Retailers Want Moratorium On New Internet Taxes Nixed

This Associated Press story says (surprise, surprise) that retailers like Wal-Mart, Target and Circuit City don't want a permanent exemption on new Internet taxes, saying that it's unfair to traditional retailers. Congress created the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce to consider just such issues. So far their recommendations have been in favor of the wired purchaser, establishing and now continuing the current moratorium on new online taxes. The question doesn't seem to be whether online sales will be taxed -- it's when, and how.

Comments

Fair or Unfair is Irrelevant

[Detritus]

Constitution of the United States of America
Article I, Section 9

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

That should be the end of the discussion, at least concerning the imposition of state sales taxes on out-of-state vendors. A State is free to tax or not tax sales of goods within their borders. They do not have the power to impose their taxes on the citizens of other states.

Why net taxes are bad

[wowbagger]

Since source code has been judged a form of free speech....

#include <government.hpp>
void example(void)
{
Government us;
++us;
--us;
# ERROR - operator -- not defined for class Government

bash>

In other words, governments, once enacted, do not shrink. Just as a cancerous tumor secretes substances to increase its blood supply, governments seek to increase their money supply via taxes. Just as the best way to keep a cancer from growing is to prevent angiogenesis, the best way to keep a government small is to limit its budget by limiting taxes. In fact, this was one of the very reasons that the Founding Fathers of the US prohibited the federal government from imposing an income tax (then along came the 16th amendment, which made it legal). Consider all the intrusions into your life that come about as a result of income tax:

• Your income must be reported to the federal government
• The size of your family must be reported in order to compute deductions.
• The amount of interest you pay on your home must be reported
• The amount you pay anybody in your employ must be reported

and so on. The number of taxes we pay needs to be decreased, and more of what the federal government does needs to be done either by the state or local goverments, or (hold on to your hat, strange idea coming up) by the people themselves.

However, since the actions to make this happen must be taken by the government, who will not benefit from them, they are about as likely as the source code for Windows 2000 quantum tunneling out of Redmond into Sunsite.