N.H. smart to protect its tax-free status

The Portsmouth Herald editorializes on the benefits New Hampshire reaps by protecting its customers from Massachusetts tax collectors.

Look at the license plates in shopping plazas along Route 1 in Seabrook. About half of them are from Massachusetts.

They're outside Wal-Mart and Lowe's and Home Depot. Increasingly, they're outside Shaw's and Market Basket.

They're in lines at the discount gas stations where prices are 20 cents or more a gallon cheaper that just across the border.

Even with the increase in the New Hampshire cigarette tax, they're buying cigarettes in New Hampshire.

Anecdotally, there is a hand-written sign near the cash register in a small grocery store in a Massachusetts town near the border that reads: "To our valued customers" and goes on to recommend they buy their cigarettes in New Hampshire because of the savings.