It would be up to the taxing authority to ensure the
data is
current
and accurate
What happens when the taxing authority gives the wrong
data out?
Tax districts do not follow zip codes --- 5 digit, 9 digit, 13
digit, or 18
(19?) digit ones. Tax districts follow their own lines, which
may, but
don't have to follow property lines.
I've been to a divebar
where the bathroom is in Georgia, and the
barback, and beer is in North
Carolina. There is a line painted on the
floor, with a table to put your
beverage on, for when you go to the
bathroom. Taking the beer into Georgia is
a violation of Georgia law,
that is occasionally enforced.
At least that
bar owner has a bright line to follow. What about the guy
whose property is
claimed to be in two different, neighboring school tax
districts? Or the guy
whose property is the boundary of two fire districts.
(His house burns down,
because the property is not in the fire district that
was originally
dispatched.)
For even more discussion, how does one treat residents of
Point Roberts,
Washington? (The most secure gated community in the world. The
HOAs
don't even have to pay for that security.) Most residents work in
Vancouver BC.
and the responsibility of the merchant to actually
consult the clearinghouse
Even with the tax tables and other things
that State Revenue provides to
merchants, errors are made. Sometimes it is
because the merchant
didn't look up the appropriate code, but more commonly it
is because
State Revenue put the wrong rate into the table.Case in
point, a
company I used to purchase things from, consistently charged the wrong
sales tax to people in a town in Central Washington. They knew it was
wrong.
The customer knew it was wrong. State Revenue knew it was
wrong. The issue
was that nobody knew what the correct sales tax was!
The various tax districts
overlapped boundaries, skipped properties, and
meandered around so much, that
even when all of the maps were
overlaid upon each other, the result was "a
confusing mess" for both the
county and state tax authorities. It was all
perfectly clear to the tax
districts, who went to court suing each other, and
the state tax authority,
to get
the sales tax that was collected by the wrong
tax district. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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