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Newegg Defies New York Sales Tax Law
JagsLive informs us that the electronics retailer Newegg.com is defying New York lawmakers; it has suddenly stopped collecting sales tax from New York online shoppers. The "Amazon tax," which went into effect June 1, requires online merchants to collect sales tax if they have any affiliates in the state. Amazon is complying but has sued the state on constitutional grounds. Overstock.com dropped all of its New York affiliates and then joined the Amazon lawsuit. Newegg started out complying with the law on June 1, but stopped collecting taxes for New York on August 21. From Newegg's letter to its customers: "After careful review and consideration, we are pleased to inform you that we have stopped collecting New York sales tax, effective August 21, 2008," reads an email the company tossed at customers late last week, including at least one loyal Reg reader. "This decision was driven by your direct and candid feedback and our continued commitment to you as our valued customers."
"This decision was driven by your direct and candid feedback and our continued commitment to you as our valued customers."
This is obviously just a publicity statement. There is no way in the world a large corporation would assume the massive risk of defying a law like this on the advice of its customers. Something else precipitated this.
Most likely, the law department in the company examined the law, and then the risk management division (or whoever it is: I have no idea how Newegg is managed) decided that the risk was worth taking. PR, seeing an opportunity for, well, PR, made up a fluff statement about how the dear customers were the reason.
Not that I'm complaining.
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[quote]Overstock.com dropped all of its New York affiliates[/quote]
This measure was supposed to boost local businesses and lower unemployment. Do you think if Amazon and NewEgg drop theirs, the $50m in revenue will be paid out in unemployment?
I am disgusted by the government of my state. I moved from PA to NY for a better job, but literally everything is higher taxed and more expensive. The taxes don't make any sense either. I live near Rochester, NY. Depending on the locality you're in, you can pay 6% (Henrietta) to 10% (Greece) taxes on a variety of things but if you send a letter it's all Rochester, NY. And then there is the paper store, I mean government agencies. Everything needs a permit, paper, registration or a tax. You can't get a single piece of paper without paying at least $10 for it.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
If consumers, for that matter income earners, had a true understanding of their tax load they would be up in arms. It is one thing to ask for this, that, and the other thing, from your government when you don't know the cost.
So governments do what they do best, they hide the tax. What is the number way to hide the real tax from the taxpayer? Embed it. This means hide it in the cost of goods and services. Lets use an oil company like Exxon for fun, after all its accused of having WINFALL profits. In 2006, Exxon's EBT (earnings before tax) was $67.4 billion, it paid $27.9 billion in taxes (41.4% tax rate), and its NIAT (net income after tax), or profit, was $39.5 billion. So, where does that 27.9 BILLION dollars come from. The taxpayer. Exxon merely wrote the check for all the dollars it collected from you and me to pay it.
The politicians win on every front here, they can hide the true cost of the tax load on the American worker and vilify any corporation that makes big numbers as being against the poor, downtrodden, hungry, or my favorite "children".
Ignorance and envy are the two greatest weapons the politicians employ and from watching the current elections it really pays off
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
With a mandated sales tax, it means YOU don't have to keep records for paying end-of-year taxes.
No, it means we can't ignore use taxes as an unconstitutional violation of interstate commerce. Pay if you want, but few do - And suggesting we make it "painless" by having the merchants handle the tax completely misses (and actually hides) the point that we shouldn't pay such taxes in the first place.
End this moronic madness now
And there, we agree (in word if not in spirit) - Let's entirely do away with the single most regressive taxes we have. Personally, I think we should also do away with "withholding" as well, and make everyone actually cough up $10-30k every April 15th - Watch how fast we get serious tax reform when people realize how much they actually pay, rather than merely bitching about it as a mostly-meaningless "rate" they don't really feel thanks to the government slowly boiling the frog.
How ironic it is, that, we hear a bunch of liberals bitching about those terrible people on Wall Street, in New York, and it turns out those terrible people on Wall Street took such a beating that the state is looking at a nearly billion dollar tax short fall. Thus, in New York we learn the ultimately failing of progressive taxation, just as we have learned nationally. If the rich do not make any money, the government is screwed.
I'm sick of hearing everyone try and talk about increasing taxes as "providing revenue". It's an insult to compare the activities of government to the activities of the private sector. Government is basically a collection of pie in the sky power mongers that use the power of the gun, cops directed by the legislature, to impose their financial will on people. By contrast, all a private company do is offer a good or a service in return, and thus they are compelled to offer something back.
New York, in particular, is disgusting. They have a tax policy that reflects decades of liberal orthodoxy and the stupidity of the results just staggers the mind. I mean, they raise taxes on cigarettes, and are suddenly horrified to find that people do not buy cigarettes in New York. Now, what do you think the enlightened liberals do up there? Do you think they set the tax at a more reasonable level? No... they call out the cops and pass even -more- laws designed to try and ban people from cigarettes from out of state.
Now, of course, they reach out and are suing, again, with the barrel of the legislative gun, trying to sue someone outside of the state, like a crab or a cancer spreading and grasping desperately for any piece of loot that it can steal.... and they call this revenue.
This is my sig.
In the end, I think there's going to be an epic battle between consumer and civil advocacy groups and states over SSUTA and similar plans to collect sales tax on online sales. The 'use tax' law is clearly an attempt by states to levy taxes on interstate transactions (commerce between and among the states) and the Constitution squarely places that power in the hands of Congress exclusively.
These use taxes have never been challenged in court and if states push much harder, I'm betting they will be.
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You may feel the commerce clause forbids use taxes, but they're on the books in damn near every state, and it'd be up to you to spend years in court fighting your state revenue service to prove it's unconstitutional.
Then it will go to Congress and they will pass new laws allowing these taxes. The current Congress never met a tax it didn't like.
Good thing all the mega corporations don't think it's fair either... They will end up fighting it instead of individual citizens.
Money is the root of all evil?
The whole problem for being smart humans are kind of gullible.
TAX
Hey I think will get me a police force or just a lot of goons with guns and tell the public it for your safety.
You need to pay me - and every year I will give you less and less that way I can charge you more and more.
If you think you are smart check out freedomainradio.com
arguing about tax is like arguing about whose god is better.
support the troops don't send them back for multiple tours
The commerce clause certainly prevents a state from imposing tariffs on imports from other states. However, the use tax is not a tariff. It is a tax it imposes on its own citizens based on what they will do with the item, not those conducting the commerce.
For instance, in my state, items brought into the state for personal use are generally taxed at the same rate as items bought in state if they are brought into the state within 6 months of purchase. Items brought in for resale are not taxed.
So, clearly, this isn't a tax on commerce. It is a state imposing a tax on its citizens...which is well within the constitution.
What part of EMBEDDED don't people understand.
WE THE PEOPLE ARE NOT THE GOVERNMENT.
We stopped being the government when we allowed ourselves to be divided among petty lines with cute little labels like Democrat and Republican.
That money coming out of Exxon which you claim is coming back to the people CAME FROM THE DAMN PEOPLE. What, does Exxon just magically print dollars it gives to the government? Is there some kind of money fairy in your world?
Any dollar, ANY, that Exxon paid in taxes came out of THE PEOPLE'S pocket. There is no other source. The people earn incomes, which are taxed, and buy services, which are taxed, and buy products, which are taxed. Do you understand now?
Dollars are earned by individuals. They are from direct work, investment, sale of capital, etc. They are taxed. The remains are the people's to spend as they see fit. However hidden from the ignorant is that for everything they buy there are more taxes embedded.
I know, there are evil rich people who pay 35% and you pay 28% but its not fair they still have more dollars. What has this country come to if we are so filled with spite and envy that we begrudge anyone doing better than us or set limits on how well any one person is allowed to do?
Don't go off track and vilify a corporation. They are owned by people; either directly or indirectly; and they employ people. They are nothing more than a giant shell that the government loves to exploit by using them to collect money from the people's paycheck (because too many are only concerned with what they take home and not what they actually earned) and they can collect yet again when the remains are spent to buy stuff.
Damn.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Correction : After careful consideration of how much how much our sales have dropped since the Amazon Tax, we have decided to stop collecting NYS taxes.
This is flamebait/offtopic or whatever but i don't care.
Liberals, meet liberalism. It costs money. Don't bitch. You're in favor of all the programs, f'in pay for it.
Actually, the "lazies" you're talking about are the "Red States", which all get more money back from the Federal government than they send it in Federal taxes. The "Blue States" like New York pay to prop up those Welfare States by sending more taxes to DC than we get back.
There are a few notable exceptions. New Mexico is the poorest state, with the most tribal population, and lots of large Federal military bases and labs, so its welfare goes mainly to big Federal contractors who don't spread it around the state much. Hawaii is another state with a lot of poor people, many of them tribal, and lots of large Federal military bases. Maine gets a little more than it pays, but again is overall pretty poor. Texas, that "Republican Paradise", is taxed and feeladen every which way, in a giant ripoff, getting just a little less than it pays. Florida is right near the breakeven, but at least it's paying to prop up a system it was #1 in ushering in with its 2000 election. New Hampshire somehow gets screwed, too.
But other than that, the other 44 states all demonstrate that voting Democratic does get you taxed to redistribute your wealth to the rest of the country - even when the redistributors are a Republican controlled Federal government. The list also demonstrates the myth that "the West is independent": other than NM and TX, all those Western states are subsidized by the rest of the country, as they have been since they were colonized.
That list represents the most valuable wealth redistribution programme ever undertaken. Run by Republicans, at the peak of their power. Even as those Republicans cut Federal taxes while running up the Federal expenses, both in record amounts. But evidently spreading the benefits along more or less strict Party lines.
--
make install -not war
Reaganomics has been adopted world wide and as such has produced the largest wave of economic expansion, on the planet, in human history. There's two problems with the USA right now. No it hasn't. Two decades of cheap oil has produced economic expansion in the 1980s and 1990s. In the 2000s, there has been very little economic expansion. I'm so sick of "conservatives" claiming that "liberal" policies are to blame for this or that evil when it's perfectly fucking clear that conservatives in this country would have us all learning that the world was created 6000 years ago and all fucking bankrupt due to their insistence on cutting taxes while increasing spending. Reagan did it, he left a $155 billion budget deficit to Bush, Sr., TWICE what Carter left. Bush, Sr. did it, he left a deficit to Clinton. Bush, Jr. is doing it too. Who didn't do it? Clinton. That's right. Bill Clinton, the man conservatives love to hate, was more fiscally responsible than any modern "conservative" president.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Heh. A reduction in income taxes? They wouldn't do that. They're too damn greedy. (Which is why they're taxing you twice on income.)
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
Liberals, meet liberalism. It costs money
It seems to me that Conservatism also costs money.....
And before you go and whine that Bush and the GOP aren't real "Conservatives" that's what they are passing themselves off as and they are getting the lions share of the support from people who fashion themselves as Conservatives. Where were the Conservatives when Ron Paul needed the support during the primaries?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Are you taxing the sale, or are you taxing the use?
If you're taxing the sale, then you're interfering with interstate commerce.
If you're taxing the use, then you're discriminating in favor of goods sold in state, because they aren't being taxed for use as well.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
This is a way to close a loophole the online retailers are using to give themselves a leg up over brick and mortar stores.
The Sears catalog was first issued in 1888, 120 years ago:
http://www.searsarchives.com/catalogs/chronology.htm
Out of state purchases have been happening for over a century. It sure took NY a long time to get upset about it. The difference with Amazon is they're doing it better than it's ever been done before. So because Amazon is succeeding too well, NY wants a piece of the action. I say leave Amazon alone. Let NY cut some fat out of their system rather than trying to find new ways to squeeze the taxpayer.
Let's use some more precise words.
Remember, Conservatives want a big Federal government
anti-federalists (yeah, confusing term)
huge military
anti-constitutionalists
and constant wars
imperialists (or military industrialists)
and unchecked illegal immigration
slavers
1) the religious Conservatives see U.S. imperialism as a Holy War, and that we need to be Christianizing all the other countries
crusaders
2) not-as-religious Conservatives really believe that millions of Muslims want to hop on a boat, come over here, and invade somehow, and that our actions in the mideast are preventing complete takeover of our country by them
bullies (irrational cowards who impose preemptive force)
3) Conservative business owners like the low/nonexistent corporate taxes
this isn't true, so we'll skip it - e.g. Daimler-Chrysler moved its HQ to Germany for lower corporate taxes
generous corporate welfare (like subsidies for oil companies)
syndicalists
The question is: are these people really "Conservative"? That depends on your definition of the word. Whereas it meant something much more like libertarianism 30-50 years ago, it seems to have mutated into the above in the past 10-20 years.
Naw, these are green people calling themselves purple. If we re-define purple to mean green because green people are calling themselves purple, then we've lost the ability to describe both green and purple.
Conservatives are basically those resistant to change. In the case of the US that means they're closest to originalists, as they would oppose changes, both historical and present. So, Ron Paul is actually a conservative - his ideals are close to Madisonian. I disagree with him on some points as I'm more Jeffersonian, but there's enough common ground for me to support him. The design of the United States scares the hell out of all of the above types.
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