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Mississippi Bill Would Tax Software Sales
Byzantine writes "The Mississippi Legislature has passed MS House Bill 1461 which would amend the state's tax laws specifically to charge sales tax on 'electrically transferred digital products,' including products bought via mail-order. The bill is currently on the governor's desk awaiting signature." Softpedia claims that 20 states have enacted download taxes of one sort or another — most of them for iTunes music — and that New York is considering taxing downloads of all kinds.
I wonder how this will play out with regards to illegal downloads? If one gets caught/charged/accused of transferring "digital goods" to which they don't own the copyright to, are they then responsible for the taxes those goods would have generated had they been legit?
Reminds me of Al Capone's downfall...
There Job is to find way to pay for services that people demand.
No one taxes to just tax. It's hard enough to tell people you need to tax for the things they want!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When the chips are down, tax people even more and damage the economy further.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
No one taxes to just tax.
Obviously you don't live in California.
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I live in Canada. Here, all of these products are taxed like any other good or service - and there is no mail order freebie to distory the level playing field of the retail economy by not having to pay them via mial order. Up here? It's not new. It's not shocking. Believe it or not, the sun still comes up every morning - the world turns. Then it gets dark and we go to sleep. Every day. Life goes on.
Thing is, the federal debt in the USA has been spiralling so fast since 2000 that all of these "reports" and pointing to same as the portents of the Four Horsemen are going to go the way of the dodo in a dozen years or so - or less.
You simply will not have a *choice* but to increase taxes in the USA to at least Canadian and possibly Western European levels if you don't deal with it soon enough. (My bet - you won't deal with it soon enough. Americans are nutty when it comes to taxes.) You'll put it off and put it off and then put it off somemore until there is no wiggle room left at all. And then you will point fingers at your politicians - instead of you the voters - which is *precisely* where the blame will lie.
That's the price you will ultimately have to pay for spending money for decades that you simply do not have. That prediction is not a *maybe*. It is a *certainty*. The cheque is coming to your table. Deal with it (and kindly quit your whining about it too, please. It's not a big deal.)
.Robert
I have a feeling this will be implemented like sales tax for purchasing items online: you buy an item from Newegg, and they have to charge you sales tax if you live in a state where they have a physical presence (CA, NJ, TN), even if your order is shipped from elsewhere.
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Because there's no "value added" by introducing a Value Added Tax.
Why should a business transaction be taxed simply because it happened? Taxes are meant to give the government the bare minimum of income necessary to conduct government business, not to punish people for spending money they received in exchange for their labor.
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You can tax my porn when you pry it from my wet sticky fingers ;)
and that New York is considering taxing downloads of all kinds.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Depends on whether or not Microsoft lobbyists were involved in writing the bill ;) If they weren't 8% of $0 = $0. If they were then 8% of $0 = $1,000.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
http://window.state.tx.us/taxinfo/use/
Many state do require you to report items purchased in another state, based on how long ago you bought it.
You might want to find out about that tax fraud you've been committing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I recently came to California from New Hampshire, which introduced a property tax several years ago. I wasn't around for Prop. 13, but after doing a bit of reading, I'm glad it passed. If someone owns land, and has little income, why should they be punished for that?
I know a man who works as a teacher in New Hampshire who owns over 100 acres of land. The land's been in his family for at least two generations. The property tax was passed, and he nearly went bankrupt paying the taxes on the land because the land value assessments were artificially inflated by the housing market bubble.
I don't like heavy taxation in any form, but property taxes are disproportionately unfair to anyone who owns land and doesn't have a high income.
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Its called a "use tax". For example CA charges one on anything bought on OR (where there is no sales tax). Buy a car there and you'll quickly find yourself being taxed by CA (although admittedly only big things like cars get tracked down. Everything else is done on the honor system, with remarkably few people filling out anything but a 0 on that line.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
No, their job is to preserve individual liberty and to stay within the boundaries set for them by the Constitution. The US government is failing terribly at both.
I wish I lived in your world. Here in the Real World (tm), governments tax anything they can get away with taxing.
After all, if you have revenue, you'll find a way to spend it....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Read my post again: I listed those three states for Newegg because of sales tax. Newegg has locations CA, NJ, and TN, so if they ship an order anywhere in CA, NJ, or TN, they have to charge sales tax. If Newegg ships a package to any of the other 47 states, they don't charge sales tax.
As far as I can tell, if Mississippi passes a Software Sales Tax, then the only retailers that have to comply are retailers in Mississippi to Mississippi residents.
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All very well and good.
But Mississippi isn't the Federal government, and Ms can tax whatever it likes without affecting the Federal deficit in the slightest.
Note, by the way, that Ms, like pretty much all the States (and unlike the Federal government), are required to balance their budgets.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I think you misunderstand our method of government. Unlike most "western european" countries, our government is based on a division between the county, state, and federal levels. And it's not a clear division either. For example, a federal law trumps a state law, unless it happens to be in the state constitution, in which case only the federal constition can override or restrict it. You might imagine what merry hell this plays on our justice system (give you a hint: Everyone in this country is a felon, it's just that some of them haven't been caught yet). The law books are just that damned dense, and have that many competing administrations. And laws are rarely, if ever, repealed. Now, imagine how hellacious that is, and multiply it by a hundred and you have the tax codes in this country.
It's not about tax as a percentage, or tax of a certain good or service, but simply knowing what to pay in. The tax code has become so horribly complicated that nobody wants to fix it, so they throw monkeys at it and they flip levers and switches and hope that it dials into the desired amount of income. It never does. Recently they approved a federal tax on cigarettes, one of a variety of so-called "sin taxes" that we knew the democrats would push forward as the solution to the deficit (if you're a minority of some kind or another -- prepare to be taxed. Alcohol is safe for now though because everybody drinks in a crap economy). Next they'll be taxing food with "trans fat" in it, and other acts of sheer idiocy, and the pattern will continue.
You have this attitude that if you sprinkle magic european-thinking fairy dust over america there problems will all be solved. That's really naive. The current state of affairs is a byproduct of how this country's government is structured, and while at times it irritates all of us, it is all about tradeoffs. As I'm sure you're discovering across the pond right now, the European Union is a giant clusterf--k of monumental proportions. Our country did the same thing -- and then we abandoned that system of organization and created the US Constitution. The European Union is experiencing many of the issues our country dealt with 200 years ago -- which is, how do you organize a number of autonomous and sovereign member states into a cohesive whole? There must be a balance struck between the power of the central authority, and that of its member states.
Our balance point may not be perfect, but it's been around for 200 years. I doubt the European Union will last another twenty. For starters, their constitution is way too long. ;)
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
No, their job is to provide the services they are supposed to be providing. They have gone so far afield in the last few decades that many people believe that "I want" is justification for the state to do something. "I want a place to live", and politicians jump to help. "I want a free college education". "I want a museum honoring left-handed butterfly collectors."
It's hard enough to tell people you need to tax for the things they want!
It's supposed to be hard to say that, and they SHOULD be saying that, but they don't. They pretend that it's "free". "Free" education. "Free" healthcare. "Free" housing. Don't ever expect to hear a politician that is in favor of spending on something to call it "taxpayer-funded" service. It's always "free".
The bad news is there might be a sales tax on downloads.
The far, far worse news is you are in Missinhippie. Get out while you can.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Maybe someone should tell them it's not FIFO~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm fairly young, but I thought that the state-wide property tax was only enacted after the Claremont Decision. This seems to be confirmed by the fourth all-caps paragraph of this story:
http://www.nhpr.org/node/4290
Is this incorrect? I thought that the NH tax system before the Claremont Decision involved only direct taxation at the town level.
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Mississippi stays at the bottom of the heap
Don't worry, they'll be joined shortly by many other states hungry for revenue. The problem with this bill (well, one of many problems, actually) is that it will damage the nascent e-book and e-music industry just as they're struggling to get established, even as paper and CD publishers flounder. Also, it will largely tax the teens and 20-30-somethings who actually purchase these kinds of products. A rather regressive tax.
It should be easy enough to get around this law. If you read the bill, it spells out the precise types of electronic "products" that are taxable. So the vendors can simply convert these products to non-ebooks and non-music and non-videos, and provide a little converter that allows the buyer to change them back into ebooks and music and videos at his/her discretion. We don't sell music, we sell blobs of binary data. If you find a way to transform it miraculously into your favorite music, more power to you!
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Who the hell is "Mississippi Bill" and why does he care about software sales? He should probably devote more of his time to planning his upcoming battles with Minnesota Fats and the Cincinnati Kid.
I think the next tax will be computer taxes... for every computer you own you will be taxed appropriately. Doesn't matter if the computer is a TI-2 or the latest Dell super computer. To make it easy a computer will be defined by a cpu, for every cpu in your house you're taxed...
If you can't afford to have a quad core computer, microwave, refrigerator, tv, remote control, digital cable box, digital thermostat, hot water heater, alarm clock, cell phone, LAN telephone, home router, home entertainment center, ps3 (ooo x8), xbox 360 (x3), I could probably go for awhile.
I hope this puts into light that property should not be taxed, because guess what, property is property regardless of land or home electronics.
An even better idea would be a refusal to sell to residents of those states. The moment the billing / destination address is identified as a taxing state, refuse the sale based on the tax legislation. If it's online, link to it specifically. Nothing like political pressure to make a politician squirm. Once those states stop having sales from Internet based sources, they'll change their tune.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Not so much as you might think. Federal commitments are just that - Federal. If the Feds don't, or can't, send the money to the States to cover Federal commitments, the States aren't actually under any obligations to find money to pay for those Federal commitments.
Nope. Feds can't pay their bills, they can't. Doesn't obligate the States to pay the Fed's bills.
Won't argue with that. But much of that "dollar's worth of government for much less than a dollar" has been at the Federal level. States aren't allowed to play those games, generally.
So, when the piper comes calling for his payment, the Feds will be raising taxes on everyone and everything to make up the differences. But the State governments won't be in that pickle - they have no deficit spending to make up, and the Feds can't really require the States to spend money (well, they DO do so now and then. But the Courts generally tell them to take a flying leap if the States don't want to play).
So, in ten or twenty years (I'm betting closer to ten than twenty, myself), the Feds are going to be in a serious crack. But the States will, in general, be fine.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Yes and No... it depends on the Province, the size of the company, and wether you are selling in-province or out-of-province, in some it's 0, in others its anywhere from about 5% to as high as 18%.
Selling outside of country is generally tax free, with exceptions like the EU, where there's some weird translated tax, where 'our' tax of the item gets sent to the EU.
But naturally, because like all governments it's a clusterfuck of weird loopholes, there are ways around almost all the taxes. But I am by no means an expert on it, so if you really want to know, you'll have to look elsewhere.
I well understand the overall complexities of monetary policy. Spending money you do not have means borrowing it. You didn't have it, now you borrowed it. There. No you have it to spend.
We're clear on that part, right?
I'm not talking about pating the mortgage and groceries. Governments don't work that way. But in the end, they entire monetary system still depends upon governments paying it back - and being charged interest in the meanwhile.
At the ned of tha day, when the interest on your debt forms such a great portion of your overall budget that it squeezes out vital programs, you will have no choice but to raise the tax. There is a level of service that people will not accept being cut-off. The bill comes due.
Put another way, the people you borrow the money to fuind the difference between what you collect and what you spend? They want their interest. That's the deal. They'll probably float the pricnipal again, but that only goes so far. Time comes, they want it for other things, too. Like, say, buying stuff for themselves instead of lending it to America. That's the problem about looking to china to fund your deficit (a problem tied to a very undervalued Chinese currency, doubtless) but there it is just the same.
Fiscal and Monetary policy is easy when you owe most of the money to yourselves internally. But America crossed that Rubicon long, long ago. There is a very real price to all of this.
.Robert
I don't think they actually have computers there. I've never met anyone claiming to be from Mississippi on the Internet.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Sorry, I know this is off topic but I can't let it pass without comment.
So you REALLY think that it was Prop 13 that sank California?
Why is it always the income side of Government that is deficient? How about examining the expense structure of the state and how it changed.
Somehow more tax money NEVER solves the revenue problem faced by Government. NEVER. NOT ONE TIME.
I believe that was soundly decided against in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Last I checked, we've spent $15,000,000,000.00 on a war in Afghanistan and lost a couple hundred Canadian soldier's **lives** there fighting a war because of some nutbars who attacked AMERICA. They attacked you - not us. Mainly because of shit you do and have done - and NOT because of some shit we do and have done.
We fairly clear on that part?
Still, given the audacity of the motherfuckers in attacking our closest allies and best friends, spending all that blood and treasure to assist America in kicking their asses was the least we could do for our best friends. And unlike most of the the Western Europeans, we actually put our guys in harm's way in Afghanistan. Our troops are there to fight. Not to be stationed in a base with orders not to fight and just fly a flag and call it "helping".
We fairly clear on that part too?
Still, that's the least Canada could do, given 9/11.
The least you could do, otoh, might be to maybe acknowledge that and say thank you (and sorry for making the war unwinnable and your sacrifice meaningless with that second front in Iraq thing. Real sorry about that guys.)
Just sayin'.
.Robert
Actually, one of the biggest reasons I don't like New Hampshire's property tax is that for the last few years, the assessors were inflating the assessed value. Thing is, the more they say your house/land is worth, the more you're taxed. It was in their best interest to say that your house was worth a fortune! My dad had to appeal on our house to get another assessor to come and give a more reasonable figure.
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So, will the downloads that Radio and Televsion stations make from their content providers be covered by this?
Brilliant use of capitalist arguments to support socialism. Just curious--which are you?
Probably a pragmatist. People who are not willing to restrict themselves by purely ideological arguments tend to be that.
http://e-city.ca/events/event_details.php?id=143
Retired homeowners see their assessments skyrocketing because others are buying and selling, putting their ability to age in place at risk.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
There are not software sales. As we have all learned, software is licensed. No sale, not tax. You want to tax it? Make it a sale, and let me do with it as I please.
Sorry, I call BS coming from NH. There has been a property tax here for 20 years (as long as I've been here) at least. The difference is that the property tax and business taxes are the only taxes. What this means is that towns with no business have much higher property taxes than those that don't. But... I've got lower property taxes on a 1 acre lot near a lake in NH than people I know on a postage stamp in Taxachusetts. And, get this, no state income tax, and really hold onto you hats, no sales tax. Also, guns are very easy to get, so.... GET OFF MY LAWN!
If there's no incentive for people to make productive use of capital, the economy stagnates.
The incentive for people to make productive use of capital is the reward / gain they get from doing so. I'm no rabid objectivist or "big-L" libertarian, but that's just fundamental economics.
it's not fair to society to let him keep it for no/low cost when it might be put to better, more productive use for society by someone else.
Spoken like a true communist. Other than life itself, there is no more fundamental right than the right to property. From your comments I get the impression that you are not a property owner or you would not be so cavalier in taxing it away.
Reallocating property from one person to another based on "productive use of capital" for the benefit of society over the rights of the individual is always going to be a negative incentive to productivity. Why acquire property if it can just be taken away (or taxed away) at the whim of some powerful individual or group? Some property taxes are probably inevitable to pay for necessary social services (fire, police, etc.) but those taxes should never be used to penalize for some imagined lack of relative "productivity".
Unfortunately, there are others who agree with your line of reasoning, most notably some US Supreme Court justices. See Kelo v. City of New London for a real world example of the results.
Sorry, I know this is off topic but I can't let it pass without comment.
So you REALLY think that it was Prop 13 that sank California?
Well.... The thing about prop 13... It set up a conflict of interest between the cities and counties and their populace. After prop 13, the cities and counties were opposed to new housing development. Housing demands services that is not covered by the revenue generated. As time goes by, the cities and counties develop complex ways of hiding this problem by implementing all manner of permit fees and revenue enhancements. For example in 2000, in one small east SF Bay area city, in order to build a house, it cost in excess of $70,000 for the required building permits. That means that every single house that has a valid occupancy permit, no matter what condition, has a built in base price of $70,000.
Artificial scarceness drives up prices. When a house changes hands, it can be reassessed under prop 13. So churn is good for cities.
Finally... The banks get to collect 5 - 6 - 7% interest on all this property tax avoidance chicanery. Lather rinse repeat for 30+ years...
We're reading about the results in the paper every day. The house of cards finally folded. Now some of the gross abuses of the state expense structure are coming into view. My favorite... The police and correctional officers union. You do your 20 years, and get to retire with full benefits. So you can retire at roughly 40 years old, and have full pay and benefits for life while you go double dip as a security consultant, etc... Same deal with the firefighter unions.
The problem is... It's easy enough to say "yea, that's wrong. They shouldn't sign those contracts." or "they should repeal prop 13", but they're entrenched. If you benefit from them, you support them. My parents love prop 13. And why shouldn't they? They're paying property taxes last reassessed in 1978. Their son bought a cardboard box of a house, payed 11% income tax, 5% of his income in property tax, 9.25% sales tax, 1% vehicle property tax, and countless fees... and double that again in inflated prices so others could do the same... and got fed up sold his house and transferred his job out of state. They still don't understand why.
So..you're saying you are against the idea that people own things like land/property. That they ONLY 'rent' it from the government (tax==rent)
Boy, now that is a big change from how things in this country started....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It just means that all of these businesses will move to a state that does not have such a law. If you do not have a physical presence in a particular state, said state cannot require you to collect sales tax (read this bill, it also recognizes this limit). The problem with this tax is that it encourages businesses to locate in another state. It will not generate as much revenue as the legislators anticipate, unless they spend a significant amount of money on enforcement. Even then I suspect that the result will just be lots of people being penalized for not declaring this on their own, not actual compliance.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison