The SCRF Legal Center, along with the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), Manhattan Institute and Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI), filed a motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals’ Fifth Circuit in support of family-owned jewelry supplier Halstead Bead, Inc., advocating for the case challenging Louisiana’s burdensome sales tax collection system to proceed in federal court.
The Arizona-based jewelry supplier sells its products nationwide through an online catalog. The U.S. Supreme Court’s South Dakota v. Wayfair ruling from 2017 allows states to require out-of-state businesses to collect sales taxes on online sales if the state has certain safeguards. Louisiana, however, lacks those safeguards.
In fact, Louisiana has one of the nation’s most difficult sales tax systems, with each of their 63 parishes in the state adopting separate sales tax systems with disparate definitions, taxability requirements and administration.
“The SCRF Legal Center and its donors are troubled by the lower court’s ruling, which fails to provide taxpayers with due process in a court with proper jurisdiction,” said Kinsey Westwood, Director of Litigation and Legal Affairs for The Legal Center. “This failure by the lower court will result in taxpayers being reduced to having their objections heard by a court in the very jurisdiction that has leveraged the disparate treatment.”
Click here to read the brief that was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals.
