allows you to personally import with you, it’s still against the law to bring it home on your return flight to Salt Lake with you…:rolleyes:
One law I am proud to break, each & every chance I get!!!
Not unless it’s more than three gallons, in which case he needs a permit, too:
Haven’t dealt with that one specifically, as NH has the cheapest liquor prices around here, it’s the preferred option. Both MA and ME are more expensive. In theory if you buy in NH transport it to MA or ME and don’t declare/pay taxes on it you can be fined. This is rarely an issue unless a reporter happens to be following a state official or someone is purchasing significant quantities.
If I go by a NH store I tend to restock if needed, my drink in a half a month consumption doesn’t require I do that very often.
When we were running World Fantasy Con in Saratoga Springs, we purchased our liquor from the state liquor stores in Vermont to save money. On weekends, there often are NY state troopers in the stores to check up on New Yorkers avoiding the state tax and charging them as they got to the checkout.
It wasn’t an issue for us, since we were a nonprofit and had a tax-exempt number.
Why would the VT liquor store operations* even allow NY cops on premises in the first place? AFAIK they loose their authority the moment they cross the state late unless they’re in hot persuit of a suspect into Vermont.
*IIRC VT is a control state, but the state appoints private retailers to sell liquor on it’s behalf rather than run liquor stores themselves.
Under what law can a New York resident be charged for purchasing liquor in VT, if they haven’t yet crossed the border back from VT to NY? What if they were going to attend a party in VT, and bringing the liquor there?
ETA: Pennsylvania & New Jersey used to (and possibly still do) have a similar situation - PA residents would go to NJ to buy liquor and save money. PA agents would also try to catch them, but they absolutely had to tail them back to PA first. As soon as they crossed the bridge, they’d get pulled over.
As a Pennsylvanian, I sometimes drive into Ohio and buy fireworks. But I never drive straight home. I always stop for lunch, do a few uturns, then head home.
muldoonthief:
Probably none, until they fail to pay Albany the taxes that they would have owed if they bought the stuff in New York. There’s some sort of law on the books that says that a New York resident has to pay New York state the difference between the taxes they paid elsewhere and the taxes they would have owed New York.
I recall a few decades ago that either an NYS governor or an NYC mayor made a point of threatening to enforce this on New Yorkers who did their clothes shopping in New Jersey. The public responded to this threat with a collective middle finger, and as far as I know, it was never really pursued.
But maybe liquor sales in rural upstate New York-Vermont are more of a gold mine, and the cops in question are gathering potential evidence for the state internal revenue department rather than actually arresting people.
I remember when New York State started going after people for non-payment of sales/use taxes on purchases made overseas, using the records of the declarations that people had made to the customs office as proof.
I was picturing a situation like Long Beach (fireworks illegal) & Lakewood (fireworks legal). I assume there are a few VT liquor stores right on the border and the NY cops sit on their side watching for people coming out of the liquor store and crossing the border. But that raises the questions:
- Is it illegal to not be charged the proper tax in VT?
- I understand that you may have to pay tax for bringing liquor into the state, but isn’t there a mechanism in place to do that short of being stopped by cops like there is with use taxes?
Used to be, from time to time the cops would sit on the MN side of the bridge to Superior, WI and stop cars with MN tags coming over. MN has very high liquor taxes, so people go to WI and stock up. Perhaps that’s changed.
Which is not what RealityChuck said:
(my bolding) I don’t know if by “charging” he meant “charging them with a crime” or “charging them use tax”, but I don’t believe either of those would be within a NY State Trooper’s power to do at the checkout, which presumably is in Vermont like the rest of the store. Unless NY has some crazy use tax/liquor laws, no crime is committed by a NY state resident purchasing alcohol in another state until he brings it back to NY. If there really is such a NY law, I’d like a cite.
I’ve lived in Vermont or New York (upstate and north country) my whole life and I have never heard of nor seen this.
And while VT liquor is cheaper than NY liquor, I never found it to be cheap enough to warrant heading “back” to VT when I was in NY to get liquor, even though I lived fairly close to the border and a town that would have a liquor store or two.
Even back then in the days of cheaper gas, the money saved wasn’t worth the effort…and these were my college days, where my fraternity brothers and I wold routinely buy hundreds of dollars of alcohol at a time.
I remember several decades ago, people from Philly would go to NJ to buy liquor. Then the Keystone Kops staked out the NJ liquor store nearest the bridge and took down license plate numbers of people with PA tags buying there and radio them to another pair of cops just on the other side of the bridge who would arrest them. Then the NJ state police arrested the PA state police on weapons charges since they did not have NJ carry permits. Sure they could have left their guns in PA, but a cop would sooner be without his pants than without his gun. I don’t know how it all played out.
Every few years the Maine State Police would send someone undercover to the parking lot for the NH liquor store near the Kittery-Portsmouth border, watching for large purchases being loaded into cars with ME plates. They would radio back and get the purchaser stopped and the booze confiscated when the car crossed back into Maine.
Same with fireworks, which were not allowed for private use in Maine until recently.
Hasn’t happened in quite a while now.
Back when Mel Thompson was governor of NH the MA state police would occasionally sit in the parking lots of the NH State Liquor stores and radio license plates back to the border. Mel had the NH state police threaten to bust the MA state police for loitering, but I don’t think much ever came of it.
Why would they confiscate liquor that was legally purchased in New Hampshire? Yes, the Maine resident needs to pay tax to the state of Maine on the purchase, but he can claim that he intended to do so after he returned home. Is it illegal for a resident of Maine to buy liquor out of state?
That’s funny. As a DC/Marylander, I go to Pennsylvania to buy fireworks and bring them home.
Yep, sales restricted to non-residents = go home and blow some fingers off.