The End of Tax-Free Internet Shopping?

Mordok-DestroyerOfWo writes "If a little-known but influential alliance of state politicians, large retailers, and tax collectors have their way, the days of tax-free Internet shopping may be nearly over. A bill expected to be introduced in the US Congress as early as Monday would rewrite the ground rules for mail order and Internet sales by eliminating what its supporters view as a 'loophole' that, in many cases, allows Americans to shop over the Internet without paying sales taxes."

Comments

Welcome to Hope and Change

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how "Hope and Change" ended up being "Tax and Spend"

Re:Welcome to Hope and Change

[Dan667]

Better than whiny and lazy as seen in the tea bag protests. (make an actual policy? that is someone else's todo)

Re:The big question that must be answered

[timeOday]

"My understanding (I'm not a lawyer) is that taxing interstate commerce is prohibited by the constitution (the root of all US law)."

Individual states cannot tax interstate commerce, no. That's why this legislation is being introduced at the US Congress. There's certainly nothing to stop the federal govt from passing laws to tax interstate commerce.

I have to question the probability of success given all the bru-ha-ha over taxes and "tea parties" yesterday. Though, really, those protests mean nothing unless the protesters are united in which govt. services to cut, or who should take up the tax burden, to relieve their supposed "overtaxation." What I really think we're about to see is conservative whites in America learning what it's like to be a minority in a democracy - what they derided as "whining" by blacks and other minorities for all these years.

Re:Only if you make over $250,000

[geekoid]

This isn't part of his plan. It's congress closing and loophole. This is a TAX THAT ALREADY EXISTS, DUMBASS.

Re:Only if you make over $250,000

[ArcherB]

This isn't part of his plan. It's congress closing and loophole. This is a TAX THAT ALREADY EXISTS, DUMBASS.

And by closing that "loophole", taxes will go up. He didn't say "No NEW taxes." He said taxes will not be going up, not "one single dime!" Here it is again since you were unwilling to read it the first time.

"I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

"You will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime."
-- Barack Obama

Re:Amazon's going to shit a brick on this one

[jav1231]

Well there's a liberal in the presidency and it was conservatives who fought it off all these years. Sounds like a snug-fitting shoe to me.

Re:Not a problem

[Quiet_Desperation]

Go to any site where progressives hang out. If you so much as suggest a tax might be 0.001% too high (or even just at the correct level), you are branded a "right wingnut" or "libertard". The mote intellectual or scientific the site claims to be, the more immature the name calling becomes. You soon realize many of them have never worked in the private sector at all.

The citizen ideologue (ordinary folks who slavishly follow an ideology) are, bar nothing else, the #1 biggest problem in this country. It's what allows gerrymandering to work. If the idiots out there would stop voting party lines, gerrymandering would be ineffective.

They have done surveys where they asked who someone voted for, and then asked their opinion on several issues. There was often complete disassociation between what the voter felt on issues, and how their candidate actually voted.

Re:The big question that must be answered

[timeOday]

"The difference is that the "whining" that conservatives complained about was people wanting to be given something that was taken by force from someone else"

So we are having this discussion in the context of the founding fathers eh? Think hard, wasn't there something valuable they took from American Indians and African slaves by force?

But don't worry. I'm sure Latinos will be strongly against wealth redistribution too - just as soon as they control 90% of it.

Re:This already occurs in NYS

[MyLongNickName]

Other countries have government health care so they have to pay higher taxes. We can't have that here, no one wants to pay higher taxes! Which is completely stupid since we have a system right now that specifically is trying to make a profit rather than caring a damn if people are suffering or die. It's this selfish, unrealistic attitude that people have that the world is all about them. Sorry, we live in a society. You can find your little groupthink areas where you can all nod your head and complain about taxes and socialism while the grown ups get together and actually talk about ways to try to improve the quality of life of as many people as possible.

Oh, and BTW, I also wrote this in my first post At least in Europe you get a half-way decent health system. Here, after paying all of these taxes, we are stuck paying for our own. And generally, your pension systems are funded. Here, they are underfunded.

So, I never said I don't want to have government sponsored health care. But apparently you can't read that well. You picked one of the three complaints I have with gov't spending and mangled that argument as well. So, call me a child if you want, but you are the one with an elementary-school reading level.