Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton just announced that he wants to levy a sales tax on legal services. I think I heard the proposed rate is 5.5%. Funny, I always thought that the filing fees that we already have to pay were a sort of tax. Not long ago , under the previous governor, all the filing fees in Minnesota were increased dramatically because of state budget problems.
I wonder if besides the attorney fee he also wants to tax the filing fees. Since all I do is bankruptcy work, which is always filed in federal court, the filing fees I collect from my clients are all for the federal court. Query: Is it constitutional for a state to put a sales tax on a federal fee?
If you are from a state where attorney fees are already subject to a sales tax, I would be interested to hear the details of how it is done in your state and what the clients think about it. My clients are already about as broke as they can get. To tell you the truth, this feels very uncaring to me. I understand that one state legislator is already talking about how this tax is going to help people.
Here’s a link to an article in today’s Star Tribune on the subject.
