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Sales tax law with Paul Rafelson of eCommerce Attorneys part 1
What is happening with Sales tax law – simple summary?
It’s been a developing issue of last few years. Sales tax law has been a driving issue of life being difficult for e-commerce sellers in the USA.
However, things are looking up for Amazon sellers.
A few years ago, some sellers were told to register and collect sales tax in every state. That isn’t really easy to do.
Over the last year, most of the important states (for e-commerce sales) have moved to the “Marketplace collection model” regarding sales tax law. This fundamental change in sales tax law means that they are making the marketplaces – including Amazon – responsible for collecting sales tax.
Paul has said all along this is the requirement!
By October, just about “every state you care about” (see list later) will change their sales tax law to require Amazon to be the tax collector.
Why have so many lawyers or accountants been telling sellers to register for and collect sales tax?
Money! It’s lucrative – it makes more customers.
Even for a sales tax law expert and a lawyer who represents sellers, Paul could have jumped on the bandwagon, eg fighting back tax liability. But he felt it was wrong.
People Paul respects in the space have however NOT been telling sellers to register.
Paul’s background
He was a tax litigator for 15 years. In house counsel for Microsoft, Walmart, GE.
Fought most states except Hawaii!
Teaches a course in constitutional law in NY.
Used to be an Amazon seller and wife used to work for seller performance and have drinks with them. So he understands Amazon sellers.
Why Paul co-created ecomattorneys.com
Most lawyers who deserve the respect of Amazon and e-commerce sellers are normally the ones who sellers couldn’t afford.
So Paul decided to make himself a lawyer for Amazon sellers. Tax is the main starting point, especially sales tax law.
He was partly motivated by bad information out there about tax and tax law, especially sales tax law. If you get on enough podcasts, you get credible even if you don’t have the CV/resume.
Look in Youtube for podcasts, Youtube – Paul has been pretty anti sellers registering for sales tax, even when states were offering back tax amnesty.
Isn’t it just the safest thing to comply with sales tax law?
The first issue is that it’s not affordable.
Paul works with companies that do $100 M off Amazon – even $10 M – they DO have to register.
But if you’re doing $2-4 M on Amazon, the hassle and time needed is a lot and probably just not affordable.
The hidden issue with sales tax: other tax liabilities
If you register with software companies – they are sales tax specialists; but there is more to it than sales tax.
There’s income tax, corporation tax etc.. So you can often put yourself in more danger based on the other taxes other than sales tax.
The law is – you’re not a retailer when you sell via Amazon!
If you’re doing things like Amazon does – Amazon is effectively acting as a retailer so it should legally be treated as one.
That’s what California law says. It’s not what the state of California does – and many of the states have been influenced by Amazon and pushed down this road. But that tide is now turning.
Moot Point
It’s also now a moot point. Amazon is now to become a sales tax collector by end of year in the majority of important states.
The only major state (in terms of e-commerce revenue) that won’t do it this year is Florida – the Republicans thought it was a tax increase (it wasn’t, according to Paul, because it’s just changing the method of collection).
However even Florida, in theory, does hold Amazon responsible for sales tax collection. [It just isn’t really implementing it yet – Michael].
Constitutional law
Sales tax law splits broadly into the state and federal level. Constitutional law over-rides what the states say – you can’t make a small seller shoulder the burden when you have the obvious solution of making the marketplaces the collector of tax.
The constitutional point in question is a “Burden on interstate commerce”.
You’ve also given the foreign sellers a way out.
In fact an eminent professor wrote an article about this: the foreign sellers have NO incentive to care in terms of personal asset protection.
Some countries may be pocketing the tax! Eg China
States implementing “marketplace facilitator” laws
New York NY now
California CA October
Texas TX October 1st
Colorado Oct 1
Which states are left
Kansas – this won’t break a seller and state probably won’t go after them as it doesn’t have the infrastructure/budget.
Florida. (See above)
Why not Comply with states’ sales tax law requirements?
It’s very costly! A lot of the states where they believed you owe sales tax, you would owe income tax as well.
If you are UK based, that would be very tricky and difficult.
You’d have to at least file dummy accounts.
Typical Accountant: $500-1000 per state x40 states!
You might pay $1000 to pay Mississippi $100. That’s not reasonable (which is in itself a legal defence).
In Colorado, someone ended up registering for sales tax. They had never registered as a “foreign” (meaning out of state) business – $200 a month bill, but didn’t find out for 2 ½ years, so end result (with penalties etc) was an $8000 bill!
There is no right way to pay
There is no right way to do state taxes!
Refile this, refile that; accountancy costs.
Colorado has 700 micro-jurisdictions eg Aspen, Colorado, Denver.
They do not use the same form or same administration body.
States don’t understand Amazon!
Their understanding comes from Amazon itself! Which is of course very heavily biased.
Which “government” are you talking about?
In tax controversy, Americans usually refer to “the government” but actually States have the right to police themselves, which includes sales tax law. They have a lot of autonomy. As long as those don’t impede on US (Federal Law), States can do a lot of things they want. For example, there was a case recently when New Jersey took on a Federal ban on sports betting was ruled invalid by the court.
Every state does have its own body of law. Sadly, many states are not great at creating laws. Plus there’s administration of laws! Various governments are wrong a lot! That’s why a lot of lawyers are often out there fighting “the government” – and winning!
How do people contact you?
They have a couple of seller lawyers; patent lawyers (design patents are a great layer of protection).
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TRANSCRIPT
Michael Veazey 0:56
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the 10 k collective cast the place for 678 figure Amazon sellers, were geared towards UK based sellers, because that’s the best experience that I can personally draw on. But we also think that we’re going to be providing a lot of value certainly for European based sellers and also, US and international sellers talking of the USA, we have Paul rafal, son of ecommerce attorneys calm with us today. Paul is a fantastically experienced lawyer who helps Amazon sellers with a lot of issues, including tax and specifically sales tax, which is the thorny issue that we’re debating today. So, Paul, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for coming on.
Paul Rafelson 1:32
Thank you so much for having me on.
Michael Veazey 1:35
So I’m going to cut straight into the what I think of is the simplest sort of questions, and they probably aren’t simple because sales tax doesn’t seem to be any anything about it, it didn’t seem to be simple. So the first question is quick summary. Just bring us up to speed. From your perspective, what is happening with sales tax, like the sort of a two sentence summary so we can get our heads around it from a simple perspective, before we dive into detail?
Paul Rafelson 1:58
Sure, sales tax is it’s been a developing issue over the last few years, Amazon sellers are woken up to a world of how miserable it is to do business in the United States at times. And this has been probably the driving issue of that. But the good news is, if you are an Amazon seller, things are looking up, the world is changing. back many years ago, some sellers were told that they had to file and register and collect tax and every state which, you know, if even if you’re a seven figure seller, that’s not really that easy to do, and really could eat up a lot of your profits and time. States have sort of migrated over the last year towards what we call the marketplace collection model, which means we have the marketplace Amazon basically being coming the tax payer tax collector for the sales, which control we’ll get into more of that later. I just saying his been the record all along. But we’re actually seeing that happen. So, you know, the good news with sales tax these days is that, you know, towards, you know, by October one, and certainly by January one just about every state you care about, and I and we can kind of qualify what that means we’ll have a law in place that will require Amazon to be the tax collector, which, you know, again, is great for sellers, because that’s, you know, less headache for you guys.
Michael Veazey 3:30
Great. Well, that’s a nice, simple summary that it’s actually simpler than I was expecting. So this is really good. So that’s really radically different to what I’ve heard from other so called or maybe they are other tax experts in sales tax. And maybe they’re not I honestly, I’m not qualified to judge because, you know, even if you sold, you know, what seems to begin as quite significant numbers, like a few 10s of millions of dollars. That doesn’t make you an expert in taxi makes you very, very good entrepreneur at the overall process of entrepreneurship, but is a specialist area. So I’ve heard from a couple of reasonably respected sources that that sounds completely different to what they’ve heard. So this is going to be very interesting episode, there’s one reason why I really, really want to have you on the show. Because I think it’s so important. I can’t be the person to tell anyone what they should or should do with their business, but it’s up to them to make their decisions. But I think this produces a very alternative view. So let me just I mean, in a way, this is the stupid question, but I’ve got to ask it, because I’m asking you to tell me why other people are doing things, which is kind of in theory of mind impossible, right. But why would the other people, whether they’re accountants, or lawyers, potentially have been telling everybody to register for sales tax for so long? And what’s behind that?
Paul Rafelson 4:42
Money? I mean, we want to be perfectly honest. I mean, it’s, it’s lucrative, if you’re a software company, that sells software that makes people collect tax, to tell people they have to do it. That’s more customers. You know, certainly, even from my perspective, as a lawyer who represents sellers, there are certainly dark side auction for me when this thing started, when I started getting involved two years ago, where I could have, you know, jumped on the, hey, let’s let’s get everybody registered and collecting, and let me help you fight your back tax liability, and every state and you know, sign up clients for, you know, 50 states worth of tax advice. I mean, that’s a massive amount of work, and certainly would have been lucrative, but it’s wrong. And, you know, so that that has been a driver, you know, unfortunately, you know, people who I respect in this space people, you know, who really do know, sales tax and tax law, really aren’t the ones out there sort of telling sellers to collect. And part of that has to do with the fact that we have to go back to sort of my background, well, what did I What do I do? What gives me the right to tell anybody about sales tax? Well, I’ve been a tax litigator for almost 15 years, that means I fight the government for living, most of my life, was dedicated to in House Counsel roles. companies like Microsoft, Walmart, GE, I fought the states, I fought just about every state, except Hawaii just can’t get them to be mad at me for some reason, they just don’t want to fight with me. I’m trying really hard. You know, all those all those times I was trying to get a business trip trip to Honolulu for a tax dispute, which never worked out. So the reality is, is that that, you know, this is, you know, what I’ve been doing, I teach a course on constitutional us constitutional law and taxation in New York. And I’m from a group of lawyers who specialize in this space, I’m by no means the best sales tax lawyer in the world, or tackler in the world, I would say, I’m probably one of the more qualified when it comes to Amazon, because I used to be a seller. myself, my wife actually used to work for seller performance. And I used to spend a lot of time with a solid performance team when I lived in Seattle many, many years ago. So and as a seller was always interested in the, you know, drink Congress, and was awesome, often very active in that discussion, because as a seller, I wanted to know, and so I just happen to know a lot about Amazon at a time when knowing a lot about Amazon, and knowing a lot about multi state taxation was important. And that’s how I got involved. But most of the people that I would say, who deserve the respect of sellers, are lawyers that most sellers can afford. And that’s, that would normally be myself included, I decided, because the issue was personal to me. And because it was just so wrong, that I wanted to get involved in sort of took a pivot in life, and decided that I wanted to sort of start being a lawyer for Amazon sellers, because, you know, it’s not just tax a lot of things Amazon sellers need help with, especially in the US, but tax being the, the main one that I could start with. So that’s, that’s what I did. And and, you know, part of what motivated me was just the amount of bad information and sort of people earning, you know, commanding respect to sales, tax experts, but they don’t have resumes to back them up, they don’t have the qualifications to back them up. But they’ve just kind of, you know, through, you know, you get on enough podcast, you develop a reputation as a thought leader, right. And that’s the problem is that a lot of these folks, you know, they’ve been partnering with software companies that are very big and have an interest in making you tackle attacks, and basically had become spokesman for it, and giving really bad advice, and I’m in my business a lot on the sales tax is fixing it. And if you know, whether it’s this podcast, or you go back and put my name in YouTube, and watch any podcast or webinar I’ve ever done, going back two years, you’ll see that I’ve been pretty adamant against Amazon sellers registering to collect tags, even when the states were offering that amnesty program where you could register, and they would forgive your back taxes. I was saying that, that that’s a really, you know, dangerous trap that you’re jumping into. So very unlike the rest of the folks out there. In summary, I mean, I guess it’s really is it’s, you know, do you really know, you know who your sources. I mean, who who are the people telling you to collect them? What are their qualifications? And what are their interests in telling you to Google columns like that?
Michael Veazey 9:13
Yeah, I mean, I guess that there’s, in a sense, no such thing as objective information ever, right? I mean, I remember when I used to study, when I say study history, not at university level, but in school as in high school for Americans listening. So, but I’ve always been very, very interested in that. And one of the things is, it’s important to look at, yeah, the CV or the resume of somebody, but also what their obvious motivation is, and, you know, I as a podcaster, you know, that I’m probably somebody to be very skeptical when you listen to and that’s okay. I’m telling you right now, I don’t know the right answer about sales tax, I have no idea because it seems so complex to me, and I get very conflicting information. So I’m just being a channel, I’m going to put the questions that I hear people asking the masterminds I’m a member of, and I guess it’s like my role of the masterminds? I’m the convenience of the masterminds. I’m not the guru, I don’t tell people what to do. I’m like, Okay, I’m going to put a question to you. Now. I don’t know if it’s right, or not the answers that you come up with, but I think you should ask the question. So I guess that’s my job. But one of the one of the questions that obviously comes up now then is if you’re in an uncertain situation, and managing uncertainty has to be one of those skill sets that in general, entrepreneurs need to get good at, right. So basically, deal with Amazon, it seems. So what is the rights of path? I mean, it seems to me, and a lot of people have taken this path, who really smart guys, when we discuss this kind of thing, and knocking around the table at the mastermind meetings that I’m sort of chairing if you’re like all refereeing out, sometimes it gets quite lively. But one of the things is okay, if you could be potentially liable for something. And if you’re not sure whether you will be or not, isn’t it the safest thing to comply with the law as it is now? And then to you know, if the states change the liability over to Amazon, rather than us or the, you know, the responsibility, I should say, which is a different thing, then we are out of the frame, isn’t it just the safest things comply with the law right now?
Paul Rafelson 10:58
Yeah, if you can afford to do it. I don’t know if it’s the safest thing. But certainly, that’s the first problem is that a lot of sellers in the seven figure range, especially struggle with it. I mean, I work with companies that do well over 100 million off of Amazon. And in that situation, they do have to collect sales tax, because if you’re doing 100 million, you know, even if you’re doing 10 million off of Amazon, the sales tax issue is still there. But when you’re doing 234 million on Amazon, I mean, the amount of time effort and hassle that you have to go through to get that done is a lot. And a lot of times when you register with the software companies, I’ll tell you, Oh, it’s you know, these are sales tax people. They’re not income tax people, they’re not state tax people. I’m not a sales tax person. In fact, sales tax from my perspective as a lawyer, for the fortune 500, I should say, for the fortune 10 companies, I’ve worked for some the largest company in the world, and G G, for those of you who don’t know, is, you know, had historically been known as one of the best tax law firms in the country, despite the fact that we don’t actually have an outside tax law practice. But our reputation for protecting know being a GE tax lawyer is sort of like I sort of say it’s like kind of being called up to the Yankees, when you get recruited to go to GE, it’s like a big deal as a tax lawyer. But the reality is, there’s more to it than just sales tax. It’s not just simply collecting, it’s all the micro jurisdictions, its income tax, it’s registering with the Secretary of State, there’s just so many places, you can footfall that you actually put yourself in more of a danger. And a lot of times by registering. And it’s interesting saving the state change the law, but the actual the law is you’re not supposed to collect sales tax on Amazon, the law is, you’re not a retailer, when you sell through the Amazon platform. A perfect example of this was the letter that the treasurer of California recently wrote to the governor, where she cites California law regulation 1569, which basically says if you are doing the things that Amazon does, like storing your inventory in the FBA warehouses and transferring consumer, then you the FBA fulfillment company, or the retailer for tax purposes, and therefore you are obligation to collect tax, that’s what the California law actually says. Now, that’s not what the California Tax Department is doing. Because their people and their corruptible and and there were beholden to Amazon, and they are a seller in the UK. So they’ve been pushing this, you know, agenda that’s been very anti seller, but doesn’t mean it’s right. And a lot of the states have been, unfortunately, very much influenced by Amazon, and pushed down this road of what’s going on with the sellers. But it’s really not a safe answer. But it’s also sort of a moot point now, because, as you said, Let’s wait until Amazon becomes a tax collector. Well, that’s happened. I mean, that’s really the end of the day, the only state that most sellers probably care about that isn’t going to be making Amazon, the tax collector in the near future. And I mean, the near future by the end of this year, is Florida. They screwed up their their legislative push for that in the Florida and Republicans saw this as a tax increase and bought it didn’t really understand that the tax was already there. With tax, they didn’t actually increase tax liability, they just changing the method of collection, but they fought it. And so Florida loses out. But the law in Florida is just like in any other state is going to hold Amazon accountable as retailer. And so whether they choose to do that or not, is up to them. But good luck going after a salad. And then we have a massive body of constitutional law, which overrides what the state’s say, and says that you really can’t do this, you really can put a massive burden of, you know, making a small business entrepreneur responsible for 50 states worth of tax collection, you know, the same tax burdens that you know, Walmart has to contend with. When you have this obvious solution of making the marketplaces the tax collector, that’s a really obvious workaround that eliminates what we call the burden on interstate commerce, and is 100% effective. Whereas if you don’t do that, you’ve placed a massive burden on interstate commerce. You’ve also given foreign sellers a massive advantage because the likelihood of the government coming after you in the UK for your UK assets pretty low because there’s no full faith and credit clause. So it’s very hard to do. In fact, one of the most renowned professors professor that I used to study under when I was at NYU doing a tax masters of law course, is staying local recently is wrote an article in a in a tax journal about this about how that, you know, the foreign sellers really have no incentive to care. In terms of personal asset protection, that doesn’t mean they can try to do other things. But that really in the day, this is putting more strain on us sellers. And certainly if you’re in China, I mean, I suspect there are sellers in China and other countries that are probably collecting taxi, pocketing it because there’s not even in the states haven’t even asked Amazon to turn over who collects tax when it happens. So that means an absolute mess. But going back to that point, at the end of the year. Most states sellers care, care about money qualify what that means. We’re talking about New York already collecting, right California. As of October 1, Illinois, as of January 1, Texas, October 1
was another big state that isn’t collecting. I think Colorado is October 1. But if you look at the list, it’s like I think it’s like well over 30 odd states now. And so what’s left is like Kansas, well, most sellers, I know don’t do enough business in Kansas to care. You know, it’s not Kansas, Kansas back taxes and going to break a seller. And it’s unlikely the state of Kansas will be going after sellers for back taxes at this point, or at any point. Right. So
Michael Veazey 16:38
okay, this is a this big news. So let me let me just reflect back to you. So make sure that I’ve understood and hopefully that gives listeners a chance to understand because if you’re out like driving or going for a run or washing up like since the time that I do my podcast listening you might be going on and what did you say? So I mean, obviously, you have a huge background, working in House Counsel, Microsoft, Walmart, GE these these are really, really serious companies. So obviously, you have great expertise and understand that other people have a motivation to not be, you know, quite straightforward. And essentially what you’re saying, so come back to the fact that it’s a moot point, first of all, that actually, it’s mostly the game has already happened in the sense that most states that we care about have already basically put something in place so that they’re going to make Amazon the tax collector, which is very interesting is not something you have heard about from other places, which is probably because it’s not in their interest. I guess. The other thing, though, is is that’s come back to this is not even the safest thing to comply with the law thing you were saying that, that that really there are other tax liabilities that you might render yourself liable for is that is that the basic problem with the compliance, the you know, the safest thing is not comply with the law.
Paul Rafelson 17:48
It’s costly. I mean, if you’re doing 789 figures, it gets expensive, right? I mean, it becomes a six figure endeavor very quickly, to collect tax in all these states, you have to take an account that all these states, in the past had said that, if you were, you know, deemed to have Nexus due to a FDA presence, they believe you would owe income tax to and you know, the cost of filing an income tax return is a lot, especially in the UK. Because if you’re a UK seller, you’re paying us and contacts, you’re probably doing something wrong, you should not be paying us income tax, and you feel free to contact us and learn more about that, or we can certainly talk about that another time. But you’re you’re probably not filing these tax returns. So you’re going to have to file the US tax returns, or at least prepare sort of what I would call sort of dummy copies of US tax returns and then use that as a basis for filing state income tax returns. Now, typical accountant, maybe 500 to $1,000, a state, you get into 40 states 50 states, you can see how the cost adds up, right? I mean, and the complexity adds up. And sometimes it’s really ridiculous, you know, you’re going to spend $1,000, to pay Mississippi be 100. But that’s what they want. registering with the Secretary of State to do business, a lot of these states haven’t sort of separated the idea that you know, you can be a sales tax collector, and not be required. It’s like the sales tax in the state. So like in Connecticut, for example, we had somebody end up in a situation where they registered because they listened to a software company, they registered sales tax, they never registered as a foreign company, foreign meaning not in the state, not necessarily in another country, but just foreign are also just means that out of state. But not registering as a foreign business doing business in the state of Connecticut fail to register, the Secretary of State got a $200 a month bill. They didn’t find out about that bill for two and a half to three years. So that that added up to well over eight grand when you factor in the interest and penalties for not being registered, there was a $200 penalty. So you know, there’s all these little gotchas and then there’s going to be an onslaught you never you can’t do it. Right. There’s no right way to to taxes always. There’s always, you know, there’s problems with the state systems, there’s problem with the nuances that the things that requires you start getting letters in the mail that you do free file that we file this, you know, you’re going to hire accountants to fix that. You know, before you know it, I mean, the cost really is is substantial. I mean, companies struggle to do 50 state tax compliance Colorado has, is it hundreds or thousands? I forget what I think it’s like 700 micro jurisdictions. So it’s not just Colorado, it’s Aspen, it’s Boulder, Denver, right, they all have their own little tax department is not on the same form. It’s not even the same administrative body. It’s like their own tax agency for this for the city of Aspen. And so you’ve got to deal with all those micro jurisdictions now. And then, you know, it just all of this complexity adds up, but complying with a state law. I mean, it’s not that you’re not complying. I mean, I know it’s hard to imagine that when the government says, This is the answer, this is what you’re supposed to do it but they’re wrong. I mean, the government doesn’t understand Amazon, to the extent that they understand Amazon, they’re getting their explanation from Amazon. So Amazon’s obviously not too the government, their retailer, Amazon’s game, and this has always been to make tax collection money so that they don’t have to collect tax and maintain a competitive advantage over local businesses. That’s sort of been their little game all along. It’s not a secret. And so they, you know, they they’re the only ones that are listening to in terms of how it all works. And the states are getting bad advice. And so they’re telling you what to do based on bad advice, and bad understanding of what the realities of Amazon are.
Michael Veazey 21:26
Yeah, I’m, I guess one of the things that strikes me is that we always, I mean, maybe it’s a UK based thing, maybe we don’t do that in in America, but it’s we tend to say is the government like there is one unitary type government, I guess, in the UK, and maybe similarly in France, we use the very unified centralized national government. And okay, you can go on to about Brexit and, and constitutional issues with the European Union. But the fact is that European Union, a lot of ways works quite elegantly in the international agreements are made, and then they have built into the national law. So most of if we leave the EU tomorrow, or in October, when it’s supposed to, I would just point out that actually, most of what it goes on about and everyone objects is already now built into UK law. And yet we could change it. But most of it’s just one fairly unified legal system. Whereas Of course, America, from an outside perspective, just seems like there’s no such thing as Dutch government, there’s your local county, which might ban alcohol, there’s your state, which might believe in abortion will be against it, you might have the death penalty or not, these are not small things are there. And then there’s the federal level. So it strikes me that it’s very clearly an extraordinarily complex system from the jurisdiction point of view. And I think we’re very used to kind of in the UK, kind of going all the government which is fairly identified as viable a city in Westminster. And and doing what they say is, you know, we got local government in this country does not have that great powers, like it seems like having USA, yeah. And he got Council Tax there within rates. But if you don’t have a physical presence very much, it’s not a problem. So I think it’s a big sort of going to put it as a legal cultural change that I think we’ve got to get our heads around it based in Europe.
Paul Rafelson 23:01
Yeah. Well, it’s funny you say that. So the government is, in my line of work, tax controversy, we regularly use the word the government is just sort of a short gun. It’s just whenever we’re talking about, you know, a particular state. So it’s actually a really interesting insight. They asked that question, because you’re right. We We are a federal a system, but we have states and states rights. And, you know, our Constitution is based on the idea that states have the individual rights to police themselves, right. So each state has has its own autonomy and how it wants to culturally establish itself. And so long as those cultural differences don’t impede on US law that’s allowed to, you know, over ride with the states can do, the states are free to do so. So that’s why we have variations and things like gambling laws. In fact, we had a case last summer, right around the time away, there were new jersey was challenging a federal ban on sports betting. And, surprisingly, the US government lost or the NCAA loss, but really, the law that the government passed that would prevent new jersey from having sports betting betting in Atlantic City was ruled invalid by the court. You know, they felt that that was the state’s right issue that states had the right to sort of regulate that that was their own, you know, autonomous, right to decide how those types of, you know, sports betting gambling, whether or not it was allowed in a state that was really for the federal government to say, which without going into the heavy detail of it was pretty landmark, given certain nuances and how the law works. And the powers the federal government has to pass those types of laws. But you’re absolutely right. I mean, we do have every state has its own body of law, and they’re not very good at it. I mean, they’re not sophisticated. It’s it’s in and, you know, having a law and having the law administered correctly as to other things. So you’ve got plenty of room for error. So that’s why, you know, that’s why there are lawyers like me out there who make a living or fighting the government and winning. I mean, it was it’s because of governments wrong a lot. And the various governments I should say, are wrong, a lot. And laws aren’t written clearly, or being misinterpreted. There’s no shortage of that. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a lawyer to do this for a living.
Michael Veazey 25:14
Now, I guess. No, it just strikes me that actually in the land of the free in the free enterprise that’s actually more treacherous to free enterprise than a lot of European jurisdictions, it seems. But I mean, certainly Britain, is very straightforward. Here. I’m part from Brexit, which is the one kind of self imposed strange thing we’re not even going to talk about today.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
