I’m planning to write to Governor ididntvoteforhim Lynch. I realize the odds of him ever reading anything I send him are small, but it’s worth a shot. As you may know, education is paid for in NH primarily through property taxes - part of the tax is collected by the town, and part by the state. The Claremont case has had people crying in their hankies for more than 1/2 of my life, and the solution of a statewide property tax, to be “fair” just doesn’t seem to be meeting the budget.
Meanwhile the local news often cites the fact that more beer is bought in NH than in any of the other 49 states. (and New England as a whole tops the ice cream sales in the US). That’s a lot of beer considering that there’s only 1.2 million people in this state, but since they say bought, rather than drank, the number of people buying from out-of-state must be factored into that or else we’d likely have some seriously high DUI rates to go along with that and probably more domestic violence if people here drank the rest of the country under the table.
Thinking about this statistic the little lightbulb above my head lights up, and I wonder about a sin-tax to partially fund education. Not an exorbitant tax that would discourage people from elsewhere to come to NH to buy sales-tax free alcohol, but a small one. Maybe a nickel per can of beer, much like ME and MA charge for bottle deposits. From observation, a price change that small doesn’t affect beer sales much - my mother loves her some Keystone Light, and it doesn’t matter if it costs a dollar more a case some months, she still buys it. Even during expensive weeks her brand is often sold out. I’m sure that the majority of beer drinkers grumble a bit when it goes up a dollar or so, but they still leave the store with their much beloved beer. Hell, we could tax ice cream a quarter/half gallon and get the same results, but beer is probably more profitable potentially.
At the moment this seems like a great solution to me- I can just find those figures the news likes to repeat, estimate how much revenue it would generate, and write a nice letter to Lynch.
I’m obviously missing something here.
Please play devil’s advocate for me, and come up with the potential downside to this plan. I’ve heard there’s at least one state (of course I forget which) that’s already doing something like this. Does anyone know more about that and how their plan is working out? If you were Lynch, what would you hate about this idea?
Governor Lynch wouldn’t hate the idea. He would, however, have one of his staffers explain that we’ve had a beer tax for decades. This segment [ http://nhpr.org/view_content/7752/ ] on NHPR gives a good overview of the beer-tax issues in the state, albeit one lamentably devoid of hard numbers. Basically, we do have a beer tax, but it’s one of the lowest in the Union, and this segment examines the arguments for and against raising the beer tax.
The NHPR bit also links to a Tax Foundation article on beer taxes, here: http://www.taxfoundation.org/images/bp31.pdf . There are a number of informative tables on beer sales and taxes.
So, if you want to write a letter to the Governor, I say go for it. I doubt this can substitute for - just an example - a state sales tax and/or income tax, but it might be helpful.
The Tax Foundation report, by the way, cites an “effective” beer tax rate in NH of 5% . I’m not sure exactly what they mean by “effective” - does this differ from the statutory level in some way? - but I’m too tired to read through the report and find out.
First of all, I’ve never appreciated the terminology “sin tax”. I fail to see just what’s so sinful about beer that it has to be stigmatized as some sort of great evil, when in fact millions of Americans drink beer and in fact is part of our cultural heritage.
Secondly, I think it’s a bit disingenous to sell a beer tax by the can when most taxes and the industry itself generally is judged by the barrel (31.2 gallons). Yes, a nickel a beer doesn’t sound like that much, but when you measure it by the barrel, it ends up being $16.64 / barrel. When the Federal excise tax on a barrel of beer was raised from 9 dollars to 18 dollars in 1991, just about half of what you propose, the industry was sent into a funk that took quite a while to recover from.
Maybe Miller, Anheuser Busch and Coors would be able to eat your potential tax, but I doubt that the micros of the world would have as much luck with it, and the last thing in the world that I want to do is to give the Wonder Bread Beers of the world another competitive advantage.
I’m just tired of the beer drinkers of the world being seen as a potential cash cow for some opportunistic politician to exploit.
Any move NH makes to fund its own operations more responsibly, rather than always trying to get out-of-staters to pay for it, is fine by me. You can’t “live free”, guys. Everything costs money. Government functions require taxation. If NH is finally getting the picture, it’s about damn time. Shaheen’s ability to get elected there despite refusing The Pledge is a very heartening sign, and maybe the beer tax is another.
How are out of staters paying for everything in New Hampshire? I’m moving to NH soon, and when I do I’ll still have to pay income tax in MA even though I don’t live there and don’t vote there. If you are so concerned about out of staters getting fleeced, maybe you should focus on your own home state first.
One potential problem with a beer tax is that many people from MA head up to NH because of the cheaper prices on everything, and lack of sales taxes. In my Fraternity days in Lowell, MA we used to head up to NH to buy beer by the truckload. We would literally drive up Rt 38 and buy all of the cheap beer from the first package store on the state line, then all of the beer at the package store further down the road, then some more beer at yet another store in the shopping plaza further north of there.
When you are buying $500 worth of Red Dog or Natural Light, believe me every nickel matters. We would actually negotiate with store owners for a bulk discount (usually around 10%). If you tax beer more, then people might just start buying beer down in MA, and then the state has actually lost revenue.
Nothing really, if the balance of payments is roughly equal. But it isn’t in NH’s case - they’re a buncha freeloaders who won’t even tax themselves when they can’t extort the neighbors instead.
Perhaps Mass. should put a tollbooth on I-93, huh?
Well, except for the pesky highway funding laws that were placed in effect by the methods chosen by MA during the construction of their highways.
This is the main reason that NONE of Rt 93 can have tolls in MA, while the Tobin Bridge, and the Mass Pike can. I don’t remember all the details, but it has something to do with how the federal highway funds were recieved.
As for a “balance of payments” issue. If you don’t like it, stay home. I’ve had to work in MA for many years since becoming a “Political refugee” in NH, and have paid MA income taxes on all that money. No vote. I thought we had a little revolution about something similar a couple of hundred years ago.
To the OP, I think it’s just a matter of folks bitching. If you CHOOSE to live in a town without a high enough tax base to support your schools, it is YOUR problem, not the problem of those that CHOOSE to live in more affluent areas. Education should be a local issue, and not one of the state. IMO of course.
-Butler
(hiding out from the MA politics in a more friendly NH)
You still haven’t answered my question. How is NH forcing taxes on the resident’s of other states?
Butler and I are both paying 5% income tax to MA, and we have no choice in the matter. Surely this is extorting the neighbors more than anything NH does. People go to NH to buy things because of the fact that there isn’t a sales tax, so I still don’t know what you are talking about.
I know that I’m exceptionally dense, but I still don’t get it. Is the New Hampshire Militia driving hordes of out-of-staters at bayonet point across the state line to buy stuff?
You *chose * to work in MA, and you *chose * to move to NH for the sake of “living free”. You don’t get to whine about the consequences. I chose to work in Maine and pay their income tax, but I accepted that as part of the package.
On many items, that’s true - and it’s worth the extortionate highway tolls and the speed-trap gauntlet, which disproportionately target out of state plates (there’ve been studies). They also go to NH for the cheaper state-monopolized liquor (the state makes it up in volume), Powerball tickets, and tattoo parlors. If they can come up with a way to claim an NH address, bingo - register the car there for half price, and don’t bother with the insurance, which is *optional * in NH. But if people need decent education or health care, or transportation off the highway system, or jobs with a future brighter than working the water slide at Weir’s Beach, NH is the last place to consider going.
You’re breaking the law if you drive your uninsured NH car into Mass, Maine, Vermont, or Canada so unless you commute by way of the Atlantic Ocean your plan won’t work.
Education? New Hampshire is consistantly in the top states for SAT scores despite low state aid to education. They used to be 52nd in the nation for aid, behind American Samoa and Guam.
Jobs? The high tech sector around Nashua used to be pretty good, I haven’t been there for almost a decade so I don’t know what it’s like right now.
New Hampshire is a frugal state, one joke is the NH welfare system is a bus ticket to Boston, but there has to be some place in the country for people who want less government.
You think nobody does a thing just because it would be breaking the law? I assure you, it’s pretty common, it gets reported regularly, and people do get caught. But the cost savings can make the risk attractive, no?
Don’t know about education there - but you can make average SAT scores look pretty high if the marginal students don’t even take them.
Nashua is right on the MA border in the growing suburban-Boston belt that’s civilizing the state and gentling its politics. Even so, it’s high tech “industry” is basically one company dependent on a single large contract, dependent on MA-trained and MA-resident staff.
The dark secret of living in NH is that, while the state does little, it essentially foists off the functions most other states perform on its municipal governments, and they tax as required to do it - while perhaps performing some functions less efficiently than a centralized operation could because of duplicated overhead. debaser has already hinted at it strongly with his complaints about local real-estate taxes. I don’t care which level of government is taking money out of which of my pockets, I only care about the total and what it buys. Who wouldn’t?
I only choose to work in MA because that’s where the jobs are. I do accept it as part of the package, but that certainly doesn’t mean I don’t have the right to voice my opinion about it. It’s not fair that MA taxes people who don’t live in the state. This is taxation without representation, and is blatantly raising funds from people who don’t live in the state.
Your entire counter argument is that NH has speed traps and toll booths. This amazes me. You see no problem with MA taking 5% of out of staters income, but NH is somehow way out of line by enforcing the speeding laws and having toll booths. The two aren’t even comparable, I mean it’s not even close to the same thing.
Plus, MA has much higher tolls than NH does. If you are coming in to Boston from the North you get hit my a $3.00 toll on the Tobin Bridge. That’s a higher toll than anything in NH that I’m aware of. Plus, the troopers are always out looking for speeders on Rt 95. Recently the’ve even been racking up overtime with the anti-aggressive driving campaign.
The things you are complaining about NH doing, are things that MA does even more of. Plus, there are things like income tax, sales tax, and many other taxes that MA has nailing out of staters which NH does not.
As I move into NH, I will be able to own a gun without paying a yearly tax. If I still want to bring that gun into MA, I will have to pay a fee of $100 every year. NH has no such tax. The examples go on and on. It’s comical that your view of the situation is just about the exact opposite of reality.
d, you chose to move there, remember? Don’t complain, especially not to another guy who lives and works in different states. Especially don’t complain about lack of representation - you still get to vote in a state where you don’t earn income, remember?
Enjoy your NH local real-estate tax bill and all the joy it brings you. If you don’t, or can’t, live free, there’s an alternative, ya know :).
We get the vote due to 2 things. First is residence, and by that the second, which is payment of taxes. Taxed and REPRESENTED.
I get no vote on how my taxes are spent when they go to the Peoples Republic of MA. If they chose to raise out of state taxes to 50% (providing it’s not illegal somehow), I’d have NO say in the matter. Taxed WITHOUT representation.
As for the local tax issue, though our /1000 may be higher, I'd reckon to say that those I know in MA are paying a higher total in local taxes.
Local decisions, local policies, local tax bills. No direct tax without a vote. That’s how it should be in my opinion.