re: LA's stupid sales tax system has been sued

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After you anti-business idiots shot down amendment 1 on Saturday, a lawsuit was filed on Monday in federal court challenging the current system under the commerce clause.

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How many times did the UPS man plow your wife in the time it took you to make this thread?

The problem then is that the Supreme Court has already "blessed" the $100K/200 sales figures in South Dakota v. Wayfair. Many states have followed up on the heals of Wayfair to change their laws to mimic the South Dakota laws.

This dpesn't have to do with Wayfair, really.

However, it's not clear if they have actually filed in those parishes. If not, then I don't see where they have standing to sue.

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This wasn't a "local driven" commission. The state wants this. And then the state will take more until all the money funnels through the state

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The state isn't pushing this. Neither are the locals.

This is being pushed by the business community who wants simplification.

This board constantly complains about how government here craps all over business. This board constantly complains about how government here makes this overly complex.

This was a solution to solve some of those issues.

Pro tip for conservatives looking to affect change:

Stop trying to create new commissions and panels. Your base doesn’t want more bureaucracy. .
Use what you got already.

Did you see that the new tort reform law has not lowered auto insurance rates? That's why we can't trust politicians.

Arguably the secretary of LDR needs “***” by their name too.


People under them may know sales tax but the secretary doesn’t necessarily know shite. Current one is the former lawyer for the department.

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How many times did the UPS man plow your wife in the time it took you to make this thread?

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LOL if you think UPS guy is making house calls at this time of day.

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Pro tip for conservatives looking to affect change:

Stop trying to create new commissions and panels. Your base doesn’t want more bureaucracy. .
Use what you got already.

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The original proposal was to have LA Dept of Revenue handle this.

Then, the local sheriff's got all upset (you know, most of them who say they are "conservative") and pushed enough of our "conservative" legislators to create a new commission that shared power with local officials.

But in typical conservative fashion... because they didn't get 100 percent of what they wanted, they voted against anything that would do some good.

Here's another case link that may work - bloomberg

The plaintiffs own a small business in AZ selling bead jewelry supplies. They attached over 1,000 pages of taxing district rules and regulations as exhibits.

They currently limit even their wholesale sales in LA, even though such sales are not subject to tax, because exempt wholesale sales still require registration across the state and with multiple sales tax receiving entities within each parish (school boards, fire districts, road districts, etc).

Yet another thing that TX and even MS do better than us.

From the suit:

TL;DR: They have a strong case that LA's Byzantine system is unconstitutional.


54. Recently, the state legislature referred to the voters a constitutional amendment as a first step in fixing this burden on interstate commerce. That measure, known as Amendment 1, failed.

55. Louisiana’s parish-by-parish approach—with numerous entities imposing their own sales and uses taxes within each parish—means that a business selling to Louisiana customers could have to file annually more than 750 different state and parish sales tax returns throughout the state—with numerous disparate calculations made on each return. Copies of those forms are attached as Exhibit A.

56. The parish-by-parish approach generates many pages of sales tax rules, creating hundreds of hours of compliance costs annually. Copies of some of those rules—those that are easily found online—are attached as Exhibit B.

57. Compliance is so time-consuming largely because it is not obvious which jurisdictions have a claim to a sale at a given address. Although a customer’s mailing address and nine-digit postal zip code can identify a town and the parish, that does not necessarily inform Halstead Bead of other local taxing bodies that have jurisdiction over the address.

58. For example, in Lafourche Parish, there are several towns but also several consolidated road districts, each with its own sales and use tax rates. See Exhibit C (Lafourche Parish Return Form). Determining which local body’s tax rate applies even within a parish is burdensome.

59. In Tangipahoa Parish, there are nine different jurisdictions, including districts nonobvious to out-of-state sellers, such as “Fire District #1.” See Exhibit D (Tangipahoa Parish Return Form).

60. In Washington Parish, out-of-state sellers must know which addresses are “Within the 4th WARD but outside Bogalusa Limits.” Exhibit E (Washington Parish Return Form, Column E).

61. Halstead Bead, not knowing the intricate details of road taxing districts, fire district boundaries, or what is inside or outside of the Fourth Ward of Washington Parish, is in a trap: if it applies the wrong rate, penalties apply.

62. If a business is a corporation (as Halstead Bead is), a limited liability company, or a limited partnership, its officers, directors, managers, or members may be held personally liable for any misapplied sales taxes or failure to properly register. La. Rev. Stat. § 47:1561.1(A).

63. In contrast with Louisiana, neighboring Texas allows small businesses to register once and collect at a single average local tax rate across the state, while giving businesses with the resources to do so the option to file at local levels. Tex. Tax Code Ann. § 151.0595 (remote seller single registration and payment provision); Tex. Comptroller of Public Accounts, Sales Tax Rate Locator (website) LINK (allowing for single and multiple address searches and downloadable data sets). Louisiana has developed a similar single average local tax rate but denies its use to remote sellers when they meet the dollar or transaction threshold. La. Rev. Stat. §§ 47:302(K)(5).

64. Neighboring Mississippi also has centralized sales tax collection by the state’s department of revenue. E.g. 35 Code Miss. R. Pt. IV, R. 3.09 (Mississippi Department of Revenue regulation to collect taxes of “sales by mail” under Miss. Code. Ann. § 27-67-4(2)(e)).

65. Of states within the Fifth Circuit, only Louisiana forces out-of-state sellers such as Halstead Bead to register and file regular reports with local governments. Louisiana thus imposes a much heavier compliance burden on out-of-state sellers than its neighbors do.

The Challenge is About Regulatory Compliance, Not Remitting Sales and Use Taxes

66. Successful protection of Halstead Bead’s rights will not deprive Louisiana of revenue, only of the need to register and file in dozens of local jurisdictions.

67. Louisiana does not impose sales tax on wholesale transactions at any level of government. La. Rev. Stat. § 47:306(A)(7). Yet the state still requires wholesale sellers with more than 200 annual transactions with Louisiana customers to register to pay local taxes and file reports—even if the tax they collect from Louisiana customers is zero dollars.

68. Thus far, the vast majority of Halstead Bead’s sales into Louisiana have been wholesale. As of November 2, Halstead Bead has had 114 wholesale orders and just 21 retail orders from Louisiana.

69. The comparative values of these transactions are similarly lopsided: $36,196.49 in wholesale transactions versus just $2,828.56 retail.

70. Because Louisiana does not tax wholesale transactions, Louisiana Revised Statute § 47:306(A)(7), the vast majority of Halstead Bead’s Louisiana transactions and sales revenue are not even subject to sales or use tax.

71. Only the approximately $2,800 in retail sales would be the basis for any revenue for the state or parishes. Halstead Bead does not object to remitting the taxes due on retail sales, but the compliance costs—i.e, the costs of registering with and reporting to each Louisiana parish, just to pay a small tax amount on individual sales—far exceed either the value of the retail sales to Halstead Bead or the revenue that Louisiana parishes would receive from those taxes.

72. For retail sales, if Halstead Bead could register and remit local taxes in a system similar to Texas’s—under which the registrations, methods and calculations for each locality’s taxes are provided in a central database—the regulatory burdens would be significantly less.

87. Here, the burdens that Louisiana’s parish-by-parish taxation scheme impose on Halstead Bead and similar out-of-state sellers far outweigh any arguable benefit to the state.

88. As set forth above, the costs of complying with Louisiana’s scheme are great. Supra ¶¶ 49–65.

89. At the same time, the benefits to the state of Halstead Bead’s compliance are negligible, as most of Halstead Bead’s sales are wholesale and not even subject to sales or use tax.

90. In fact, the costs Halstead Bead would incur to comply with Louisiana’s parish-by-parish reporting, filing, and collection requirements would be far greater than the combined tax revenue Louisiana local governments would receive from Halstead Bead’s sales.

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In most parishes the school boards are the sales tax collectors. Next most common is sheriffs. If you think they don't know anything about sales tax, you probably should have voted for the amendment.

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Yes, the sales tax collectors in those offices know about taxes. Members of the board have no idea what is going on. The only people with solid working knowledge of the situation is the employees that are actually collecting the sales tax. They won't be appointed to any position here and we all know it.

Go ask the Sheriff how taxes are collected. Go ask the Superintendent of schools how they are collected. These associations are focused on their own issues and not on sales tax collection.