Mississippi Taxing – Nuclear Power And Accusations Of Racism
Claiborne County has significance in the history of the civil rights movement. In 1966, African American citizens of Port Gibson, the county seat, started a boycott of white merchants which was suspended after the City hired its first black police officer. Police shooting in the wake of the Martin Luther King assassination rebooted the boycott with leadership from the NAACP and Charles Evers, brother of Medgar Evers, who had been murdered in 1963. NAACP liability for collateral violence associated with the boycott ended up at the United States Supreme Court, which overturned a Mississippi judgment of $1.2 million against NAACP in 1982.
And property taxes were a big part of the racial struggle in Claiborne County. Evan Doss Jr. became the first black county tax assessor in 1972.
Chicago Loses $29 Million Appeal By Expedia And Other Online Travel Companies
The OTCs generally operate on a “merchant model”.They buy the room nights from the hotels and mark them up. That is where the taxes get funky. The OTC does not charge you tax on what you pay for the room. The OTC charges you a “tax recovery” amount. They then pay the operator occupancy tax based on the net rate the OTC is paying for the room.
What aggravates me about the system is that if the “tax recovery” amount is greater than the tax remitted to the operator, the OTC keeps the difference rather than refunding it. To be fair, I should be open to the possibility that the tax recovery amount is sometimes insufficient, but I’m a cynical bastard, and I’m thinking tax recovery is an additional profit center.
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Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.