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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."
use the NYT archive
1 7ECOM.html
http://archive.nytimes.com/2003/02/17/technology/
It's a very interesting debate. In my eyes it comes down to lazyness versus saving a 'buck or two'.
Personally, I like the lazyness route. If I can order something and it comes to me, I think it's worth the extra wait. On the flip side, many would prefer going to the store to buy what they want (though paying a few pence extra) so that they can get it now. How much do you enjoy instant gratification?
Another issue how might this affect small companies, like the guy that makes and sells mIRC. Taxes are complicated, and it might make it difficult for people such as him to sell his product w/o having to spend a lot of time and money creating an e-commerce engine (or partnering with someone that does) that customizes the amount of taxes per-state.
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
you need to readjust the lenses on your perspective goggles.
Apple is a *huge* comapany with a world wide presence and sales in the billions of dollars.
"Small" business is generally considered to be one with gross annual sales of 3 million or less. Even that's really pretty big.
A *little* company is my mom trying to broaden the market for her handmade jewelry by offering it online. Having to handle sales taxes for every jurisdiction would simply kill that. Dead.
KFG
Target and Toys 'R Us should have been collecting sales tax all along. Since they have stores nation-wide, they have nexus in all of the states. By 'agreeing' to collect sales tax, they're just agreeing to start doing what they should have been doing already.
Behind the scenes, they probably made a deal to agree to these taxes in exchange for the states not going after them for past taxes on their Internet business.
The spin that the stores have put on this is pretty clever. By agreeing to the tax, they put pressure on Internet sites without nexus (like Amazon and eBay) to pay sales taxes on their business. They know full well that Amazon and eBay (without a network of stores) will have a difficult time figuring out how to collect all these taxes. Target and Toys 'R Us already have it figured out. This gives the chains with physical locations an advantage.
Also, this is just the beginning. Once sales tax is collected on online purchases (which won't add up to much money), what to stop a whole new wave of taxes on online sales? It's going to get expensive and complex very quickly.
Worse of all, big sites like Amazon and eBay will find a way to cope, but Mom 'n Pop Internet stores likely won't survive. Less competition, higher prices, less innovation. As is the case with most taxes, the consumer loses in the end...
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried. -G.K. Chesterton