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."

Comments

eBay taxes...

[$$$$$exyGal]

Does anyone know how eBay would start collecting taxes? Would they do it on the items full price? Or maybe just on fees that eBay collected? And/Or would each seller have to start collecting taxes on every item sold?

I, for one, don't collect taxes when I'm running a garage sale.

--sex

The real reason behind this.

[cybermace5]

It's smoking.

Yep, another thing to blame on the smokers.

See, states have been taxing cigarettes like mad. New York, for example. Some retailers in other states were doing a rather brisk business selling cigarettes online: no tax.

They all thought the government would clamp down on internet taxing before too long, and they were right. Not only do they get to claim they're protecting the world from smokers, but they grab some extra cash for the here and now. Never mind that sales taxes always have a chilling effect on spending. Technically, though, it's just the companies that are doing bad right now. Joe Six-pack has been spending his little heart out, and the economy hasn't budged.

So is it the state's fault for raising taxes on cigarettes, or the online retailers "cheating" the states out of the money they've already spent that was supposed to come out of smoke taxes?

I don't smoke, but think it's none of the government's business.