“This policy punishes communities trying to stay safe and makes protection less affordable for everyone,” Northwest Security Services President Joe D’Amico said.
A Washington-state based company has filed a lawsuit challenging a new sales tax expected to boost the government’s annual revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars.
According to The Washington State Standard, the lawsuit was filed late last month by Security Services Northwest, which is headquartered in Sequim. In its six-page filing, Security Services Northwest said that the implementation of the sales tax was rushed—to the point that it allegedly violated the company’s rights to due process. Attorneys are now asking that the sales tax be blocked from taking effect until at least January 1.
The lawsuit names defendants including Washington state, the Washington Department of Revenue, and agency director Drew Shirk.
The Department of Revenue has since declined to comment on the complaint, with a spokesperson saying that the agency is currently “reviewing the lawsuit with legal counsel.”
The Standard notes that the proposed sales tax amendment imposes new taxes on certain services and is expected to bring in about $2.6 billion over the next four years. Additionally, hundreds of millions of dollars will flow down to local government, which receive a share of state sales tax revenues.
Other companies, including Comcast, have filed their own claims against the state.
In its lawsuit, also filed in September, Comcast attorneys said that parts of the law are prohibited under the federal Internet Tax Freedom Act, which prohibits states from imposing “discriminatory taxes” on e-commerce and e-commerce platforms.
“Almost all forms of advertising conducted over the Internet are subject to the tax, while most forms of advertising conducted off the Internet are not subject to the tax,” Comcast noted in its filing.
Comcast is specifically contesting provisions of the law that require a sales tax to be collected on all advertisements sold by streaming services; notably, these provisions either explicitly exempt or do not include advertisements published in newspapers or aired on the radio and television.
“These excluded categories of advertising were drawn in such a way that the burden of the tax falls on Internet-based advertising, rather than non-Internet based advertising,” the lawsuit argues.
The lawsuit also imposes new taxes on security-related services, including the services offered by bounty hunters, private investigators, security guards, and background check and fingerprinting services.
In its claim, Northwest Security Services says that the law was adopted so quickly that there was little time to “adapt to and implement internal controls and procedures to ensure that proper sales tax is charged.”
“This policy punishes communities trying to stay safe and makes protection less affordable for everyone,” Northwest Security Services President Joe D’Amico said.
Sources
Another lawsuit filed over WA’s new taxes on services
Comcast lawsuit argues new Washington tax on advertising is illegalFree
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