Even though they love trillion-dollar wars, abolishing all income taxes and the IRS is a favorite mission of the inbred mountain-men and militia-types who seem to constitute about 80% of the Republican party nowadays. There is a central and long-held belief among Republicans, most likely held by Bowen Greenwood and Will Deschamps as well, that the federal income tax is unconstitutional, because supposedly it was not properly ratified by one of the state legislatures back a century ago when it was amended to the Constitution.
Kudos to Schweitzer and the Democrats for cracking down on out of state tax cheats. The Administration announced this week that there is cash to be gotten from national travel companies that have been booking rooms without paying the 7% hotel tax.
Needless to say, Republicans have never supported the Democrats on any efforts to collect taxes from deadbeat corporations who don’t pay what they owe. In fact, the Rs have often tried to put up road blocks to the Revenue Department’s efforts to collect taxes that are due. During several legislative sessions when Democrats and the Adminsitration tried to get important legislation passed to help them in this effort (like this bill, in 2007), Republicans, lead by visionary statesmen such as Scott Sales, Mike Lange and John Sinrud, did everything they could to kill it. It’s really bizarre in fact, that Republicans are so averse to any taxes at all that they believe a person should simply nullify the law by disregarding it. Or, the Rs simply go out of their way to take all the teeth out of the enforcement powers of the MT Department of Revenue.
Funny, because Republicans like Hannity, Beck and company, and no doubt their numerous brown-shirt followers in Montana, delighted in uttering the refrain “Democrats like raising taxes, they just don’t like paying them” during Obama’s transition when it was shown that a few of Obama’s cabinet nominees owed back taxes. Unfortunately, in Montana there can now be uttered a similar slogan: “Republicans believe in cutting taxes, by allowing people to break the law and not pay them.”
Can someone explain this thing to me, this attempt to get taxes from travel sites. Are we talking about Priceline and stuff like that?
It’s like Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, et al. Evidently when you book a trip or hotel through them in Montana, the little item that says taxes and fees that gets added onto the ptice befor you click purchase, they are supposed to be remitting those taxes to the state but they are keeping them.
Well if it is true that Expedia being sued by Montana for not paying taxes, then you guys in this blog are all smug hypocrites that are full of crap because Expedia is run by super-liberal billionaire Barry Diller, who is like George Soros and company and funds the entire Democratic Party nationally, and no doubt Schweitzer Baucus Tester and company as well.
Patriot,
If you are a Liberal you still have to pay taxes. In fact if you look at it blue states pay for the rest of the country (with the exception of Texas). I don’t see anything Hypocritical in asking people to pay taxes if taxes are owed.
Then I’m sure, Stinky, that Patriot will be thrilled to know that Diller of Expedia is on his way to Montana, to address the Economic Conference in Butte in two weeks. I wonder if Schweitzer is gona be waitin’ with the paddy wagon. This could get good.
That’s rich. Dems bring in a New Yorker, billionaire, tax evader, super-Hillary-Obama worshipper, and backer of the Congress that brought us Obamacare, as the honored guest at a Montana economic conference. I’m sure Diller knows what it’s like to make a $30K a year, the average Montana salary. In his speech, he can talk about the taxes he owes.