European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - November 29, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Order by Jube shiver or. Los Angeles times Hen the shopping rugs hits bran Graifman of new York he does t head for a Slote or thumb through the yellow pages he consults a Slack of mail order Cata logs whips out his credit card dials some Tolfree numbers and has merchandise delivered to his door tax free in this a or. Grail Man a second year student Al psf. A school has acquired a vide Cassella recorded a cordless Telephone stereo equipment and even a facsimile municipal parking meter mail order is More convenient said Graifman. Who says that he receives about a dozen mail order Cata logs a year. You eliminate the Middle Man ii you order out of slate you Don t pay sales taxes you get the stuff at Rock Bottom  the lax free Appeal of mail order merchandise May increase with the recent Enoch men of the historic tax overhaul measure. The new Law would end deductibility of slate sales lax on Federal income Tan returns some experts expect More Consumers in an Effort to avoid paying a Levy they can no longer deduct to be lured to the booming $46 billion a year mail order business. There s going to be More incentive to buy out of Slata and avoid paying sales  said Leon Rothenberg. Executive director of the federation of tax administrators and slate Revenue agents in Washington which represents state lax officials the Impact of lax Reform is just going to add to the  Stales Aie already losing at least $1 billion a year due to the Lailure of Many mail order customers to pay sales lax. According to the Federal advisory commission on intergovernmental relations a body established by Congress alarmed at lha loss Many states Are becoming More aggressive in collecting the Levy. Under a 1967 decision the supreme court ruled that a stale cannot require a mail order company to collect a sales tax unless the company has an office warehouse or some other physical presence in that slate Consumers Are supposed 10 pay the Tan voluntarily in the state where they live. Some slates such As new York and California annl a special use tax form for such reporting. But enforcement and pubic awareness of the requirement Are All but non existent. In my 24 years of practice i be never seen anybody volunteering to pay la is on goods ordered through the mail said Irwin Pomerantz. A private accountant in los Angeles. Noting thai Little Effort is made to inform individual taxpayers about what to do Pomerantz said what does the state expect people to do write a Teller saying dear Sif. Here s the Money i owe you " even without the seeming incentive brought about by tax Reform the problem of collecting sales lax has grown dramatically in recent months. More mail order companies accept credit cards and use toll free numbers in an Elfort to make interstate shopping easier. And new Home shopping services reach millions of out of state mail order customers through appeals Over Cable television. The rapid growth of the mail order Industry is by mail pay no tax of Erma Bombeck no one Ever talks about it. But the evolution of Public kissing has gone from a comatose encounter to a Lull blown aerobic exercise. I was watching an old Western on television the other sunday with John Wayne. The movie was about 40 years old. Nothing romantic happened until the end of the film when suddenly their tortured eyes met and you knew something was about to happen to could be stomach cramps or they were going to kiss. Al precisely the same moment they swiftly came together. Their lips almost met. His were just under her nose and hers were in the Middle of his Chin. They froze there for live seconds. Ii was a living tribute to it. Rugh of. H was t titillating. It was More cerebral. The Jack Terry moved ahead with the times a kissing became choreographed adding -3.-v i t. A it a filling or dirt to the Sean Catalon department especially evident to Harold l. Dittmer a retired los Angeles resident who says he received about 1,300 Cata logs last year Aboul 400 More than he received in 1983, when he started keeping track i gel Cata logs Selling government surplus equipment i be gotten Saks fifth Avenue Bloomingdale a Wiltmer says. Dittmer likes receiving Cata logs and As a result has ordered roughly s1,600 Worth of merchandise through the mail in the past 12 months alone. He says that he has ordered scores of items ranging from seed and Garden fertilizer to outdoor apparel and insect repellent. The big advantage is the Lack of sales  Dittmer said. I even look in Cata logs to see if a company is located in California or outside the slate so i can avoid paying sales lax. And when you figure you Don t have to drive around town comparing prices burning Gas. That s quite an advantage Dittmer said. Stale officials say that Mait order companies have an unfair Price advantage Over retail Ouli ets thai pay sales taxes. They also say that in companies entice in stale retailers to move out of Sale thus creating a loss of tax Revenue and jobs. The mail order Industry argues that it is burdensome unfair and unconstitutional to charge mail order companies a lax to support government services in a stale where Tiey have no presence and therefore receive no benefits ii is a regressive meddlesome lax said Robert j. Levering director of government affairs Lor the direct marketing association which represents Many mail order businesses the average mail order Sale is after All Only for about s40." mailing costs on Oul of slate merchandise can of course outstrip the sales lax savings on Large items. And the nation s iwo largest mail order companies Sears. Roebuck and . Penney collect sates taxes on most purchases because they have stores across the United stoles. However the savings on Small arid expensive new Yolk to holc items such As clothes computers telephones Art work stereo and video equipment can be substantial when purchased from an Oul of slate mail order company especially when the Price lag already includes a discount. Whatever the motivation for ordering by mail critics say that the states have done Little to publicize Consumers obligation to pay sales tax on Oul of slate purchases and. Therefore live Only themselves to blame for she loss of Revenue. In an Effort to ease collection state tax commissioners Are supporting a new Federal Reform measure aimed Al negating the 19s7 supreme court decision. The Bill introduce eco in june by rep. Jack Brooks. D Texas Calls for any company engaged in interstate sales to collect and remit sates taxes if in systematically solicits business and has More than s12 5 million in annual sales nationally or $500.000 in any one state the re would be a uniform tax rate per state the state would have to sort out each local government s share. Some other states Are More aggressively pursuing collection on their own. New Jersey and Illinois among other Stales have negotiated reciprocal agreements requiring Ilala tax auditors to share mail order customer lists to Kielp track Down mail order customers who have not paid sales tax. Texas comptroller Bob Bullock appeals to slate Pride in a newspaper and Campaign that urges texans to write Congress in support of the sales lax Reform measure. When was Iho last Lime a new yorker Send Money to pay for your local schools asks the comptroller s and. California is in the process of negotiating reciprocal agreements with a dozen states West of the Mississippi similar to lha pacts in new York new Jersey and Illinois officials said. The problem is that the Nickel and dime purchases Aren t Worth Billing to each individual said Ernie Kronenburg chairman of the California state Board of  at this Point we Are working on trying to get the retailer to  the head from one Side to another much like the removing of a tree stump. This was followed by a real sexual revolution. The parting of the lips an event which made the parting of the red sea Pale by comparison. The Art form continued to move Forward at an alarming rate to the Point where Henry Fonda referred to it in on Golden Pond As sucking  i be talked with a lot of the viewers of the 80s who Are not aroused by looking Al kissers anymore. Bul rather bored. There s nothing for them to do while they Sil there for two or three i  watching the kissers gel from lust to censorship. Since it s All pretty predictable i Busy myself wondering where allot Joan Collins lipstick goes. If one of hem has a bad Back. Do they Ever gel the Chance to eat hamburgers with onions. In they have a Gams plan for nipping and Biling on ears to memorize saturday. November 28. 19bs like major league football. Sometimes i watch Al the fuzzy fade ins and fade outs and obscure overlaps and try to figure out what Par of the body is being shown. Elbows Are hard to figure even sex and violence Are becoming redundant. One night i ran into the room because i i thought i was missing some action Only to discover the heavy breathing was from a husband carrying on an illicit lava affair. I can listen to the same thing when i ask Many husband to move the sofa. It in t a question of whether the passive kissing of the 40s was just As Boring As Donna Mills burning up ,1,500 calories in one kiss. The Issue is no whether you Leel guilty Lor looking in on something Hal should be As private As Raggedy underwear. The Point is kissing in whatever form you want  Lake was never meant la Baa Spectator sport. ?,v3 the stars and stripes Page t7