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Amazon To Comply With Kansas Sales Tax Law
theodp writes "Online retailer Amazon.com will begin collecting sales tax on Kansans' Internet purchases in April, company officials told legislators Tuesday. Kansas' new destination-based sales tax law took effect last July."
I hope Texas doesn't pick up on this an require sales tax on us. You can't beat no tax and free shipping on Amazon. They're prices are always decent.
I also found it interesting that this article was written by my local newspaper. It's fun to see Fort Worth out in the world!
Who wants to pay tax and shipping when you can go to a local store and just pay tax? Plus you get the item right away. On-line retailers will have to cut into their margins even further to compete.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
I don't like to pay taxes anymore than the next guy but I've always felt a little bad for the brick and motar stores. Not taxing online stores gave them an unfair advantage.
An online store should have to have efficient enough in their operations to run on lower mark-up so that their price + shipping + tax is less than an old brick and motar (price + tax).
In an ideal world the tax rate would go down when more items are taxed (i.e. a revenue neutral change). Of course we all know the increase in tax actually goes to fund someone pissing in a cup and calling it art or maybe a few more jets to fight a cold war that has been over for years...
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
without representation? I know the merchants always pass it onto the customer, but still.
If states start doing this for internet sales, they'll do it for mail order/catalog sales.
This could be interesting if some states insist on collecting point of sales tax, and others insist on collecting point of delivery tax. If all states are not using a single system, it would seem that some combinations would cause you to have to pay for both states... that would kill any reason to order online or from catalogs.
Sig under construction since 1998.
What people miss is that, if the store does not collect tax (no tax) then the buy still needs to pay the tax.
Interstate shipping is viewed more as wholesaler transfer. When you buy out state, you are importing goods to your state. If you "consume" them then you pay the local tax on the "consumation" based on your price. If you sell them retail, you collect the tax and pay that.
This is what business have done for years.
It is what you should be doing today.
Amazon has a distribution center in Kansas. Other companies that don't have a presence can safly ignore Kansas law.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Maybe Amazon thought if they just clicked their heals it would all go away.
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. - Henry Ford
First, I'll come out and say my philosophical leanings are definitely libertarian. So anyone who dislikes such people for going horribly against their personal views should probably stop now. ;)
OK, I've never quite understood sales taxes to begin with. Because of my philosophy, I'd just assume that it's just greedy governments wanting more. However, I'll set that aside if someone can point out a rather good reason.
The thing is, it would have to be some pretty good reasoning for me because there are a number of problems with sales taxes. One, they are regressive and hurt those whom the government is trying to help. Two, I hate walking into a store buying something and then realizing it cost me more than I really wanted because I forgot to add 5% (right now I'm in a place where the local option tazes bring it up to 8.5%!). I mean it's a borderline rip-off that they don't show the tax price.
Now to get onto the topic of internet taxes: I've seen people here on Slashdot say that Amazon, et al should pay sales taxes just like every other store that sells in a state, but I don't buy that (pun not intended). They bring up the fact that those delivery trucks go over roads and therefore sales taxes are paying for that. The hole in that, though, is that UPS pays corporate income taxes, property taxes, etc. and the person buying the good also pays their share of taxes. This is when it seems like the government likes to count money twice and tax it three times.
I'm quite willing to listen to anyone who does support sales taxes if they can offer a good reasoning behind them. Please, do not come out and attack me for my beliefs; you will only hurt any argument you could make and just polarize my own beliefs.
TSage
Call of Cthulhu is obscure. I bought all his books for my wife in the mid 90's and the only store I found them in was The Tattered Cover in Denver. Sadly they have been hit hard by the online book sellers.
Call of Cthulhu was out of print before 1995.
In my opinion sales taxes are extremely low and need to be raised to at least 20% to pay for social programs (higher amounts for welfare, foreign aid to Israel, etc) and law enforcement (to help beef up the police and BATF for total gun confiscation). It's time to grow up a bit around here and accept that the government is here to help you live a proper life according to the law and that you should pay your taxes and you should happily accept even higher and more numerous taxes. If it doesn't have a tax on it then it should be illegal. Please vote for John Kerry, Wesley Clark (he helped out with Waco which is a good thing), John Edwards, George W. Bush, or Howard Dean. All are dedicated socialists and will work hard to make the USA even more of a police state which is badly needed in this age of *TERRORISM*.
Usually this is the case, and it's called a "Use Tax" levied by the state where the items are going.
The biggest problem with Use Taxes is that they are hard to enforce. For example in my area (VT/NH border area), a substantial fraction (well over 80%) of the retail businesses in the border area are all on the NH side, so much of Vermont shops over here to avoid the VT sales tax (we don't mind much, it brings in business). Of course, in reality, everything they buy over here that they drag back over the border is subject to the Vermont Use tax (which is the same value as the sales tax), so if they are being completely legal there is no price advantage at all. The problem is that Use Tax is so hard to track, that all the state of Vermont does is have a line on your taxes to report all this stuff, and they rely on your honesty to report it all. Of course, a simple polling of the Vermonters I know show that, unsurprisingly, nobody reports any realistic values, so the tax goes mostly uncollected.
This situation is similar in many other border areas, although usually the tax rate differential is even lower, meaning there is less motivation for the state to enforce it.
The ideal solution is to either (a) figure out a way to enforce it (which is what many states are trying to do with online retailers), or (b) give up on it and find a way to tax that is halfway enforceable.
.. I lived there for a while and there taxes are pretty high, and they tax about everything and the high paying jobs are goverment jobs which pay a whopping 17 to 20k per year. Housing is cheap there though, but this is another reason NOT to live in kansas
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
There's a rising interest in Lovecraft, driven partially by S. T. Joshi's scholarship, and new editions of his works are being released now that Arkham House is losing some copyrights and licensing others (not to mention releasing those horrid posthumous Derleth "collaborations.") The brick and mortar Barnes & Nobel in my local mall (Hartford, CT area) usually has a respectable selection on the shelves, as did the one in my parents' hometown (southern NH), and the Borders where I went to college (central MA), and all were willing to order for me when the books weren't on the shelf. I have more trouble finding works, say, Roger Zelazny on the shelf than I do Lovecraft.
(If you haven't picked up Del Rey's "The Road to Madness," you might want to consider it. It collects a lot of Lovecraft's lesser-known pieces.)
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
You see, the federal government has a constitutional, and historical jurisdiction over interstate commerce. If it gets to a turf war, then NO states will be able to levy excise taxes on interstate commerce, or (more likely) states will be required to adhere to the US Dept. of Commerce rules. That will allow federal officials like the US. President from having to commit political self-injury of imposing a new, unpopular federal Internet sales tax.
To understand this issue you must understand the role government plays in protecting and fostering and regulating commerce on all levels--not just sales. If disputes arise over the sale, which state will adjudicate the dispute? Now the State of Kansas has a tax-revenue interest in making their consumers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcitizens available for e-commercial harvest by the corporations who can $$$$ lobby their smalltime statehouse officers.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
decision handed down by the Supreme Court. Amazon maintains a distribution center in Coffeyville, KS, meaning that they have a physical nexus in Kansas and thus are required to charge sales tax to residents of Kansas, just as they are required to charge sales tax to the residents of Washington State where the corporate headquarters are located.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
well i hope this doesnt catch on. if i have to pay Tennessee's ungodly 9% tax AND shipping that will be the end of me buying anything online...
Matt
You have 1 Moderator Point! Use it or lose it! Is that a threat? -vapid
If only you were a real geek like me, you wouldn't know any girls, thus you would have saved whatever you paid Sephora plus the errant sales tax!