St. Joseph, MO – 2nd time around for use tax.

I’m not sure if it’s really the council or the news reporter that doesn’t understand what use tax is.  See this quick blurb about it.  First, the use tax doesn’t replace sales tax – it complements it.  Second, they had to stop collecting it before because it discriminated against interstate commerce – that was the unconstitutional issue.  Use tax is for taxing items purchased from remote sellers, but you can’t tax remote seller’s and not tax local sellers, or have a higher use tax rate than a sales tax rate.  Someone in St. Joseph needs to do their research and get the story straight.