Comment by triceratops | Hacker News Reader

Comment by triceratops | Hacker News Reader

> Hobby Lobby bought the tablet in a private sale, after a Hobby Lobby representative viewed the tablet in London. The auction house shipped the tablet to its New York office and, from there, hand-carried it to Hobby Lobby's headquarters in Oklahoma City, "so that Hobby Lobby could avoid incurring a New York sales tax," according to prosecutors.

Oy vey. I don't know how serious this is but it's not a great look. Is this kind of thing common in the art world?

I find old clay tablets, and ancient writings in general, absolutely fascinating - particularly the randomness of the information that we can get from them. The oldest person whose name we know is from a signature on a receipt for some oil or some other merchandise.[1] It's slightly incredible when you realize that you have no idea who the ruler at the time was, or what he (or she did) but you can pinpoint precisely which goods exchanged hands on a specific date.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kushim_(individual)

There’s an entire industry built around moving very expensive art so that you don’t have to pay any taxes on it. Switzerland and Monaco (and I’m sure others) have “free ports” where expensive art that is bought as an investment can be stored tax free. It’s kind of like storing the painting at the international departures gate in perpetuity.

Since it would be a pity to spend so much on a painting you never get to see there are companies that will create a replica of your beautiful tax liability so that you can enjoy your multi-million dollar investment. Rumor has it these replicas are so good they occasionally get “mistaken” for the real thing and the worthless art ends up in storage while the expensive art ends up hanging in the wealthy collector’s living room tax-free. Oops. Classic mixup.

For further reading, Wikipedia has a list of freeports.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_economic_zones

> Is this kind of thing [tax evasion] common in the art world?

Oh yes, it seems so common that it's more or less openly advertised:

https://www.wealthmanagement.com/art-auctions-antiques-repor...

And art collectors are not infrequently involved in shady schemes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urs_Schwarzenbach#VAT_fraud_an...

The super rich play a completely different game than the rest of us.

I wonder if this is actually tax evasion. I think the idea behind this was to avoid a taxable event from taking place, not to lie in order to avoid paying taxes they legally had to. It's analogous to me driving out of my way to avoid going over a toll bridge, vs. (for example) covering up my license plate to avoid being caught by the toll cameras.

> Oy vey. I don't know how serious this is but it's not a great look. Is this kind of thing common in the art world?

Sure. The British museum used to be fairly brazen about the fact that they'd loot less-developed countries for cultural artifacts. Who do you think used to sponsor archaeology expeditions?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Museum#Controversies

Err... my comment was referring to the sales tax evasion. I'm aware that the looting of cultural artifacts is an age-old practice, that's only recently been legislated against.

If your New York business sells something to someone in Oklahoma, you don't have to charge NY sales tax. That's not controversial or a grey area (edit: until 2018). I don't know exactly how they structured this transaction, but if it ended up in Oklahoma it seems to be within the spirit of the law.

> If your New York business sells something to someone in Oklahoma, you don't have to charge NY sales tax

Are you sure about that? It seems that at least online businesses don't work that way.[1]

1. https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/self-employment-taxes/s...

I'm not an expert, but that link seems to agree with me (note we are talking about a transaction circa 2014).

> If your business has a physical presence, or “nexus”, in a state, you must collect applicable sales taxes from online customers in that state.

> If you do not have a physical presence, you generally do not have to collect sales tax for online sales. However, in June of 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that will likely change this exemption to collecting sales tax.

Ah got it. It may have been legal at the time.

The buyer is still responsible for paying a 'use tax' in that case (which is typically identical to the sales tax rate).

This is referring to the sales tax in the buyer's state. I'm not aware of any state that requires sales tax in the seller's state for orders that were not made or received in that state.

> Err... my comment was referring to the sales tax evasion.

It's not immediately clear to me why, when someone in Oklahoma City purchases an object from someone in London, anyone should be paying a New York sales tax.

Different times and rules. Britain robbed it's colonies and exploited their people. Doesn't mean the British museum would still do this today (but I'd also not exclude it). In contrast some countries like Germany have started actively bringing cultural heritage back to its home (often against the institutions currently holding them).

Wait, your problem is with the actions taken to avoid a taxable event in New York by a buyer in Oklahoma?

This is the same as when you buy something on Amazon and the tax is based on your delivery destination, rather than Amazon's distribution centers or headquarters. It is lawful and makes sense.

Boeing, for years, 'delivered' jets at the Portland, Oregon airport to avoid Washington state sales tax.

This to me is the most egregious part:

> [...] authorities said it bought thousands of artifacts that had been smuggled out of Iraq. Some of the items on display at the Museum of the Bible had been looted from previously unknown archaeological sites.

Breathtakingly unethical.

...assuming that they knew they were looted. You could make a case that, yes of course these items were looted, and they turned a blind eye to that. But you could also make a case that they trusted a 3rd party to validate the artifacts.

Don't forget this is the group that voluntarily funded research that eventually proved some of their most prized possessions were, in fact, forgeries[0], so we have to assume they have at least a modicum of ethics.

[0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/museum-of...

It’s not a modicum of ethics, it’s ass-covering in the case of legal challenges from the countries where these items were looted. After several high-profile antiquities cases in the early 90s and 2000s, and a federal precedent out of New York, every museum was forced to do this kind of bare minimum due diligence to avoid prosecution. Prior to this, they were being brazenly in bed with organized criminal networks in buying this stuff.

They may have a moral code, but it is the sort of code that is OK with illegally smuggling artifacts that their own hired experts and lawyers were concerned were looted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_Lobby_smuggling_scandal

I'd suggest being open about forgery shows they're interested in getting their money's worth from their feeders.

So they share the moral code of as the great state-run museums of England, France, Italy, and Spain? That's good to know actually.

Yeah, cowardly thieves are as common as rats.

> But you could also make a case that they trusted a 3rd party to validate the artifacts.

Given the nature of the business, that would have been breathtakingly naive of them. There's a certain point at which naivety isn't credible.

Well...yes allegedly buying looted artifacts is bad, but that was already the headline. I didn't realize that allegations of sales tax evasion(? not sure if it was a charge, or just an interesting tidbit pointed out by prosecutors), a pretty pedestrian crime in comparison, would also accompany these charges. It's sort of like: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArsonMurderAndJa...

Forget the artwork ethics, Hobby Lobby owners are notorious.

Forced people to come to work at their stores despite orders to close during pandemic as definitely not "essential". Their reason? "god" spoke to owner's wife and said to stay open.

You also may remember them from suing against ACA for religion exemptions against allowing their employees to have access to the pill under insurance (they oddly won).

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