3 ms·

I am embarrassed by US sales tax treatment of tourists

3 points by robomartin 14y ago

Just had a couple of friends come visit from abroad. They bought a bunch of stuff. Probably spent a few thousand dollars retails. Having been to Europe many times we all assumed that they could file a form at the airport and get a refund of the CA sales tax they paid. Well, it turns out this is not the case. We don't do that in the US. Yes, as a visitor in the EU you can get VAT back, but not here. We either are not smart enough to handle this or just don't give a shit about charging foreigners taxes they should not be paying. To me this is embarrassing. What happened to "No taxation without representation"?

patio11 14y ago
The United States has no sales tax, per se. (There's a few flavors of excise tax at the federal level.) California, and many municipalities in California, have sales taxes. They are routinely exacted from people who don't live in California, including (most relevantly by volume) other Americans. To my knowledge there has never been a serious discussion about tax totalization at either the international or national level because it would be an absolutely mammoth undertaking. By comparison, in some countries taxes are imposed by the national government, and totalization is virtually automatic within a nation and comparatively easy to arrange for international tourists. (Also, those nations tend to have much higher taxes, and they've made the decision to rebate them to international tourists so as to encourage them to not go to locales with more favorable tax regimes.) What happened to "No taxation without representation"? Not the best analogy, since foreign visitors are ordinarily not entitled to much say in the internal affairs of their host countries and can pick freely from all available tax regimes to purchase their goods from, but a good piece of rhetoric. You might consider bringing it up with your elected representatives. I rather suspect that they will be unsympathetic, as the Californian electorate routinely signals that they would rather pay salaries/health care/pensions for state workers than lower taxes on people who don't reside in California. (I managed to pay approximately $1,500 in taxes to California last year just with a business trip -- yay hotel tax.)

3 points by robomartin 14y ago

patio11 14y ago

The United States has no sales tax, per se. (There's a few flavors of excise tax at the federal level.) California, and many municipalities in California, have sales taxes. They are routinely exacted from people who don't live in California, including (most relevantly by volume) other Americans. To my knowledge there has never been a serious discussion about tax totalization at either the international or national level because it would be an absolutely mammoth undertaking. By comparison, in some countries taxes are imposed by the national government, and totalization is virtually automatic within a nation and comparatively easy to arrange for international tourists. (Also, those nations tend to have much higher taxes, and they've made the decision to rebate them to international tourists so as to encourage them to not go to locales with more favorable tax regimes.) What happened to "No taxation without representation"? Not the best analogy, since foreign visitors are ordinarily not entitled to much say in the internal affairs of their host countries and can pick freely from all available tax regimes to purchase their goods from, but a good piece of rhetoric. You might consider bringing it up with your elected representatives. I rather suspect that they will be unsympathetic, as the Californian electorate routinely signals that they would rather pay salaries/health care/pensions for state workers than lower taxes on people who don't reside in California. (I managed to pay approximately $1,500 in taxes to California last year just with a business trip -- yay hotel tax.)