Subject: Company Change - Chris Smith

From: "Smith, Chris " <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 16:17:52 -0500

Effective the end of December, I will no longer be employed with
Royal Bank of Canada. As such I will not be participating in
this list from this address.

If you are following up on old correspondence regarding
only working group or IOTP items, that is from
[email-masked], those items can be directed 
to    [email-masked]    . This address has been part
of the TRADE list for some time.

If there are Royal Bank specific items you wish to follow-up
on, I would suggest you contact

    Tim McGaugh
    [email-masked]

to deal with the disposition of those items.

Although I will continue to participate as an individual
where appropriate, I will have to wait until January to
establish how my new employer wishes to handle items or
work such as this.

Best wishes for the coming year...

....Chris Smith

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From: Chris Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2000 01:30:53 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)

Some time back, we had an almost-acrimonious discussion here
regarding taxation and purchase protocols.

Whether you like it or not, that discussion may be about to
return, via the Streamlined Sales Tax Project.

CNNfn has a reasonably complete article on this, with much
background info...

http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2000/12/22/cashflow/q_salestax/index.htm

Quite simply, it looks like the idea of online ordering as
a way to avoid some taxes is not going to fly. The good news
would seem to be that the legislative initiatives are designed
to *reduce* the complexity of the sales tax situation, rather
than simply declare that 'taxes must be collected' without
regard for the difficulty of implementation.

-- 
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 Chris Smith                     <[email-masked]>