Tennessee Sales Tax: Fill & Download for Free

Most smartphones are generally more expensive in India than they are in the States. And there are a whole host of reasons for that.Firstly, it isn’t fair to compare the USD 649 to INR 57,000. While the latter is the all inclusive price in India, including sales tax, VAT, and a gamut of other taxes, the former doesn’t include the sales tax which varies across jurisdictions, ranging from lowest in Alaska (1.76%) to highest in Tennessee (9.45%).The average is close to around 7%.So the USD 649 is actually more like USD 680–720.The current USDINR rate is 66.80. So, the USD 649 base rate translates to INR 43,350.Now add the below taxes.BCD (Basic Customs Duty) - 10%SAD (Special Additional Duty) - 4%CVD (Countervailing duties / anti-subsidy duties) - 12.50%The compounding effect is a whooping 28.7%.So, the post tax price is INR 43,350*1.287 = INR 55,800.Also, global phone manufacturers without a retail presence in India sell through third parties who will add their own share of profit to the price. Finally, the manufacturer themselves have to have a buffer to protect against negative exchange rate movement of the Indian currency. That would account for the final INR 1,200 difference.Similarly the USD 749 price point comes toUSD 749 * 66.80 INR/USD * 1.287 = 64,400. The remaining 1,600 again being third party retail costs and buffer against currencyAll these factors contribute to the 35–45% premium in price of flagship smartphones in India as compared to US.

Thanks for the A2A.I’m a Californian.It may surprise some of you to hear this, but California is not a nice place. Socially, environmentally, economically, it’s a crap-hole.And I am continuously reminded of this whenever I travel out-of-state.Let me explain what I mean.Some of the things I notice when I travel to other American states, in descending order, are:1. How nice and polite and considerate everybody is. This is probably the thing that surprises me the most about other states. I experienced near-total culture shock when I left California in 2004 and began attending college in North Dakota.Everybody was so…nice.So friendly.So trusting.So humble.The service in the restaurants was actually good. Not just good, but personal.People remembered my name, after I’d only told them once.They said things like “please” and “thank you” without fail, whether they wanted something from me or not.They invited me over to their houses for meals and extended stays after knowing me maybe an hour or two.They were kind, hospitable, empathetic, and guileless.North Dakota was like that. Minnesota was like that. Tennessee was like that, too.It depresses me, even now, to think how accustomed I’d become to being surrounded by selfish, conceited, ostentatious blowhards. Californians, in general, are some of the rudest, most inconsiderate, most superficial, most entitled, and most self-centered people I’ve ever encountered.2. How safely everyone drives. This is kind of related to #1, but I thought it deserved a discussion of its own.I was in Seattle last December. I’d never been to Seattle before. I was driving from the airport to the downtown area in the rain. The traffic was, I’d say, medium-light.Something strange about the way everyone around me was driving kept niggling at me. It took me a while to figure out what it was.Then it hit me like a bolt from the blue.Everybody was driving the speed limit.I looked around and every car I saw, even those in the fast lane, was doing a sedate 65 miles per hour. Many were doing less.I have become accustomed, in my 20-odd years of living in California, to being the only person on the freeway who actually drives the speed limit. I’m used to literally every other person on the road going faster than me and passing me. I was astounded to find that this was apparently abnormal in other states—even in large cities!Granted, it was raining in Seattle, and perhaps some of the speed demons were erring on the side of caution. But even so! In California, adverse weather conditions like rain, snow, and fog count for naught. You will still find yahoos speeding down the freeways at homicidal speeds, no matter the weather.I was floored—and quite pleased—that Washingtonians seemed to set a higher premium on traffic safety.3. How low the sales tax is (assuming there is sales tax). California sales tax is 7.25%. That’s not the highest in the US by any means, but it’s a fair chunk of change. Frequently, there are other taxes added on to Californian purchases. A five-cents-per-gallon gas tax just went into effect statewide on July 1, for example. There are local taxes to contend with sometimes, too. To estimate how much sales tax I’ll pay in California, I generally add 10% of the total cost of the items I’m buying.So when I travel to a state that has lower sales tax, like Wyoming (4%) or states that don’t have sales tax at all, like Montana and Oregon, it’s weird. Everything seems so much cheaper. I don’t have to calculate sales tax because it’s either a negligible amount (by comparison) or zero.4. How clean and safe it is—or seems, anyway. I’m sure Boise, Idaho has its problems. All cities do. Crime. Urban decay. Pollution. Drugs. But I gotta tell you, compared to practically any major (or non-major) Californian city, Boise looks like paradise. Fresh, clean air. Clean streets, devoid of potholes. Green front lawns, devoid of trash or junked cars. Houses that don’t have peeling paint, sagging screens, or pungent whiffs of marijuana wafting out of them. Relatively low crime rates. “Problems” that would make an urban-dwelling Californian laugh.Pretty much every major Western city I’ve visited—from Phoenix, Arizona to Seattle, Washington—looks cleaner, brighter, friendlier, better managed, and more hopeful than the Californian cities I frequent. Hell, even Boston looked better.5. How empty it is. I grew up in California, the most populous state in the Union, with almost 40 million people as of this writing. (When I was growing up, it had about 35 million people). It’s also the third largest state by area, at 163,695 square miles.Then I moved to Wyoming, the tenth largest state by area (at 97,914 square miles). At the time I was living there, the state had a population of roughly 532,000 people—the smallest of any state.California had seventy times as many people as Wyoming.Needless to say, Wyoming’s population density is a bit less than California’s, even though Wyoming is 60% of California’s size. There’s a lot more open space. A lot fewer towns, a lot fewer people. (I heard a rumor, probably apocryphal, that Wyoming actually has more antelope than people.)I live less than two hours from San Francisco. The San Francisco Bay (commonly referred to as “the Bay Area”) is one of the most densely populated urban areas in the country. Even out in the boondocks where I live (San Joaquin County, in California’s so-called “Central Valley”), the population density is ridiculous. The so-called “small town” that I live in has 60,000 people in it. It’s adjacent to a Californian city that most people don’t even know the name of, but which is the 13th largest city in California and the 63rd largest in the country. (Stockton, in case you were curious.)I’m used to there being a lot of people around.So when I drive over the mountains into the adjacent state of Nevada and enter the howling nothingness between Reno and Winnemucca, I am gobsmacked at how empty and lonesome it is. There’s just nothing out there. And it’s creepy.

I just saw Senator Bob Corker post this on Facebook:“Tennessee continues to be a great place to do business, and I am proud of all our state has done to create an environment for job growth.”With a link to this story:Haslam: June featured lowest unemployment rate in Tennessee historyIt’s great that unemployment is down to 3.6% in Tennessee, but Corker and Haslam are really spinning the facts out of proportion. The headline is charged too, it isn’t the lowest in “Tennessee history,” it’s the lowest in 41 years, since the state government started keeping track of the unemployment rate.What’s more concerning?This:You see that? Tennessee is the state with the highest rate of workers at minimum wage — with current policy, you can’t really get anywhere. Tennessee has one of the most regressive tax systems in the United States — with no income tax and sales taxes of nearly 10%, low-income households pay higher percentage-of-income than the rich, stunting entrepreneurs and minimum wage workers in what would otherwise be a relatively business-friendly and deregulated market. Instead, because of the regressive and ridiculously high sales tax, businesses are conglomerating and buying out the little guy.I have no beef with Governor Haslam’s comments on the wonderfully low unemployment rate, but Corker’s insinuation that the 40-year unemployment low means that business is growing shows either intent to deceive or an elected official too out of touch with the day-to-day going-ons of the average citizen’s life — neither of which the public should tolerate.In the end, you can put a spin on things any which way you want, but personally, I think Senator Corker is trying to roll with the notion that it’s better to have jobs that suck and don’t get you anywhere, or put in a more memorable fashion — the rather Clintonian assumption of“Hey, better to have blowjobs than no jobs, am I right?”