"Kerry will pay Mass. tax on R.I. yacht; $500,000 pledge halts Revenue Dept. queries into possible evasion" by Donovan Slack, Globe Staff | July 28, 2010
Senator John F. Kerry announced yesterday that he will voluntarily pay $500,000 to Massachusetts tax collectors on his luxury yacht, a pledge made hours after state officials had begun inquiring into whether he had attempted to evade the payment by docking the boat in Rhode Island.
The state Department of Revenue had just started looking into Kerry’s use of the $7 million sloop and into reports that it had been spotted repeatedly in Massachusetts since it was registered in March. Officials could have subpoenaed the ship’s log to see where the yacht had been, according to a Department of Revenue official who declined to be identified by name because tax cases by law are confidential.
But any investigation was swiftly curtailed yesterday, after Kerry issued a statement in the late afternoon, pledging payment....
The state’s senior US senator has been assailed by questions since the Boston Herald reported Friday that he was docking his yacht, Isabel, in Newport, R.I., allowing him to avoid hundreds of thousands of dollars in Massachusetts taxes. Rhode Island rescinded its sales and use tax on boats in 1993, creating a tax haven for yacht owners.
Maybe we should be more like Rhode Island. Then the yacht owners would dock here.
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The Boston Globe's Hatchet Job on the Boston Herald
Am I reading the right paper?
Also see: Heralding the End of Newspapers
Yeah, even they know it is over.
That's what happens when you serve a certain select group of religious supremacists with lies, newspapers.
Residents who buy boats out of state but plan to use them in Massachusetts must file a form and pay a use tax, equivalent to the Massachusetts sales tax of 6.25 percent, by the 20th day of the month after they take possession of the boats, according to the Department of Revenue. Kerry filed no such form and paid no such tax....
HE KNEW what he was DOING!
Kerry has sailed the boat in Massachusetts, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who declined to be named, although it is unclear how often. The senator has homes in Boston and on Nantucket....
The controversy comes at a tough time for Kerry, who is under intensified scrutiny for his role in the war in Afghanistan since the release Sunday of classified reports that suggest the American-backed Pakistani government has been secretly helping the Taliban. Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was instrumental in developing the Afghan war policy and in securing a $7.5 billion, five-year developmental aid package to Pakistan.
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