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Warming Battle Over Online Taxes
mackertm writes "The NYT (free registration, blah blah) has an interesting story about the fight over Internet taxation. A coalition of states and some big clicks-and-mortar retailers are leading the charge to simplify the process of collecting taxes online. Amazon, Dell, and eBay are the biggest pure e-tailers resisting this movement. It's fun to see Amazon try and talk about how difficult it would be to implement taxes for all states, when it's already doing it for Target and Toys 'R Us."
I already pay too much tax as it is. Period!! The state and feds need to learn to live within the budget they currently have...and stop spending. I willing pay taxes for infrastructure, education, defense, and care for the truly infirmed and elderly...but, I do not want to pay into a wealth re-distribution plan. Which I feel our current system is. I say no more new taxes...leave the internet alone.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Hmm...but rich people tend to spend more, so they pay more tax. It's the exact same percentage of what they pay on goods/services if you're rich or poor. That's why tax theorists favor it, its FAIR. In your example, the rich person is more likely to buy a more expensive computer and pay more taxes, or buy more computers, and pay more taxes, or by a computer and a big screen TV, and pay more taxes, or buy more-expensive-crappier food and pay more taxes. As opposed to now, when the rich person just pays more income taxes (95% of the money raised from income taxes comes from people considered "rich") and gets no additional use for their money.
What's the solution? You spend a lot of time whining about the "regressive" taxes, but you don't pose any alternatives.
I've always been in favor of a head tax. The guy who sits next to me with 12 kids would pay a lot more taxes than me instead of a lot less (I'm not exaggerating, he really has 12 kids. He talks to them all day on the phone. It's as annoying as you'd think.) But that kind of tax is "Anti-Family" (then again, so am I), so it'll never happen. It would, however, nicely reduce the noisy brat in the restaurant problem. Friggin breeders. (yes, this paragraph is mostly a joke. Except for the screaming brats and friggin breeders part.)
So, you want a flat tax? That's disproportionately