In Wednesday’s Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY), there’s an article about how the Cayuga Indian Nation opened its first gas station, on Route 90 in Union Springs, NY. As tribal lands are sovereign, this allows them to sell taxable products such as gasoline and cigarettes at a discount since they are exempt from tax on those items.
Well this obviously did not sit well with the nearby Nice 'n Easy Grocery Shoppe, a nearby gas station/convenience store. Obviously, it can be bad for business when a new guy opens up down the street that can sell cheaper than you can. So what did they do to counter this?
Put up signs on all their gas pumps that say “We are proud United States citizens that pay all New York state sales tax.”
That’s right. DAMN all those non-taxpaying Indians, with their casinos and tax-free gas and cigarettes and higher than average rates of poverty, alcoholism, and various other problems!
What, like the Cayugas hate America? Maybe they were just, you know, happy the way they were? About 200 years ago, the Cayugas were forced from over 64,000 acres of land that they owned. A federal jury awarded them almost $250 million in damages since the land was illegally acquired, with the ruling and the amount under appeal.
I understand that this new place has a competitive advantage, and that can hurt business. But to make it an issue of Americans vs. Indians is disgusting. What’s wrong with putting up a sign that simply reads “Purchase price includes $0.xx/gallon local, state, and federal tax”.
Because "“We are proud United States citizens that pay all New York state sales tax.” sounds a lot better than ““Purchase price includes $0.xx/gallon local, state, and federal tax”.”
This is a big issue in New York, and the governor has been engaged in legal wrangling with the reservations for a while about some sort of repayment to the state of taxes that are being avoided by non-reservation residents who buy at reservation shops. As you can imagine, it’s a pretty big loss of revenue for the state, especially because NY cigarette taxes are so high. I don’t know if I’d call the gas station racist, though…they’re not upset that the Cayuga exist…just that they’re undercutting them on prises
While it is undoubtedly true that American Natives were robbed of much of their land and heritage when the settlers came over from Europe, and while it is only just that their struggle is recognised and their losses compensated, one has to wonder whether exempting Indian reservations from all tax is a smart thing to do. I’m not saying those plans weren’t made with the best of intentions, but obviously they have at least partially backfired. Surely, when the Native Americans regained legislative power over their reservations, the main underlying idea was not to turn them all into casinos.
I think this is even worse: in this case, the Native Americans were able to use their tax-exempt position to obtain an unfair business advangtage over a (other than the land it’s on) similar business. The competitor’s reaction is tasteless, but there is certainly no harm in stipulating that all conditions should be equal for all Americans.
How the flipping fuck does posting a sign with “…We are proud United States citizens that pay all New York state sales tax…” make the gas station racist?
Lemme answer for you, shit-for-brains, it doesn’t. At all. Racist would be ‘No Injuns allowed!’ or something like that. The gas stations’ sign focused on what the owners percieved as their own stregnths, and didn’t mention the indians.
It was 200 fucking years ago. It’s time to pay taxes.
I really can’t understand what is racist about the sign at all. Throwing racist around like that trivializes all of the real racism that’s out there. I wish you’d stop it.
It’s easy to ramble on about the nastiness of American expansion X centuries ago, but the people who own that gas station have to pay their mortage and feed their children in 2003, and their livelihood is being threatened by an inherently racist legal structure. Say what you will about treaty arrangements, but however you slice it, some people are being treated differently because of their race. Now, that may or may not be legal or fair, but it has the potential of destroying the lives of the people who own the Nice 'n Easy, people who did nothing to screw the Cayuga tribe over 200 years ago. Would you expect them to just smile and laugh as their bank account plummets and they have to declare bankruptcy?
They haven’t DONE or SAID anything that is actually racist. So I sympathize with them.
Neither the original gas station with the sign nor the legal structure is guilty of racism (at least not on the basis of anything we know about them from this thread). Some people are not being treated differently because of their race, they are being treated differently because they constitute a separate governmental entity, which is a protectorate or something of the sort, just shy of being a separate nation. You may not like that law but its reason for existence cannot easily be attributed to racism. It emerged from the history of political and military interaction between the governments of the US (and the colonial governments that preceded it) and the Indian tribe.
(But no, there’s nothing racist about the other gas station proudly proclaiming that they pay American taxes. Their sign may appeal to people with racist sentiments, but it may also appeal to people with libertarian anti-tax sentiments who feel sorry for them.)
As much as it disturbs me, I gotta side with Brutus; it’s not racism.
But, I think it’s pretty funny. An implication of their “We are proud United States citizens that pay all New York state sales tax” sign is that they are paying sales tax by choice. As if, if given the choice not to pay the tax, their patriotic spirit would force them to pay it anyway. Call me cynical, but…
Elwood, this has been an issue here in Niagara County for years. I have heard from the locals that similar signs were put up a long time ago, when the Indian reservation gas stations first started refusing to return taxes on non-native sales back in the 70’s. (I should make this point clear, by the way: it is technically illegal for those gas stations to not levy New York State taxes on sales to non-natives. The state government tried to start collecting taxes on such sales in 1996, but gave up in the face of, I quote from the Buffalo News, “violent protests.”)
This is a major source of problems here. The local Indian gas station has branched into food, computer and most of all cigarette sales. All are sold untaxed to non-natives. Again, this was never an intended part of the law. So I’m not surprised that there’s some backlash by local merchants who must levy the tax.
I’m rather curious about something. Is there a federal military base nearby? The state taxes do no apply there either. That’s because, you guessed it, it’s a federal reservation (yes, military bases are federal reservations). Do the gas station owners near them display the same sign? Are they going to accuse us military folks of not being proud US citizens? At the military bases, computers, cigarettes, alcohol, food, and sundry other items are sold non-taxed.
Duke: You wouldn’t happen to have anything that shows that your assertion about the intent of the law is correct, would you? After all, one community with a lower sales tax than another cand, and does, sell items to members of that other community without charging the higher tax.
They aren’t exempt from all taxes, just state taxes, because they are not under that state government’s jurisdiction. They do pay regular Federal income taxes, capital gains, and so forth that everyone else has to pay. And of course, any tribal member making a purchase off a reservation will be subject to that jurisdiction’s local sales/gas/tobacky/whatever taxes.
Washington State palefaces get pissed at this too. Luckily, like all merchants, the native cigarette & fireworks dealers set up shop as close to the well-traveled roads as possible; ususlly right on the boundary. The local cops simply sit a few feet away and bust the non-native customers as soon as they enter their jursidiction.
At every PX I know about, you need a military ID to buy anything there. The complaint New York has about the reservation stores is that New York State residents not living on the reservation are buying products there.
And, btw, according to New York State law, if a resident of the state buys products out of state, he has to pay New York State sales tax on those products.
My point, Captain Amazing, is that the state tax laws do not apply on the federal reservation, be it a Tribal or Military reservation.
IIRC, California has just as stupid a law for buying stuff out of state as New York does and then paying taxes on it. In California’s case, it’s not called a sales tax if the stuff’s purchased out of state. It’s a “use tax” because of the item’s “intended use in California.”
Right…they don’t. That becomes a problem, though, when the tax free stores are open to the general public, because then the community goes to the tax free stores. I know I wouldn’t want to own a gas station in Western New York. It also costs the state a lot of revenue. So I can’t blame either the gas station or NYS from being upset by the situation.
If you define discrimination as giving preferential treatment to one group over another, you might be able to make the case that laws that allow native tribes to circumvent state laws are in and of themselves discriminatory.