Archive for November, 2006
Wine Distribution Notes, v11.2
November 30th, 2006
R. Corbin Houchins, Beverage Industry Counsel, just released version 11.2 of his Notes on Wine Distribution. This is a great resource and recommended reading for all that are interested in wine direct shipping. The first sentence of each release describes this resource well:
These notes, now in their thirteenth year, are intended to serve discussion and development of wine distribution options in a changing legal environment, with emphasis on alternatives to three-tier systems.
We will start posting these new releases as soon as they become available.
Sales tax rate decrease in North Carolina
November 27th, 2006
From the North Carolina DOR notice
The North Carolina General Assembly enacted legislation that reduces the general State rate of sales and use tax from 4.5% to 4.25% effective December 1, 2006 and from 4.25% to 4% effective July 1, 2007. Therefore, effective December 1, 2007 2006 the general State rate of sales and use tax will be 4.25%. Effective July 1, 2007, the general State rate will be 4%. Items subject to the general State rate of sales and use tax are also subject to any applicable local rate of sales and use tax. All counties levy a 2.5% local sales and use tax; Mecklenburg County also levies an additional .5% local tax for public transportation.
Compliance Q/A in Kennewick, WA – 11/28
November 22nd, 2006
Welcome to the (brief) second installment of shipping compliance events summary! These events are great opportunities to hear from experts on legislative changes to the rules, best practices for staying compliant and growing your market, special offers on shipping and other related services, and introductions to technology solutions.
November 28th – Washington Wine Industry Summit – Shipping Compliance Q & A
Click here for more information and registration
Three Rivers Convention Center
Kennewick, WA
The free ShipCompliant MapTool
November 13th, 2006
Wine Business Monthly wrote a quick piece this morning about a free tool our team created to help wineries communicate their direct shipping policies in a consistent and brand sensitive manner.
Wineries do not have to be ShipCompliant customers in order to use the free widget that creates a nicely printed PDF map of their OnSite or OffSite direct shipping policies. We have appreciated all the feedback we’ve recieved thus far, so please continue to let us know what you think.
To use the tool, simply select which states you would like to appear on your map, change the titles, upload a logo and choose the colors for your states and you are done. Click here to give it a whirl.
The second wave of the Granholm tsunami
November 7th, 2006
Two states now have court cases that illustrate the second wave of the Granholm tsunami. Explicit discrimination in favor of local wineries relative to out-of-state wineries is, in theory at least, already washed away. We now see another crest on the horizon, aspiring to wipe out de facto discrimination –where the formal text of the challenged regulatory scheme is non-discriminatory, but the result disadvantages interstate commerce. The first case of that category to render a dispositive ruling was Huber Winery v. Wilcher, noted in a previous post.
On October 10, 2006 a federal district court in Tennessee consolidated two cases before it. One is the 2006 S.L. Thomas Family Winery suit, in which both parties have moved for judgment on the pleadings, the plaintiff relying on Granholm, and the state asserting inherent 21st Amendment powers. The state contends that its laws deny direct shipment equally to all wineries, making the suit a de facto discrimination case based on differential inconvenience, similar in that respect to Huber, in which the court rejected the state’s proposed leveling down to on-site sales for all wineries because of the greater burden of visiting a California winery relative to a local winery.
The other case is Jelovsek v. Bredesen, a consumer action filed about a month after the Granholm decision in 2005. In June 2006, the court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss in Jelovsek, which had argued that a consumer, as distinct from a winery licensee, does not suffer the kind of harm to an interest required for judicial relief. That argument (challenging a plaintiff’s to “standing to sue”) seems unlikely to succeed in a properly conducted Commerce Clause discrimination case, in view of the Granholm opinion’s reference to a consumer right of access to national markets. In any event, the defendants appear to concede that the standing issue has been taken out of the S.L. Thomas Family Winery case by consolidation with Jelovsek.
