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Originally Posted by fishbones
Actually, you said it was going to be chartered for "a good part of the year". There was nothing to indicate that except for a quip about maintenace and charter purposes. Nothing about how many charters it would be used for. You were wrong to assume. Reasonable, shmeasonable.
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Actually, what I said was that "it looks like" the boat is going to be chartered for a good part of a year. This is a reasonable assumption based on the spokesperson remark, business fundamentals (of leasing a yacht) and the fact that John Kerry doesn't actually own the boat. It's registered to a LLC based out of Pennsylvania, probably to provide liability protection to the Kerry's...again, basic business practices.
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Again, it was simple to find the ship yard where the yacht was berthed and make a quick phone call. The closest location that they do charters is out of Maine, and they only charter boats that are berthed there. It doesn't matter what other boats are chartered out of Portsmouth. I guess it's only wrong doing if you consider lying while making an excuse for not paying half a million dollars in taxes wrong doing.
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You said "they don't do charters out of Portsmouth" without providing who "they" is. That that company the boat was bought from doesn't do charters from Portsmouth isn't really relevant as the Kerry spokesperson never alleged that the company who owns the current birth was managing the charters.
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The fact that it was discovered that the boat had been kept in Massachsetts waters within the 6 month time frame for paying taxes on it seems to me that there was some wrong doing.
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I've read that the boat was "seen" in MA waters but never that it was "kept".
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Oh, and the fact that once the story broke, Kerry was quick to say that he was going to pay what he owed to the state also indicates that he's only paying because he was caught.
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Or more likely that he's filthy rich and to him the 500K isn't worth the political damage done by accusations with no real merit, at least not yet.
Let's recap. The yacht is bought from a RI company in March (that's less than 6 months ago mind you). RI has no taxes on boats. The boat came with a warranty. As they intend to charter the boat they keep in in RI so the warranty service can be provided. The boat was seen in MA. It's actually owned by a legal entity in PA. MA can go after taxes if they think they boat is being used too much in MA.
That's about all we really know, but John Kerry is guilty of tax evasion.
-spence