Kerry to pay “sails” tax on yacht

July 27, 2010

OK, Sen. John Kerry is tired of all the yacht tax questions.

Kerry announced this afternoon that he's paying all Massachusetts taxes due on his new $7 million yacht even though it's docked
in Rhode Island, where he bought it and which doesn't collect sales tax on luxury vessels.

Rough calculations mean that Kerry will hand over to Bay State tax officials $437,500 in state use taxes, the companion to state sales taxes when an item is purchased in one jurisdiction but brought into another for regular use.

Massachusetts' senior U.S. Senator also will owe another $70,000 thanks to the state's annual excise tax on yachts.

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Comments
  • Kay
    14 years ago

    Since the nonpayment was widely reported by media across the political spectrum, I would suspect that continued nonpayment would have been noted, too. But I’ll try to track it down.

  • Woody
    14 years ago

    I saw some time back where Sen. Kerry had further delayed paying his “sails tax,” but I never found any confirmation that he actually did get around to paying it…not that the left-wing press would ever follow up on that. Do you know if that tax was actually ever paid?

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