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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."
Go on. It's good for the economy.
"Clicks and mortar"? "E-tailers"? That alone was enough to keep me from reading the article.
Texas is finally getting the internet!?
... :)
Wow, I thought this day would never come. I thought all them rednecks would just be sittin' there talking about their "inner net" (inner netting on shorts), for decades
Two words: Customs Duties.
... they might go missing.
Painful! And plus they might search your stuff, so no purchasing of illicit materials or sex toys
I, for one, don't collect taxes when I'm running a garage sale.
The IRS has been notified of your fraud. Have a nice day.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
So there I was; 15 years old, naive and about to go on my first date where sex was involved. I went to the pharmacy and asked the man for condoms. "Here you go, that will be 5 dollars plus 70 cents for the tax." the pharmacist said. I replied "Tacks? So that's how those things are held on."
Trolling is a art,
Cute, but the IRS doesn't collect Sales Tax. That's a purview of the State and Local governments. Most localities also have exemptions specifically for people who have a garage sale and similar endeavors.
Of course, it might be funny to see the local tax collectors shaking down the neighborhood kids when the open their lemonade stands in the summer...
"To calculate your sales tax, press OK noooooowwwwww."
"..."
"..."
"...Why don't you just tell me what your sales tax is?!?!"
--"It's Bradford Company, slash your last name, dot your first name"
If you live in California & travel to Oregon to visity aunty Jill, you pay Oregan sales tax while there.
And yet, if you live in Oregon or Montana, and travel to Washington, you make a royal pain in the ass of yourself by trying to present your driver's license to every store you buy $2 worth of goods from, as a get-out-of-tax-free card. And then bitch about how long it takes the poor sales people to figure out how the fsck to write up a tax-free sale for your stupid ass. Disclaimer: I am a "customer service representitive" (aka min. wage retail slave) in the state of WA.
(Note: I think Safari may have a bug that chopped up my last post. Sorry for the double).
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
Right... so if I cross the state border into Texas and go shopping at the Galleria in Houston, then when I check-out, can I tell the clerk, "I'm not represented by this state" and refuse to pay taxes?
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."