Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Tennessee Crack(ed) Tax
I have been watching the State trying to explain its drug tax stamp idea (called the crack tax) for near two years. It looks as if a good run to try and tax folks who deal in drugs may be near an end after a few million dollars has been collected. The idea was that you could pay the tax on your pot, crack, coke, moonshine, meth or whatever drug you were selling agianst the law right up front. So if you were caught at least the taxes were paid and they could not get your house and car and all the money from your bank account and so on. The complications were many in folks minds right from the start. You see, you could not just get the stamps by mail you had to appear at a tax office in Nashville in person and make a claim to have so much of whatever and declair so much weight by which it would be taxed. It is the only tax in which you had to be present to pay.
See this guys attempt at getting some stamps it is very interesting if you are interested. Also this is the Knoxville News Sentinel account of this tax being questioned.
When I first heard of this stamp idea I knew why the State Government wanted it, but I thought in my own uneducated mind of complications. First off, the Department of Weights and Measures would need to get involved because the taxes are on grams of certian items, so everyone must have a State stamped scale inspected at least once a year. Then what about sales taxes and dues to each county for the commerce? As best I could understand it each person who owned the drugs would have to buy a new stamp because the stamps were specific to each person not to the item, so if you got some pot with the tax stamp on it, that would not matter unless the stamp was identified to you. That left the item to be taxed and taxed forever until it was used up.
I tried real hard to get an image of our states drug tax stamp and I am under the impression that an actual stamp has never been issued.
I wonder if I had a stamp if it would make matters worse?
UPDATE: Thanks to Say Uncle I now have a Tennessee stamp. I ain't very creative.
:: posted by Tennessee Jed, 10:10 PM
1 Comments:
Is this for real? I'm trying to picture it. People actually go in and pay taxes on their illegal activities? Gosh, that would sure solve New Jersey's budget crisis in one hell of a hurry.
