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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."
Ok...so which state will the taxes be going to? The state in which the business operates out of, or the state in which the purchase was made in, or both?
This is seriously going to hurt a lot of online retailers. State politicians who are loathe to raise income and property taxes (lest they be called a L I B E R A L !!) are going to take it out on a lot of still-nascent online businesses.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
How will this mesh with the Sears decision by SCOTUS? My understanding (I'm not a lawyer) is that taxing interstate commerce is prohibited by the constitution (the root of all US law).
Any law geeks out there want to pick this one up?
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
Overtaxed as we are already, this has been occurring in NYS for quite some time now. Some retailers like newegg resisted, but Amazon and others charge it even though they're not legally inside NYS's jurisdiction.
I personally don't shop from amazon any less, but I've never been one to buy things off the internet I can't get locally (to impatient to even wait for overnight shipping).
"Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
Here in Rhode Island we have a "use tax", which basically says if you buy something from out-of-state you need to pay a tax on it which, concidentally, is the same rate as our state sales tax.
I pay it, but one thing bothers me. I thought only the federal government is allowed to tax interstate commerce. Isn't a state "use tax" like the one in Rhode Island doing that very thing, even though they claim they're not? Has this kind of "use tax" been challenged in court on Constitutional grounds?
I was beginning to worry that I might actually be able to spend the remainder of the money that that the government lets me keep each payday without having them take more from me. I'm so glad that they're working hard to prevent that from happening.
There never was any such thing as "tax-free internet shopping". The only thing this would be an end to is scofflaws.
9 times out of 10, shopping online will STILL be cheaper than retail.
If big box retailers think this will save their ass, they're in for a nasty suprise.
And I agree with the FP, sounds like this is going to be a mass of red tape. Think of the fights over who gets the sales tax from amazon...
Sounds DOA to me.
The difference?
Price Tag: $2.99
Total: $3.15
- versus -
Price Tag: $3.15
Total: $3.15
If someone from Canada buys something, does he pay the state taxes? That would be stupid.
And if a company in Canada sells something to someone in the USA, does he have to collect the state taxes? Good luck with that.
The only sane way to do this is charge taxes based on the shipping address, from sales within the USA only.
This 'loop hole' has been in existence since the beginning of the mail order business.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I really don't have a problem with paying sales tax, or taxes in general. Of course, I may not be thrilled with how my tax money is spent, but that's another matter. Taxes still play a major role in implementing civilization. And I ,for one, prefer civilization to the freedom-only-for-the-rich promoted by libertarians.
Caveat Utilitor
From the FA:
"California residents, for instance, are now burdened with a sales and use tax of at least 8.25 percent. State law is strict: if Californians travel to a state with a 5 percent tax and shop there, the law requires them to cough up the 3.25 percent difference when they return. Online purchases are taxed as well."
This kind of thing really bothers me. It's as if all our money, wherever we spend it, belongs to our home state. I'm sure not many people actually "cough up" the difference, but just the principle of it really burns me up.
Glad I live free or die! No state tax or sales tax(*)! (*) until more MASSholes move up here and vote one in.
This is exactly the type of thing Interstate Compacts were made for.
States which currently or in the future impose "use taxes" could agree with each other to collect the taxes from their own state's vendors then remit the money to the destination state, less a processing fee.
The rates collected and the processing fees if any should be negotiated between the participating states, not in Washington.
When a resident buys something from a non-participating state, he would be responsible for declaring the user tax and paying it himself, the same as today.
What WOULD make sense at the Congressional level is reporting: Require vendors to report the annual per-person or per-address total of all out-of-state purchases to the various state tax departments so the tax departments could bill the taxpayers. But Congress should not be requiring the actual collections.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"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
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
It's all about greed. The internet company operating outside the state (if they're in the state they're already paying taxes) isn't using any of the infrastructure that the taxes pay for. If anything, they should be paying taxes in the state where they do the business, but then you have customers in other states paying out-of-state sales taxes which don't benefit them and aren't fair either.
The current system has worked well for many years. What hasn't worked well over that time is politicians controlling their spending of other people's money in their attempts to buy their way into continued future paychecks. Now they're out trying to steal even more from you.
If we threw out these politicians trying to vote this in as just yet more Big Taxers and Spenders then this stupid and unfair idea might actually go away for a while.
And it goes without mentioning the problems any Internet company would face in computing the proper state, county, city, and even borough taxes properly and paying them to all the proper taxing authorities. This is MANY TIMES the burden any local business faces. Talk about an attempt to kill internet companies - you couldn't have come up with a better scheme.
And think of the companies (FedEx, UPS...) which depend of them for a large chunk of their business. Raise prices, kill off companies, are you really trying to make this recession worse!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
What is the justification for sales tax on an internet purchase?
Did the state or county provide some service or infrastructure that supported the internet sale?
Did the state or county or city bring anything to the table?
No?
Why then they should bug off!
any taxes on their internet purchases.
LOL.
They talk a good game though.
I'm currently stationed overseas and have an APO mailing address. I do a lot of my shopping via the Internet. I'm highly curious to see how these proposed changes will affect myself and all other overseas military members. These changes would definitely affect my shopping habits as I would probably just special order through the Base Exchange for certain items and wait the extra time, not paying sales taxes.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
OK,
My money has been taken out of my check, automatically, without my permission, and being used to pay for services I will never be able to benefit from. I then pay MORE taxes, to even more agencies for infrastructure maintenance that I have no say over what gets fixed, or when. THEN I get to pay even more taxes on the goods I purchase with what little money I have left after all those previous taxes, and now they've found ANOTHER whole new way to tax me.
I understand the whole "taxation without representation" thing, but this is getting as bad. Why am I paying into programs that, because I'm 27, will never be able to use because they'll be long bankrupt by the time I'm old enough to benefit from them?
Also, how are they going to dictate who gets this tax, and how is it reported? and what do they do in an international purchase? Will I have to pay tariffs for items purchased overseas? Will they charge me another tax, to pay for the foundation of this new taxation system?
America is going tooooo far with what is expected of it's citizens to pay already!!!
We've somehow now become endebited to the banks, because we'll get stuck paying for the bailout. Though it would have been CHEAPER to just hand every American Citizen over 10 Million dollars a piece. We're seeing record highs in unemployment across the board, it is becoming more and more frequent that companies are cutting cost of living increases and merit wage increases, not to mention bonuses, 401k matches, etc.
How do they expect us to now pay MORE with LESS? It's incredible that people are ignorant enough to think that it is somehow OK in this nasty economic climate to impose even MORE cost on normal citizens for something we already can't afford!!!
"This is the value of a summer spent and a winter earned"
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I live in NH, which has no sales tax, but the issue you mentioned is by FAR my single biggest pet peeve, and the only complaint I have about any taxation in our country.
It's inconvenient. I dont like to drive 10 minutes to Mass, see something that says $5, and be asked for $5.20 ... regardless of any semantics over who "pays" if the price tag said $5.20 my objections would vanish...
In California, the sales tax is a tax on the seller. The seller has the option of listing the sales tax as a separate item on the bill presented to the buyer, but is not obliged to. Even if the seller does not list the sales tax separately, the seller is obligated to pay the sales tax. When you buy popcorn in a movie theater for $5.50, the tax is not listed separately, but the theater pays the tax to the state. If you buy from out-of-state, you are required to pay a use tax, which coincidentally is equal to the sales tax.
This law would require sellers in other states to collect the use tax and transmit it to the state. It does not impose a new tax, but acts like withholding from your paycheck, making sure you don't forget to pay your use tax. 8=)
For more than half of the years of my adult life, my out-of-state purchases excluding hotel rooms, restaurants, and other things used out of state were either zero or so close to zero as to be not worth the paperwork.
Most states that have use taxes exclude small items you personally carry into the state such as trip souvenirs and all or almost all exclude items used out of state such as meals or lodging.
The "out of state" sales tax problem has been around as long as there has been both the sales tax and catalog-only sales companies. I wonder if your grandmother bothered to pay use taxes on her mail-order seeds and other domestic items she bought from mail-order-only companies?
When your parents bought their "Greatest hits from the 1950s 8-Track $19.95 TV Offer" tunes 35 years ago, did they bother to declare it and pay taxes? Most people did not.
This is nothing new.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You raise an interesting issue. Let's say you download some music, software, movies, etc from teh pirate bay. Today, that's not a crime (uploading -- distribution -- is). But tomorrow, you may be charged with tax evasion or conspiracy to commit tax evasion.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I can see this getting fun when Amazon, Newegg etc. ask the state tax departments to provide them with a definitive answer as to what the sales tax rate is for any given address in that state, and the tax department doesn't have an answer ready. Were it me, the next thing would be a request for declaratory judgement that my business didn't have to collect the tax until the tax department could give me that answer.
And no, ZIP-code-level doesn't work. I know places around San Diego where part of a ZIP code's within a city and part isn't, and addresses in the part that's outside the city do not owe city sales tax.
State law is strict: if Californians travel to a state with a 5 percent tax and shop there, the law requires them to cough up the 3.25 percent difference when they return. Online purchases are taxed as well.
But compliance is spotty at best. California's Board of Equalization estimates the state lost $1.34 billion in 2003 because residents aren't paying use taxes--and attributes $208 million of that to online purchases.
This reminds me of the RIAA's definition of "lost revenue". The state didn't lose anything... with a law as badly thought out as this, any money they did collect should be treated as a windfall. When you create a law where the only possibility of any compliance at all is people's innate honesty, just be glad that so many people are basically honest and bank what you can.
If taxes are charged based on the location of the seller, this would be a good time to invest in office and warehouse space in those states that DO NOT charge sales tax, e.g. Oregon. If taxes are charged based on the location of the buyer, I see a big future in people renting PO Boxes in those same states, and having them re-ship their purchases or just drive across the border to pick them up. A 10% VAT us a huge psychological barrier; as the sales tax exceeds that amount, people are much more willing to take gray market measures to avoid the tax. Seattle sales tax is already 9.3%; faced with a multi-billion dollar deficit, it will inevitably go even higher.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I work for an online retailer here in the state of Washington. Recently, our state passed a law forcing all state business to collect sales tax based off local jurisdiction, instead of our home jurisdiction. They then allowed only two companies to actually handle all that info, with whom you are required to deal with in order to collect the proper amounts. Needless to say, the complexity involved was not fun. Not to mention the thousands of dollars it costs to deal with the "government approved" sales tax info vendors.
Having this kind of thing go nationwide makes me quake with fear.
New Yorkers already pay an online tax of 8.625% for many retailers who operate within the state (Amazon Tax). It really sucks! It's not fair to introduce this tax in the current economic conditions to the rest of the country; people have little disposable income as is. The only good thing is that it sort of levels the playing field for mom-n-pop shops with no online storefront.
Internet retailers are not required to _collect_ the taxes, but you are still _required to pay them_. Internet shopping is not tax free.
What? reship becasue of a 5% increase?
It would cost you more money, a lot more money.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It would be highly ironic if this rule is introduced now. Driving the cost of online purchases up would have reduced the cost difference between buying online and brick-n-mortar, which MAY have saved the likes of Circuit City and BestBuy from going bellyup, if this rule was introduced earlier. Either way, the government wants our money.
Real men read Slashdot articles at -1, bottom up.
Probably about as often as tax cheat Republicans paid their tax on internet purchases.
What is the justification for sales tax on an internet purchase?
"We want more money (because what we take from you already is being misused)".
in canadian hosting and colocation companies, since everyone will be relocating there
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Wires for the network, the right of way for the wires for the network, the road to drive down to maintain the wires for the network, police to protect the property rights of the purchaser so that any purchases get made at all, etc.
Of course the state provides infrastructure. Do you think Amazon's website just magically shows up on your computer without anything in between you and them?
--
JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
I don't mind paying taxes, but I wish the US did something like VAT in Europe.
Basically, the prices you see advertised already include the tax in them. No trying to figure out 8% of some number, no more $2.99 item being just a hair over $3 and filling your pockets with loose change.
Gee, this is terrible! People are using their (post-income-tax) money to purchase things, and the government isn't being inserted into the transaction at all. Anarchy is soon to follow.
Dear America,
Hi, you owe us $3 trillion or so, and we'd like our money back soon as we're a bit concerned about the strength of your currency. Maybe you could increase your taxes to get it for us?
Thanks,
Rest of the World.
Yeah I know it's a troll but I'll bite.
I've paid taxes on internet purchases. It all depends on which merchant you deal with. Most often I've seen it where if you are in the same state as the merchant, to avoid pissing someone off in the state IRS, they charge that tax, but not out of state tax.
And for the record, the progressive left wing of the party finds almost all sales tax to be unfair and regressive. I could go into the details of why we see this, but progressives and liberals find and are far more willing to pay Income tax, not sales tax, because our feeling is income tax is better and in truth fairer for society as a whole. Not all taxes are made equal.
If you want to debate the difference, feel free to follow up and start a whole new flaming thread.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
So, STOP IT. Just stop. Do something else.
Once you're used to it, you'll be at an advantage when civilisation plows into the wall of resource depletion and the rest of the suckers are wondering "wuh wuh wuh happened???"
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The alternative is for the federal government to set up a uniform framework for sales taxes, allowing the state only to set percentages. I think most people wold be against this expansion of governmental influence in terms of taxes, given the riots yesterday against the payment of taxes for such essentials such as medical care for our soldiers, help for homeless children, and the like. Such a framework would also likely lead to national sales tax, which, in spite of what the naive people assert, would be likely be passed in addition to the federal income tax.
In the end, the solution will likely be more aggressive of enforcement and stabilization of income taxes. The IRS is going after Americans who use United States services, but pretend to be citizens of other countries. This would mean state taxes, which I think would benefit the country, if sales taxes were significantly reduced. For instance, rush limbaugh is running away from his patriotic duties to live in texas. If these are the type of people no-income-tax-states attract, it is a justification for a state income tax. Texas needs innovate, intelligent people. In Austin alone, we have our fill of drug infested entertainers.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
All fine and dandy..IF they had simplified tax rates enough for this to make sense. They haven't :(
WA state changed** they way they collect from in-state vendors to be in-sync with this scheme but haven't simplified anything for out-of-state vendors. There are still over 366 tax codes and rates for the state! The exemptions are a bit vague at times and no way to ask if XYZ should be taxed.
They need to make taxable vs nontaxable clear and easy before other states will willingly collect taxes for others.
We sell medical supplies. Items that replace a body part are tax exempt. An internal catheter is taxfree while an external catheter is taxable (near as we can tell...like i said no one to ask for sure...INCLUDING A STATE TAX AUDITOR, they didn't know either). A leg bag for the catheter is probably taxfree. How about an extension tube for it? The drain tube? The shut-off clamp?
How about a kit containing those parts plus cleaning solution and towels? They seem to think it is PARTLY taxable !?!?! Good luck with that.
**previously in-state vendors had to pay tax based on where it was shipped FROM...most computer systems don't deal with that gracefully if you have multiple warehouses in the state. They are keyed for a code based on CUSTOMER location, most deal fine with multiple locations for the customer. Not to mention explaining to a customer why order A has a tax rate of 8.1% but order B has a rate of 8.7%. I suppose it is a start but....
Better stop now..in case no one guessed i have been filling out sales tax forms for 20 years now :(
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You mean as opposed to Bush's "Spend Money We Don't Have?"
They get taxes from the fuel used to transport the goods. They get money from the vehicle registrations. They get money from the vehicle purchases. They get taxes from the goods purchased to maintain the transportation vehicles. They get taxes from the corporations that sell the goods and the ones that transport the goods. They get taxes from the employees of both of those groups. THE GOVERNMENTS (local, state, and federal) GET PLENTY OF FUCKING MONEY OUT OF INTERSTATE COMMERCE!!!
A company such as BestBuy, Borders, and so on already collects sales tax for the states where they have a presence.
A company such as Amazon does enough volume of commerce that they can afford the accounting to figure whose tax is owed to whom.
But a small company may have only a few cents to collect for a given state over a day, week, month or even year. Counting the beans costs more than the beans are worth.
Most likely, "Sales Tax Clearinghouse" companies will crop up, which will offer to file your forms with each state and distribute... for another fee.
When we ran an online store (selling Children's Books), most of our customers were out of state, but we did collect for our home state... which amounted to less than $50 per year most years, especially as many in-state customers were schools and churches (which do not pay sales tax). Multiply that by, what, 48 states that collect sales tax? The paperwork is horrendous.
Design for Use, not Construction!
Americans in general are not unwilling to pay for government... they just want less of it.
Unfortunately, I think it's more like Americans in general are not unwilling to have government... they just want someone else to pay for it.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Just don't fuck with your average person's TV and you can do whatever you want to them.
It used to be that these taxes were a temporary wartime measure to support the war effort. Then they become permanent and...hey, wait a minute, TV's weren't even widespread back then...
Nevermind, just roll over and take it up the ass as usual.
But if anyone wants to volunteer some lazy, cowardly, bloodless, sit on your ass and pointclick type of petition "revolt", please do if it'll make everyone feel better.
Obviously this only works for items for which the sales tax exceeds the shipping costs. A 10% tax would pay for a lot of shipping, if you use USPS book rate instead of FedEx next day delivery. You are correct in that it certainly wouldn't make sense for all of your purchases.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"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." - Barack Obama, Dover, N.H. campaign stop, 12 September 2008.
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
Now, I've read enough Slashdot to know that the Americans here hate taxes and all politicians are corrupt, but still...
Thinking of your entire nation as a whole, it doesn't make any sense at all to subsidize interstate trade at the expense of instate trade. Closing this in some sensible manner will be good for your whole country. It really isn't about taxing more, but about making things consistent and fair.
Wake up, not all paranoia is healthy. That's just my 2c from EU.
It sounds to me, like Californians are being treated more like "subjects" rather than "residents."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Wires for the network have all been installed, operated, and maintained by private companies. "The state" had nothing to do with it.
1. They make the implicit assumption that everyone has a sales or use tax, and that people are avoiding it. That may be true in many cases, but not mine, since my state has neither. I don't
2. Similarly, it's unfair for businesses operating here. For a business located purely in my state, it's not a fair burden for them to have to calculate and collect use tax for any of the hundred (cities, counties, states, and various other revenue districts) that someone might be in when they click their mouse to order. I don't mind the "nexus" argument for sales tax (hey, the company chose to set up shop in a state? Then you can learn the tax rules and when to collect them), but extending it to use tax isn't fair. If a state really feels they need a use tax, it should be their responsibility to figure out how to collect it, and not involve companies that don't even have nexus in their state.
3. They talk about simplifying it, but there's already enough cases that I can this not working correctly (person in state A buys a gift from vendor in state B for shipment (from state C) to the recipient in State D).
I say get rid of the sales tax. They aren't necessary, we've got several states (including my own) that get along just fine without them.
No, as in "spend even more money we do not have." Obama's budget is NOT smaller than Bush's, it is larger.
Yeah, it's kind of sad how people keep going on about this, but Obama's spending so far is not really any different from Bush Jr., Bush Sr., and Reagan who in turn each ran up the largest deficits in spending than any president since WWII. As conservatives often point out, Reagan constantly called for a balanced budget amendment, but he himself never actually proposed a budget that was balanced. Small wonder then that between congress and he the deficit ballooned. I'm guessing that it will be very difficult for Obama to increase the deficit in the long term, thanks to recent republican president's propensity for long, expensive, unnecessary wars and their inability to balance a budget. It has nothing to do with political ideology, it's how much U.S. debt the world economy will support.
If I stop think about it, it really pisses me off that conservatives are so easily hood-winked by the rich upper class and Wall Street who call for smaller government and lower taxes whenever a democrat is in power, but what we end up with is tax cuts for the rich, benefit cuts for the poor, and a huge deficit to boot. Stupid.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
I've often thought that all of the sales taxing entities need to get together and create an internet sales tax clearing house where anyone selling on the internet simply submits the buyers zip code and the the other relevant information and it returns the applicable tax amount rather than forcing all retailers to figure it out on their own. The taxing entities would be responsible for keeping the rates up to date and paying for the clearing house but wouldn't be losing so much revenue due to unreported transactions.
Of course, living in Oregon, I don't really care that much since we don't have sales taxes here.
BTW, for all you teabaggers, the Boston Tea Party was specifically fomented because the colonists objected to the the Crown reducing the tax on tea to 0 for the British East India company. The opposite of what today's teabaggers are protesting about.
I believe Wisconsin recently enacted taxes for online sales. Unfortunately I live in Wisconsin.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
Dunno about the political affiliation of the head of the IRS, but I recently read that he's in tax arrears by some $34,000.
In Liberty, Rene
"Did the state or county provide some service or infrastructure that supported the internet sale?"
Yes.
"Did the state or county or city bring anything to the table?"
Yes
Any other questions?
What did they provide? How pertinent was it to this specific transaction? How far can we extend this "provided a service"? I'm sure the building where the item was made used light bulbs to provide lighting (while making the item being sold) or at the very least the vehicle used to transport it had headlights - does that mean that New Jersey sales tax should be paid (Edison invented the light bulb and he lived in New Jersey)? How is that NOT New Jersey providing a service?
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An incentive to shop even less than we already are now...
8==8 Bones 8==8
When the economy was booming, many residents questioned why the city councils were maintaining "rainy day budget funds" they weren't using while they were putting up taxes. So the taxpayers forced the cities to use up these budgets before raising taxes. Now, there are massive waiting lists for council housing; asylum seekers, single parent families, immigrants who cannot find work and can't afford to go home, pensioners who lost their company pensions and the unemployed workers who were paying for everyone else.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I found out this year that if you are a resident of a state that does not have an income tax, but work in a state where there is, you get penalized on your Federal taxes.
How?
Because if you worked and lived in states that all had income taxes, you can deduct the income taxes that you paid in each state. However, you can only deduct income tax OR sales tax on the federal return, not both. So, although you paid as much in sales taxes in your home state as you would have if it had been income tax (probably more, if you are a resident of Washington), you only get one of the deductions, not both.
If that statement is incorrect, then H&R Block's Tax Cut software has a serious bug in it, and they owe me money.
Probably about as often as tax cheat Republicans paid their tax on internet purchases.
But probably far less often than moral conservatives get high on pain pills after railing against "druggies."
The last thing we need is the consumers having completely no idea how much of the cost of a product is actually taxes.
In fact, I'd much rather have the following pricing scheme be mandated:
Price tag:
$3.15-Total
$.50-Federal tax
$.20-State tax
$.05-Local tax
Or whatever it is. Now I know everybody could in theory know all this stuff anyways, but lets face it: Do you really know? Neither do I, but I do care...
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
The tax laws are so complicated that we run a cluster of servers that do nothing but crunch sales tax numbers.
http://www.vertexinc.com/
It's not just 50 states but each and every individual boro, township, and parish located in those 50 states as they can each make and levy sales tax law.
There are literally 1000's and 1000's of different sales tax codes through out the United States of America.
Without some provisions for small businesses an Internet Sales Tax Bill would essentially eliminate the small businesses ability to compete online.
Please mod parent Funny! He is making an argument for VAT because "math is hard" and "coins are heavy".
I really, really, really hope that isn't your entire philosophy concerning VAT taxes. Otherwise, any tax system, regardless of how burdensome or repugnant could be foisted on you - as long as the reverse engineer it to give you these paltry creature comforts...
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
I could really go for a single tax. No more cigarette tax, alcohol tax, food tax, roadway tolls, gasoline tax, sales tax, cell phone service tax, internet tax, airline tax, or property tax. Just an income tax that isn't automatically deducted from my paycheck, but that I pay once a year. The Local, Federal, State governments can figure out who gets what percentage. I think people would be shocked at how much tax they actually pay(aside from just income tax). Basically, I want a bill at the end of the year, and I want to pay it, and I want to pay the prices that companies post for goods and services.
Oh, and I'd like a pony.
Reagan's tax structure was higher than the tax is proposed to be in 2011. The proposed tax structure returns us to the codes during the Clinton years - when he also cut military spending, which is the real way we've cut deficits in the past. It has nothing to do with cutting social services.
For the first time in American history, people got a tax cut while the nation was at war. That's one of the main causes of the deficit increase. If you want a war, you have to pay for it with tax increases, and not bury it in emergency funding bills to make it look like you're fiscally responsible.
I agree with you on cutting spending, and I think we should cut military spending in half to 500 billion a year, eliminate all private contractors in war zones, and make it a law that private contracts must be fully transparent to the buyers, that is, voters like you and me. Allow a single payer system to compete with private insurers, and our society as a whole will save more hundreds of billions of dollars. Eliminate the private prison system, which incentivizes the expensive incarceration of over 1.5 million people, and we'll save more. Basically, remove the ability of corporations to profiteer when there is no market advantage to have them there in the first place.
These tea parties and all of the nonsense about high taxes in America are centered around the idea the the "right" to get wealthy is more important than all other societal concerns. It's a great way to destroy a functioning democracy, and you can see the decay through the decline of wages, the disappearing middle class, and skyrocketing health care and basic needs costs. It really is stupefying to watch people protest against their own interests, demanding that Blue Cross be allowed to rip them off while they suffer through treatable diseases since they have "preexisting conditions." Demanding that private contractors receive billions of dollars to perform the same jobs that soldiers are capable of for a tenth of the price, and then protest "government" education which represents a tiny fraction of the federal budget.
Stupefying and deeply depressing.
No matter what you like, no matter what the constitution says, the fact is that online shopping WILL BE THE MAJORITY in the future. Then where does the state get the money? They are already bankrupt. The law has to allow them to tax more.
The states should negotiate the compact, Congress should just rubber-stamp it or, if it's a bad idea, refuse to approve it and send it back with its objections, much like a Presidential veto message but without the possibility of an override.
Also, by being a compact, it can be made to apply to the states involved, rather than nationwide.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You're right. All we have to do is cut military spending, from a trillion dollars per year in 2008 to something more reasonable, like 500 or 400 billion.
It's funny, that never seems to be an option for the ideological right.
I suspect the cost of implementing this mandate will far outweight the taxes collected. It will start to take out money from the economy at a time it does not need it. It will shut down small internet businesses that can not afford the tracking and accounting and auditing and reporting needed to do it. Only large businesses will be able to compete or you will have to hire a service to handle it for you. But that adds a tax on the tax.
Let you Congressman and Senators know how you feel about the issue. Let them know that this issues has not gone unnoticed. Let them know what you think the consequences of a mandate as described would be.
I can't take seriously the private citizen who stands for such a proposition.
The Founding Fathers did: they privately owned, or relied on private ownership of, cannons, rockets, and battleships - the most extreme armaments of the time, and which the then-government didn't want them to have. RPGs and F22s aren't that much beyond those, really.
The second amendment is far less clear than most people understand it to be. Read United States v. Miller and District of Columbia v. Heller in their entirety to get some idea of the subtleties that are involved.
It is completely clear - which is exactly what causes cognitive dissonance in those who don't want it to say what it plainly does.
I've studied Miller carefully. The presiding judge just wanted the case to go away, because he was under pressure from the feds to uphold the recently-passed NFA law. That the defendant & his lawyer did not show up in court made it difficult to address the case properly, and a pretense was concocted to toss the case back to a lower court, where the issue died (following the defendant's lead). (It was deemed unclear whether the item in question fit a particular category, which had to be resolved before determining whether the category could be, for all practical purposes, banned.)
I've studied Heller carefully. There are many subtleties in there, mostly because the court didn't want to get caught up in tangents, and because adressing those tangents would have led to obvious conclusions (which are strongly hinted at, like legalizing M16s) which part of the court, government and public would have nervous breakdowns if clearly upheld. (It was deemed clear that Mr. Heller's request for a _permit_ should be granted; he did not challenge whether the requirement of a permit was lawful.)
The issue is complicated only to those who try to impress their opinion on a contrary enumeration of a right.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
The Air Force
NASA
FDIC Insurance
SEC Regulation
NIST
DARPA
And all of the things they have brought us, like computers, the internet, and small stuff like that. Or maybe the founding fathers allowed us to interpret the Constitution for a reason...
Things are tough already and there are signs all over that shows consumer spending cut backs. Now, they want to tax us for online purchases? I guess everyone skipped that part when they filed their taxes, huh?.
The common citizens can play their game, too. If the law makers want more tax revenues from people, just avoid spending. Here in California, they raised our sales tax so they can continue with their over budget spending. Talk about kicking you when you're down...
Buy all your toys online now kiddies before they jack us. That Apple netbook/tablet better ship soon! ;-)
How much did you make this year ?
ok send it in!
Well that now want to take more money away from working people who buy stuff online to save money. They will do anything to bleed blood from a turnip these days. Another fine example of the government not looking out for the well being of their constituents but their wallet. As soon as it begins to appear like a windfall of money they will vote for a raise for themselves. Federal reps do it every year. Yesterday is the start of the dissent people have with this. I for one think this is not a good idea at all. I buy online to get a good deal. Now with the stupid tax it won't be beneficial enough and might as well get it local. Online business suffers.
Yes, ideally, folks should save for their own retirement. However, practically, most people except the most hardcore libertarians are against deciding you should starve to death because you ended up with insufficient cash when it came time to retire. What do you do for folks that lose their money through theft? They get to starve because they were unlucky?
Many of the "problems" with Social Security come when people think of it as a govt. mandated retirement fund. Yes, when looked at in that light, the costs are high and the returns poor (although the requirement to invest only in T-Bills was a stroke of genius; if the trust fund were in private investments I can only imagine the pork-barreled SNAFU that would be.)
However, Social Security was not conceived as a retirement program, it was conceived as an anti-poverty program for the elderly and unable to work. Looked at in that light, it makes a lot more sense: we (the citizens of the U.S.) achieve a jointly decided on societal goal of trying to keep penniless elderly and disabled fellow citizens from literally starving to death due to hunger.
There are real problems with Social Security as it currently exists, but its very existence is not one of them.
SirWired
Most of the wires for the network were installed by a government granted monopoly which was then required (by the government) to put a wire anywhere that someone needed it.
--
JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
Of course the state provides infrastructure. Do you think Amazon's website just magically shows up on your computer without anything in between you and them?
Yes, thanks to the private companies who contract for bandwidth services between me and Amazon. So now I should be thankful the government let someone put copper/fiber down on the ground? And they want a piece of the pie because of that? Fark. that.
That may be so... but we customers still ended up paying for it. By and large it was not tax money.
And when it has been, it has been wasted. For example, the Federal money that went to the telcos to run fiber to the home... where did it go? They used it for other things. Now they want us to pay (again) for running fiber to the home.
I'm sure the building where the item was made used light bulbs to provide lighting (while making the item being sold) or at the very least the vehicle used to transport it had headlights - does that mean that New Jersey sales tax should be paid (Edison invented the light bulb and he lived in New Jersey)? How is that NOT New Jersey providing a service?
...I hope nobody from the New Jersey legislature reads this.
most people except the most hardcore libertarians are against deciding you should starve to death because you ended up with insufficient cash when it came time to retire.
At what point did I say that retired people should starve to death?
Here is a hint....never!
What I did say was "You will be a burden on your children" do not put words in my mouth to push your point of view.
There is nothing that Social Security can do that can not be done better by saving your money, your family, or privet charity.
I do think Social Security should be abolished and the people given that money to save or invest as they see fit.
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."
Idiots! We are in what is being described as the biggest economic calamity
since the Great Depression and these idiots want to discourage people from
engaging in consumer spending.
Brilliant.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So now I should be thankful the government let someone put copper/fiber down on the ground? And they want a piece of the pie because of that?
Consider that copper in the ground for a moment. Here is what the state government contributes to it:
1. The legal authority to run lines across private property even if the land-owners do not like it.
2. The regulatory framework to keep the company that owns those lines from abusing the customer.
3. The roads that are used to haul the copper in, as well to move the equipment and labor required to install and maintain it.
4. The regulatory framework to handle production and distribution of electricity that runs down that line.
5. Protection for those lines from vandals and angry landowners.
6. A workforce educated at public expense to provide the labor for installation and maintenance.
The whole system fails if these elements are not provided. If they're not going to be funded by a sales tax, how would you LIKE the state to get the money to pay for it?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Oh yes blame the hard working successful people for wanting to keep the fruits of their labor.
Very few people in this country advocate taking away the greater part of the fruits of any labor, with the potential exception of ill-gotten bonuses awarded to failed financial firms. Suggesting that taxation of any kind doesn't enable people to keep rewards for work or investment is an exaggeration tactic. If you want to argue about specific levels, that's always legit, but suggesting that a marginal difference on the order of 10% amounts to binary discussion about whether people should keep or lose the fruits of their labor is disingenuous, particularly in a society where, yes, we do have representation.
News flash for you: we are over taxed, this is not new we have been saying this for a long time.
This is 100% opinion, and it isn't shared by everyone. Personally, I think the current income tax levels are by and large reasonable, though I'd like to see the bottom income tax bracket be lower than the highest capital gains. There are others in higher income brackets than I who agree; Warren Buffet, among others, has made statements to this effect.
The government needs to stop funding things it was never meant to do in the first place; the war on drugs, welfare programs, rebuilding other countries, and the list goes on.
While I can agree that many of our recent policy decisions on this front -- and in particular the curbing of civil liberties -- have been blights, I can't agree that our government was never meant to be involved in those things, given that among the missions of the founding document one finds imperatives to "provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare."
The United States of America is not a democracy! It never has been a democracy!
This is often thrown around like it's a great insight when it's largely pedantry. Yes, I realize that formally there is a difference between a pure democracy and a representative republic. In common usage in the United States, when people say "Democracy" what they generally mean is a representative system combined with a body of defining law like the one we have. The United States IS a Democracy -- for constrained values of Democracy which the term quite certainly allows. We can make Venn diagrams if you like, but that might also be pedantry.
Our representatives are not Representing us any more
Your representatives may not be representing you, but it's quite possible they're by and large representing the constituency that elected them. This is one of the things that I find a bit amusing about the tea parties -- almost to a person, it doesn't seem occurred to them that perhaps the representation process has actually been working as intended, even if the current prevailing representation disagrees with them.
People are starting to wake up and see this, as the haze clears they look at their wallets and get angry. That is what the Tea Parties are about.
It's pretty much inarguable that the status of anybody's wallet at the moment has little to do with with emerging policy under protest, unless you're going to argue that the effects of government spending travel backwards in time. So what's the protest actually about?
Increased spending? Did you know that the budgeted federal outlays are on par with those of the first and last year of the Reagan administration? Is this over letting the tax rates for the top 5% of earners in the United States return to the levels where they obviously blighted and hamstrung the economy of the 1990s and having tax cuts for everybody else? Is it over actually attempting investment in American infrastructure when the private capital markets are in such a disarray due largely to private malfeasance and mismanagement that they can't do it?
It is one thing to suggest that there is current mismanagement of the both the crisis bailout and the stimulus (don't confuse them). Specific criticisms are apt (unless they're like Jinda
Tweet, tweet.
Sorry... who started the $750 bailout? You really think Bush wouldn't be ramping up spending too? Obama hasn't cut the things Bush allocated to spend on things like the military... he's winding down the war, but it will take time, so it's not like he can cut the budget until he's finishing the wind down.
Bush ended the notion that Rs are the small government party. Or did you miss the TSA, DHS, etc?
There is already taxes collected on *anything* that ships.
:)
Unless it is a download only item (software for example) taxes or other fees are paid on *at least* all of the following:
- Sales and excise tax on fuel for the truck moving the product
- IFTA fees
- Apportioned vehicle resigistration fees
- Property taxes paid by warehouse facilities of shipping company
- Income taxes paid by shipping company
This is what came to mind off the top of my head. These are specifically taxes associated with *shipping* the product. You're now paying on top of that as well if they enact interstate sales taxes. I realize that any product purchased in a retail location paid many of these same taxes (via shipping costs) as well, but the point still stands - folks are already paying on this.
Plus the single most important part of all this - everyone who lives in a sales tax state pays Use Taxes (FL), right?
Illiterate? Write for free help!
The average tax burden for Americans is -- just in direct taxes -- about 40 percent of our income.
Do you mean an arithmetic mean? If so, it probably doesn't mean anything useful about the tax burden for the general population, given the income (and therefore tax burden) distribution of the population. Also, please be sure to distinguish between statutory and effective rates -- they're often *very* different in this country.
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, whereas conservatives are "whining" about not being able to keep what actually belongs to them.
The other difference is that the conservatives in question often don't seem to be able to distinguish between the operation of a Representative Republic whose members choose to define a society which uses this level of taxation, and a mugger on the street taking the same sum from them.
None of this is to say that discussions on how tax money is used and how much is required are off limits. A well-operating society will probably have them continually. Just that glib comments that take a broad brush to the entire concept of taxation don't contribute much to understanding the issues involved.
Tweet, tweet.
The whole system fails if these elements are not provided. If they're not going to be funded by a sales tax, how would you LIKE the state to get the money to pay for it?
1. The legal authority to run lines across private property even if the land-owners do not like it.
There's a cost associated with having legal authority? Wrong. Once an easement has been established, there is no upkeep cost.
2. The regulatory framework to keep the company that owns those lines from abusing the customer.
Covered by the telcom taxes I have to pay on my internet connection.
3. The roads that are used to haul the copper in, as well to move the equipment and labor required to install and maintain it.
Covered by fuel taxes.
4. The regulatory framework to handle production and distribution of electricity that runs down that line.
Covered by taxes on electricity
5. Protection for those lines from vandals and angry landowners.
Paid for by property taxes to fund local police departments
6. A workforce educated at public expense to provide the labor for installation and maintenance.
Paid for by property taxes, and to a lesser extent the federal government.
Why should I pay sales tax for goods from another state when the infrastructure I'm using has *already* been paid for through other taxes?
If was I assured that the government was using my tax money efficiently and productively, I wouldn't have an issue paying them. However, the government uses our money neither wisely nor efficiently.
Here's a small example of how wasteful my city is. My city has a budged deficit like virtually ever level of our inept government all over the country. During a radio interview during the winter he said we were one snowfall away from declaring bankruptcy. It's the same song and dance year after year. Somehow they never set aside enough money to cover snow removal.
But here's the good bit, after he made that statement we had a fairly minor snow storm, amounting to maybe a couple of inches. And yet I distinctly recall plows running up and down the streets of my neighborhood to clear the small bit of snow lying at the edges of the street. The street itself was mostly clear of snow. This nonsense went on for two days.
In addition to that these idiots in the snowplows did their plows into the pavement. Every time one of the trucks goes by the rumbling is intense from these plows and sparks are flying. So what's the end result? Sometime this summer crews will start patching all the potholes. And the stretches where the streets are really torn up they'll end up repaving everything, and some of these streets have been paved within the last 10 years.
But then they complain that they have no money. And they can't cut spending even if they wanted because every last department and union refuses to make cuts. The head of the board of education, who earns nearly $200,000 a year for not doing much of anything refused to forgo a raise because she needed it to cover cost of living increases.
And god forbid anyone propose cutting taxes in certain areas, like education. Nevermind that my city spends, on average, significantly more per child than any other country on Earth and I'd say that the quality of education is crap in comparison to what I've seen overseas. There are some good people out there, but money is squandered carelessly and apparently a lot of this money goes to the fat cats running the system.
So what's the solution? Like a bad welfare case or a drug addict the government resorts to squeezing a little more money out of people. Property tax is already ridiculously high in my city and we're looking at it going even higher this summer.
With utilities or any company I have the ability to dispute charges. I can moderate usage, or if I'm unhappy with a provider I can cut service. What the hell can I do with the government. Nothing. The buck stops there. I don't pay and I go to jail. And good luck trying to dispute anything.
What's really bothering me is this blind faith I see in the government nowadays. Like anyone who questions the government is doing something wrong; just look at the media's response to those tax rallies yesterday. And then there's the frustrating nonsense about how we need to punish the wealthy. More like punishing success.
And I love how tax rebates are portrayed as gifts from the government. It's my money, first of all. And secondly, this is simply a nice way to guarantee that these "tax cuts" are temporary. And third, this way they can give handouts to people who haven't even had to pay taxes, but do already enjoy the benefits of our welfare system. I'm all for putting money towards educating people out of poverty and ignorance, but I am completely opposed to handouts. Time and time again it's proven to be a failure, remember those FEMA debit cards?
And the problem isn't only the obvious taxation on income. It's all the other fees the government slips in there to screw us out of our hard-earned money. Like this damn internet taxation. It's a nice way of spreading out our tax burden so that we don't notice how bad it actually is. Sometimes I wonder if what we pay to the government doesn't already rival what Europeans pay.
The sales tax costs would be a pain, and there'd be a slight negative economic impact from consumers or businesses having to absorb the additional costs of the tax itself, but life would probably go on for all that, and local businesses would be slightly more competitive with mail order, which might not be a bad thing.
The costs of compliance, on the other hand, could turn out to be nightmarish, and in particular, a situation where there's no competition between tax info service providers would be an outright disaster (and is effectively graft).
If something like this ever goes into effect nationally, it ought to mandate the states and other locales are responsible for providing compliance information in an open, automated, and free manner, and if they can't clear those costs with the additional tax revenue, they have no business pushing them onto the private sector to be duplicated and magnified in a thousand ways.
Tweet, tweet.
I think behind this point of view, lies the fact that non-existent internet sales taxes, was the root of the crisis we undergo.
Fortune Rota Volvitur
There is nothing that Social Security can do that can not be done better by saving your money, your family, or privet charity.
Yes, there is. It can be counted on to be available.
A brief response:
1. Upkeep costs for an easement include everything related to record keeping, courthouse and law enforcement needed to track, maintain and enforce that easement.
2 through 6: These taxes differ from state to state. In many, if not most states, they do not fully cover the cost to the state for providing the services indicated.
In short, the infrastructure you're using gets paid for from multiple sources. It appears you favor raising telecom, fuel, and property taxes rather than extending the reach of sales taxes. This is certainly a possible solution, but why should I pay higher telecom and property taxes just so that you can shop online?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Why should I pay a higher sales tax because someone shops inefficiently in person instead of online? I don't favor raising any taxes. I insist my government actually reduces their spending. Taxpayers are not a blank check.
Then it will take a few years for the govt to close that loophole.
There is nothing that Social Security can do that can not be done better by saving your money, your family, or privet charity.
Yes, there is. It can be counted on to be available.
Is that so? so this is being available?
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."
nobody will starve to death. humans have this thing called compassion, and it is NOT a government invention.
For a long time, I lived in the edges of a particular zip code which was centered in (and named after) an incorporated town in a different county. Oh, the joys of arguing with a minor bureaucratic functionary who truly believed that I did not know what county I lived in.
So why have a concept of money in this magical fairyland of yours at all?
Jesus Christ, it's like the Communist movement, except they advocate private property instead of public property - with all the same fervor and sheer stupidity.
You have always owed taxes on goods purchased over the Internet. thing is, the states weren't as desperate for money as they are today. Read here for my full rebuttal to this hysteria-invoking stupid CNet article.
The original article is full of misstatements, half-truths and Barney-Fife impersonations. Frankly, the good people on Slashdot who have been around the block a few times will recall that in the 1990s, the "threat of taxing your internet" was a reoccurring theme and absolute nonsense.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Tell ya what. You can help those people if you think you should. I promise that I won't stop you!
What I hear you say? There won't be enough people who think like you to help such people? So let me get this straight, you're saying that your ideas won't be popular enough? That most people will not want to help out those less fortunate?!? Well damn what does that mean... Let me see.... Ah yes it means, nimrod, that people do not agree with your premise and thus you propose to steal (IOW take by force and threat of incarceration) their money to implement your desires!!! How the fuck dare you impose your will on us!!!
Here's the deal, if what you're proposing is an agreed upon (enough) idea that people will naturally agree with you and participate in your charity then they will do so without governmental force. And if they don't agree with you then you have no right making them do your bidding!
Ah, clueless dude - it is a government mandated retirement fund!!! So then, look at it in the light of what it is - not what it ain't.
See above. First off, it is a retirement program. Secondly if your "jointly decided on societal goal" is that popular then surely it could achieve its results by voluntary contributions by those who agree with the plan. And those of us that don't agree would be free to not participate and to live our lives the way we see fit. In the end, wasn't America supposed to be about freedom and not slavery?
The real problem is from idiots like you who don't think things out thoroughly and have no qualms enslaving otherwise free people with their favorite idea of how to save the world using other people's money.
Technically, I don't think mail order is a loop hole as much as it is a tool of free trade. I think the origin to this "loop hole" is a free trade agreement between states established by the federal govt. Not having taxes between states benefits competition in the market place.
In CA, the state charges a tax on everything that is sold. This tax is paid by the business for the privilege of operating in CA and of course passed on to the consumer. If I live in CA and buy something from another state, I'm technically supposed to declare "use tax" for the goods bought elsewhere, but used in California. Of course, no one does that, but that's another problem.
Within the European Union, there is a similar free trade agreement. Countries are no longer allowed to tax goods and services coming from other country. The difference to the US is that EU countries are better at collecting the "use tax".
People are money grubbing greedy bastards no matter if they are system-gaming individuals, corporate fat cats, or double-speaking politicians.
Nobody will admit it though, because we're a proud species that thinks it's our god given right to screw each other, so anyone who has the balls to call us out on it has hell to pay for daring to challenge the status quo.
Twisted Tax Tables Touting Terrible Traps is just one of many manifestations of this. See also AIG.
Greed is everywhere, not just in corporate board rooms. It's high time the human race looked itself in the mirror and stopped being so selfish. Whatever happened to the common good?
And since when did self-interest get a blank check to ruin cooperation?
2 wheel-scrolls and still talking about Canada! I don't give a shit about Canada!
Because they try to get the tax out of the retailers also. Almost everything I bought online when I was living in NY was already taxed... but my choices were to pay the $20 or meticulously document every online purchase that I made.
But this notion that every cent of income is YOURS is ridiculous.
Self-evident fact is ridiculous? Odd. It absolutely is mine. Every cent I earn. Period. We are not vassals. We do not live in a feudal society where the Lord asserts ownership of what we produce and we get what he doesn't keep. WE OWN what we produce, and then the government demands that we give them a piece of it.
The legal evidence that you're wrong is in that your money cannot be taken from you without due process. If you didn't own it, the government wouldn't need to go through due process, they'd just take it.
You mean to say that you didn't rely on public roads or education in your business? Or anything else built out of public funds? Because there's no way you didn't benefit from those things.
How does this have to do with anything? Certainly you cannot be asserting that there would be no roads or education without government; that's obviously nonsense. And since government DOES take from us to pay for these things, why should I not use them, since I paid for them, even if it was against my will? You're not making an actual argument here.
And when you say "tax money is MY money" you're really saying that you deserve to get all of that benefit for free, with the rest of us paying.
No, I am saying no such thing. I am not saying I should get a free ride and everyone else should pay, I am saying the GOVERNMENT should not be doing most of what it does, and that I should get to choose whether or not to pay, and to whom I pay it. Because that is liberty.
Your claim of "selfishness" holds no water whatsoever: you completely misrepresented my argument, inventing some notion that I am looking for a free ride. There's no truth in it.
Which I assure you, absolutely none of the players in this particular game is.
The US Constitution reserves the power to tax interstate commerce to the Federal Government. The states tried to ignore that and collect from out-of-state vendors, and got slapped down by the Supreme Court. Then they enacted this fun little item called a "use tax", which is supposedly not a tax on interstate sales but a tax on the "use" of an item within a state. Oddly enough, however, it just happens to be the same rate as the sales tax, and one can deduct from it any state sales tax paid. This is a blatantly unconstitutional dodge, but no one affected has the power to do anything about it. Balancing that is the fact that on most items the tax is difficult to enforce. Simultaneously, the state legislatures have been trying to get Congress to grant them the power to tax. Congress, however, not seeing anything in it for them (and getting a lot of lobbying from the other side) has mostly not been sympathetic. Nobody involved cares a whit about fairness or the nation as a whole, and doing so yourself is playing a sucker's game.
Here's the deal, if what you're proposing is an agreed upon (enough) idea that people will naturally agree with you and participate in your charity then they will do so without governmental force. And if they don't agree with you then you have no right making them do your bidding!
Most would agree. Unfortunately, there are a few losers like you that are so misantropic that they want to see everyone else die, and we (by which I mean the sane rest of the society) are too compassionate to just let you die when you'll actually need that social security money (which you will most likely do - most rabid libertarians I know are actually quite poor; their libertarianism is mainly because of the delusion that they can make themselves really rich by working hard with guaranteed success). So you become a free rider. But we don't want free riders, either, so when you have the money, we not so kindly ask you to cough up the taxes.
How the fuck dare you impose your will on us!!!
The same way we impose our will on thieves, murderers, and other criminals. Tax evasion is not fundamentally any different - the society as a whole (through democratic means) has decided what's in its best interest, and the state is used to protect those interests.
So far it seems to be working pretty well. In case you haven't noticed, none of the most economically advanced countries in the world are even remotely libertarian. On the other extreme end, if you want to be truly free, I hear there's plenty of space to settle down in Somalia.
"...(although the requirement to invest only in T-Bills was a stroke of genius; if the trust fund were in private investments I can only imagine the pork-barreled SNAFU that would be.)"
That decision was a disaster for people paying taxes. I would prefer the latter. Because then the fund would have actual reserves to cover the increasing costs. Currently the reserve has a bunch of IOU's in the form of T-bills-we overpaid and get a tax increase to boot.
I love slashdot. People moderate up wrong answers. I'm giving up my ability to moderate to set the record straight. The correct answer is:
All businesses have to charge you for GST (a federal tax), they only have to charge you for PST or QST (provincial taxes) if they have a presence in your province. However, if you live in Ontario (for example), most of the businesses you buy from will charge you PST because they have a presence of some sort in that province, blame geography.
This would solve all of the problems. You buy online or in the store, and you pay the same amount in taxes, and incidently, less overall than you would now.
Is the middle of a drastic recession the proper time to go on a wrist-slapping mission through one of the only avenues that is propping up what little consumer spending we currently have going for us? That's not governance, that's vampirism!
The power to tax across interstate boundaries is reserved exclusively for the fed. I see that they're covering that base and I'll be writing my congressional delegation saying that this is an overreach.
Sometimes you pay it in other forms like shipping costs. Of course, it will be companies like UPS, Fedex, and the USPS that will take a hit from this. Well, and the consumers of course. I guess it's still better paying 60% of a books price than paying full price at brick and mortor stores like Barns and Noble for the more expensive books. (hardback or tech books)
Conservatives and libertarians don't define taking other people's money as virtue. Doing good things with your own money is considered virtuous.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Don't forget that corporate taxes ultimately trickle down to us in the form of higher prices.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I forget the details, but the ability to tax items with use tax is set by Congress.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
However, Social Security was not conceived as a retirement program, it was conceived as an anti-poverty program for the elderly and unable to work. Looked at in that light, it makes a lot more sense: we (the citizens of the U.S.) achieve a jointly decided on societal goal of trying to keep penniless elderly and disabled fellow citizens from literally starving to death due to hunger.
There are real problems with Social Security as it currently exists, but its very existence is not one of them.
Um, if it was about just keeping "starving" folks from dieing, I don't think anyone would complain about it. It's turned into having those that have retired have a higher standard of living than working college students. Or where a good slice of that college kids income is going to support some one else's grandpa who is surviving better than he is. That's what's wrong with it. If SS was like $50 a year and only going to really starving folks, no one would complain about it. It should also have this big social stigma against anyone actually using it. It doesn't have that though.
Hmmm... what do you do if you either have no kids, they hate you, or don't have money themselves? The Welfare programs you don't want either?
I'll repeat this: prior to Social Security, impoverished elderly people literally starved to death. Private charity didn't save those people, nor is it always and everywhere available.
SirWired
So you want to live in a society in which the government restricts none of the freedoms which you, personally, think you are entitled to, and takes no money that you, personally, don't think is going to to a worthy cause? It sounds like that is what you are saying.
I suggest immigrating to Somalia; I hear it's a lovely place. The "central government" controls an area of several city blocks. Outside of that zone, you can do whatever the hell you want, assuming a warlord doesn't shoot you.
SirWired
Prior to Social Security, there were a great many elderly people who most certainly DID starve to death. In much of the world, people die of hunger every day, why would it be any different here if you remove the safety net SS (and much-maligned welfare programs) provide?
SirWired
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1153017&cid=27186027
pudge, pudge, pudge.
You forgot to offset taxes by all the benefits you get each year. Let's see here- no terrorist attacks with airplanes lately, check. No nuclear attacks from the Ruskies, check. I wonder if the founding fathers worried about that?
Police. Jails. Roads. Air traffic control. Elections. Some safety from pollution from all those people wanting to express their liberty. Gee, you get a lot.
Now, I imagine your children will never use public schooling, so I did not mention that. It is there if you want, though, and the school board is elected.
So, did that guy who took your wallet arrange for your retirement income? Old age medical care? I thought not. The analogy is not quite right, I think.
Oh, I know you do not want all that. But I am tired of your whining. Please move to Antarctica, or the moon, or some other place where you can declare yourself supreme ruler (and there is no internet connection).
Cheerio!
Jim
ps- Weston, if you think you can get pudge to budge, you don't know sludge.
taxes lets see shipping: its like a tax, every state it passes thru if ground shipped gets a cut. AKA fuel tax, dont for get the person packing it pays taxes. The person driving the truck pays taxes. If it is sent by air, there are the airport fees. Planes dont land and take off for free. Does the recieving the sale loose, no not if things are being produced and shipped from the state. Now the USPS does not pay taxes on fuel, thats if delivered. But the employees do. UPS, Fedex and the others try not to. For some things the internet price with shipping costs more than going to Wally world and just buying it. It is often a matter of spending time; driving there, parking the car, searching the aisles, waiting at the check out and going back home. Some times you can order on line and pick up. I do this when it is offered. Yes, you do have pay local taxes on local pick ups.