It wasn't by accident that I picked escapees from Massachusetts. I was just mirroring reality. There has been press about people leaving Massachusetts, because of taxes, and then trying to turn New Hampshire, and other destinations, into mini-Massachusetts.
Same thing happens on the left coast. Californicators (so-called because they come from California to escape the taxation and regulation, then frack things up in Oregon) priced housing out of the reach of the locals and demanded all sorts of 'services' and 'protections' like they had back at home, apparently not realizing that all those S&Ps were the cause of the high taxes they tried to escape in the first place.
Not quite, in the case of Oregon. They saw "no sales tax" and went YAY, then blinked when they got the property tax bill, especially as property values skyrocketed due to people selling off an expensive California property, using that to buy a relatively cheap house, but still overpaying for the area, driving the assessed value of everything around it up, and started voting to cut property taxes. This resulted in a lot of unhappy people when services started getting cut to keep up with the reduced taxes.
My own primary action item when I get there (hopefully a matter of months rather than years now) is getting rid of the sales tax on prepared food. I plan to be a restaurateur, and I hate the idea of being a tax collector.
If I understand it correctly, the tax is technically on the restauranteur themselves, they just typically pass it along directly to the customer.
You do not understand it correctly as it is worded in every place I've looked.
It's restaurateur, not restauranteur. Trust me on this. I used to get it wrong too.
It might be worded that way, but the tax people get pissy if it isn't added explicitly at the end for them to analyze. Ever bought something at a convention? Noticed that a lot of vendors will just take cash for the stated value of their items, but if you pay with a card, they add on sales tax suddenly? That's why.