Slashdot Mirror
Wisconsin Passes Digital Download Tax
McGruber writes with news that the State of Wisconsin has passed legislation to extend sales tax to digital downloads. The new law will go into effect on October 1st. Estimates suggest that the 5% tax on "downloads of music, games, books, ring tones and other video entertainment" will bring in $6.7 million annually. "[Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle] has been fighting for the change for years. He and other state officials say it is a matter of fairness: Internet vendors shouldn't have a tax-exempt advantage over Wisconsin's brick-and-mortar retail stores." Similar legislation has been proposed in North Carolina, and we've previously discussed New York's foray into taxing sales made online in addition to downloaded purchases.
In addition to this, the current legislature wants to increase the state sales tax another 0.5%, add a tax to car insurance sales and put toll booths on the Interstate. This after they voted themselves a 5.5% wage increase.
I'm a little confused how they're going to enforce this law against companies that have no physical presence in the state? I did not see that addressed in the article.
Option 1: Start using PayPal with an out-of-state relative's address
Option 2: Get a PO box over state lines, and open a bank account there while you're at it.
I am curious, though - they expect to make $6.7m per year... how much of that will disappear into enforcement and accounting? Doesn't really seem like there's enough return on it to balance the hordes of pissed-off constituents.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Glad to see that WI is working to help stimulate the economy by pulling more money out of it!!
Has something changed recently that makes all these states think Quill Corp. v. North Dakota no longer applies? Are they just following New York's lead and hoping the opinion is reversed? This is 17 year old case law; I don't see what would have changed to warrant reversing the precedent.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Between this and the recent story about how they're going to require home routers to maintain logs, we're completely fucked. Everything decent about the internet has been shot in the ass.
Fuck, this shit sucks.
Slashdot has been shot...Where?!
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I believe Wisconsin internet vendors can only tax Wisconsin buyers. Out-of-state taxation would basically be taxation without representation, which is what previous legal precedents have disallowed... that is, until the federal government decides to pass a law enabling states to cooperate on internet sales taxation.
And just wait until the federal government gets involved directly. For only pennies on the dollar, an eBay sales tax could fund Social Security and Medicare for through the baby boom crunch. (Or could it...?)
A tax on auto insurance? That's a regressive one. Oh, do they want more uninsured drivers on the road? Lovely. I can see how everybody wins with that proposal.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Good luck with that.
Love,
anyone who ever used the internet *ever*.
AFAIK, gift cards/certificates/checks, etc, are NOT initially taxed, precisely /because/ the tax is paid when they're redeemed. I know that's the way it has been around here, anyway. They're handled straight across. A five dollar bill gets you a five dollar gift check/card/certificate/whatever.
It's also worth noting that the business doesn't book the sale of the gift check/card/certificate, either. It's considered the equivalent of a cash for cash transaction, a five dollar bill for five ones, or whatever. The sale is booked only when the gift is redeemed, or in areas where it can expire or if there are service fees attached (as there are to gift Visa/MC cards most of the time), at the time of expiration or charge of said fees.
So no double taxation.
Duncan
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master,
and if you use the program, he is your master."
R Stallman
No taxes on our torrent downloads, either.
You are welcome on my lawn.
interesting... let's say someone downloads something from the pirate bay. There's no sales tax involved, and that's not "fair".
There are two solutions:
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
An interesting statement. So, you think it's only "fair" that everything should be taxed? One cold argue that a tax on brick and mortar stores pays all the services the state provides: a road to get to the store, police to watch the store, and... what else does the state provide? For the on-line stores? Would it be fair to make the internet sellers pay for the services only the brick and mortar stores need?
Okay, so the state provides schooling for the poor. But then, why do rich people pay income tax? Isn't that meant to redistribute wealth, to let the poor have the same opportunities the rich had?
Let's put is this way: taxes are never fair. They are an unavoidable evil. Robert Heinlein said it best, "The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it contains until it destroys." ("The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", 1966)
"Internet vendors shouldn't have a tax-exempt advantage over Wisconsin's brick-and-mortar retail stores."
Umm, what? We're not talking about selling physical products, we're talking about selling data. Are there any brick and mortar stores in WI that let you come in and pay to download things to your USB drive using a connection at the cash register or something?
interesting... let's say someone downloads something from the pirate bay. There's no sales tax involved, and that's not "fair".
Well, you don't pay sales tax on a CD that you lift from Best Buy so they're both equally unfair. I've never really heard people complain about paying taxes for something because others have gotten away without paying at all for the item.
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
What exactly will Wisconsin do with this tax revenue? Will they now start providing their ALL of their citizens with Free Health Care?
I suspect not. What exactly CANT wisconsin do that they're already doing with their current taxes?
If we're going to tax our citizens more, then lets provide them with more services!
When i'm buying something, i want to know what i'm getting, and it better be worth it.
Wiki France.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-436
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h1076/show
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Now, explain how we can keep adding so many government jobs and not expect the burden to become too much?
Cherrypicking statistics is easy. Let's put those numbers in perspective
Total goverment employment growth 1997-2007: 12.3%
Total population growth 1997-2007: 12.7% (Using 267,000,000 and 301,000,000)
Sure, the goverment is employing more people now. Oh, dear I wonder why. Could it be because there are more people in the country than there used to be.
We are creating more non wealth producing jobs than wealth producing jobs.
Ah damn. Another one who thinks that the goverment doesn't produce wealth. I guess you are now thinking about claiming that the goverment doesn't earn money, it just taxes the private sector. That is the standard propaganda used. The statement is literally true, but is a simple deception.
Using that incorrect reasoning, no private business makes any money either. Because every single one has to get their money from other companies in the private sector. One company getting more money means that the remaining companies gets less. A wealth transfer as some like to call it. And no, taxing is no different than private companies charging for services. It is just that anyone living in a country has a life long contract with the Goverment business. It sucks to be in such a contract. But that is the price for not having your own private army.
All of this of course have nothing to do with wealth creation. Wealth is created by workers who do productive work, farmers, factory workers, miners, teachers, policemen, road workers. Some work in the public sector, and some in the private sector. There are of course also many mostly unproductive or even contraproductive jobs in both sectors.
So we have this big slow down, with many private sector jobs lost, yet government keeps growing
That one is simple to understand. Firing someone costs a private company nothing, but it costs the goverment in a loss of production that can no longer be taxed. By employing the citizen instead of letting him go unemployed the goverment creates work that can be taxed.
As long as the value of the work created is greater than the surrounding expenses of employing, it is a win for the goverment. This of course only applies as long as the person in question don't have a large chance of getting employed in the private sector, because in that case you have to start comparing the relative worths of the private and public sector jobs.
We are simply running amok. The real problem with government paid jobs is that are nearly impossible to do away with them.
And yet the republicans cried when the jobs the stimulus package created temporary jobs. That of course was the whole point. Creating temporary jobs in a recession to avoid having labor go unused while not creating permanent jobs that are difficult to make away with.
If you want to yell at wastage, yell at the bailouts (bank, auto industry, mortage). Those are about throwing money at bad investments which is almost always a bad idea.
Even better, boycott Wisconsin and buy Real California Cheese. Not only will it hit the governor right in his revenue stream, (Just like it did, I might add, when people did the same thing until they voted out Proxmire.) you'll be getting better cheese. After all, everybody knows that the best cheese comes from the best milk, and that comes from happy cows.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE PAYING TAXES ON ON-LINE PURCHASES. THEY'RE CALLED USE TAXES.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_tax [wikipedia.org]
Here is the deal:
- If you don't pay them, your state can send you nasty grams in the mail saying "We see you have filed zero dollars in use taxes, please pay them." These notices are fairly common. IOW, the state tax departments are saying "Look, we aren't stupid, you're buying stuff on line, pay your tax". Now who here wants to keep records of the crap they buy JUST so you can pay use tax at the end of the year?
- With a mandated sales tax, it means YOU don't have to keep records for paying end-of-year taxes. They just add it on to your purchase like any other state(if your state has a sales tax). I don't know about you but I'd much rather pay the friggin tax up front then worry about the stupid EOY paperwork.
One thing to make life easier for consumers AND businesses: only allow one tax rate per state. example: Wisconsin has a moronic tax system where every county can charge differing rates something up to like 1/2% on top of whatever the state charges. Some counties are 5%, some are 5.5%, or like 5.25%. So to make it easier on on-line retailers, just legislate single tax rates per state for those that have a sales tax. End this moronic madness now.