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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?
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
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.
The difference?
Price Tag: $2.99
Total: $3.15
- versus -
Price Tag: $3.15
Total: $3.15
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
"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."
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 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.
Overtaxed? Are you kidding me? If anything, Americans are extremely UNDER taxed. Have you looked at your deficit recently? Have you ever compared your personal income tax rates to any other country's other than tax heavens? I didn't think so.
That's like saying John Doe is a nicer guy than Joe Sixpack because Joe beats his wife three times a week and John only beats his wife twice a week.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Wrong. The deficit is not from undertaxation, it is from overspending. There is a big difference.
Americans in general are not unwilling to pay for government... they just want less of it.
fine then I want less services.
Specifically I don't want services not enumerated in the US or state constitution.
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I'll bite.
The deficit is a result of us overspending, not us being undertaxed.
As far as personal income taxes go, rates are low. However, I also pay FICA into a system which I hold little hope of seeing money come out of. My employer has to "match" this tax -- basic economics indicates a large percentage of this ultimately comes from my pay. I then pay taxes to my state. I then pay taxes locally. I pay property taxes. Occasionally I get a one-time assessment. I pay tax on gasoline. I then pay sales tax. Every item I buy has a hidden tax in it as I pay for all of these employment and sales taxes that are bundled into the price of the goods. I have to pay a tax to get a driver's license or renew my plates. I have to pay to get my car emissions tested. My internet and telephone have various taxes added onto them. On certain roads you have to pay for the privilege of driving on them. I am sure there are a half-dozen more taxes I pay that I am not thinking of or am unaware of.
And what we get back for what we pay for is ludicrous. Welfare for banks and other financial institutions, welfare for folks who don't want to work. And the ability to invade other countries.
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 please don't tell me I am undertaxed.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Insightful? I would have to disagree. The issue isn't a lack of tax revenue, it is one of unchecked Congressional spending. My 11 year old son understands basic budgeting. Don't spend more than you make. If you don't make enough, go out and earn more. Unfortunately, Congress doesn't feel compelled to earn as they can just take. If you sincerely feel that our level of taxation is unfair, why not simply pay more? You can, in fact, do so. Overpay your taxes and never file for a refund. Put your money where your mouth is.
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.
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
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.
"We do in fact need higher taxes in order to pay off the monstrous debt we're accumulating."
NO!!!! What we need to do is stop accumulating debt by getting renegade government spending under control!
"Only anti-Americans would still be wanting lower taxes given the huge crisis we're facing."
What happens when an anti-American comes into contact with a regular American? The so called "crisis" was manufactured by the Washington DC power brokers and their politically well connected friends. If we had the limited Federal government that The Constitution mandates, there would be no "crisis". The Federal government sucks the lifeblood out of the economy by taxing the honest hard working citizens. Then they turn around and use the money to fund imperialistic military crusades, line the pockets of the wealthy elites (bailouts, subsidies, no bid contracts, etc.) take a cut of the profits to pay the salaries and benefits of bureaucrats, and if we're lucky, maybe spend 20 cents on the dollar in actual services to the people who pay the bills.
Social Security and Medicare are supposed to be separate from the general fund. Take that off the table, and then tell me where the government is spending your tax dollars.
Foreign Wars
General military spending
Bailouts
Interest on the national debt
Welfare programs (non SS or Medicare)
Things like education, infrastructure spending, science and research funding, etc. barely make a dent.
If you feel like paying more taxes to fund U.S. imperialism, enrich the financial elites and well connected corporations and pay for welfare programs, the government is accepting donations.
So, you can't fight a rising deficit by cutting spending?
To an extent, you can. But what do you cut? "Social programs"? Those social programs are going to prevent a lot of hard-working, skilled Americans and their families from starving or going homeless over the next year or two. Will *you* be the one to tell the family of four who have weathered three layoffs in two years and already seen the last of their six-month emergency fund that we're cutting their food stamps from $338 a month to $288? Or dropping the program altogether? And once you do, you've got, what, 2% of the deficit paid off? What's next? "Social programs" account for a tiny percentage of the federal budget.
Should we raid Social Security (again)? Drop infrastructure spending (again)? Cut education (again)? We're going to need that SS cushion, or people won't retire, and jobs will continue to be scarce. Our infrastructure is already suffering badly, and it costs more to clean up after a disaster than to prevent one (Katrina anyone?). Education is essential to remaining competitive in the global economy; as it is, we're having to import large numbers of health-care workers from the Philippines and other countries with better schooling available, and even the less-skilled pink/white collar jobs are shifting overseas at the speed of a telecom connection. Will our deficit situation improve if, in 10 years, we have even *fewer* literate and numerate 18-year-olds? Will their parents be able to "take up the slack" if they're working three part-time jobs to make up for the food stamps we took away, or to cover the emergency room bill since they can't afford to go to the doctor regularly?
And again, those things are a relatively small percentage of the budget. We could completely redirect education spending, and it wouldn't make much of a dent in the deficit. Maybe we could sell the Brooklyn Bridge?
Defense is really the only place where we spend enough money for cutting to make a big difference. Care to raffle off a B-2 bomber?
Yes, we have to watch our money... but there's such a thing as penny-wise and pound-foolish. Many of our spending cuts have *cost* us money in the long run. The suggestion that we should be able to pay off the deficit simply by "cutting spending" is to suggest that we are living beyond our means by maintaining a first-world existence.
We do need to increase revenue. Our taxation brackets are based on much smaller amounts in real dollars; we need to start ratcheting things up slower, so that on the bottom end (the five-figure households) you're paying the same or less, but at the top end (your seven-figure-a-year earners) you're paying more. YES it's wealth redistribution. I don't understand the argument against it; we're all in this together, and no one is going to pull down a million a year unless there's infrastructure and a quality labor force to build on. Try posting a CEO resume in Zaire, really... see how many bites you get.
I also think that, in this day and age, the IRS needs to change the "bracketing system" to something more intuitive. We look at the "top bracket," see the figure "35%", and FREAK THE FUCK OUT... how dare they take over a THIRD of my hard-earned money? But that's soooo not what is happening, is it? A family with $400,000 taxable income is actually paying 28% in taxes, and you better believe that at those numbers, they've got $100k or more in deductions; they'll be tracking their sales tax, deducting property taxes on homes assessed at seven figures, paying mortgage interest, contributing to Roth IRAs, and so on. Now they're actually only paying 22% in taxes on their gross income. (The plural of anecdote is not data, but my mother's experience, when she married a millionaire and retired from teaching public school, was that they paid a tax figure that came to 12% of their gross income; the numeric value of their taxes the first year was LESS than what she'd paid the prior year on her teacher's salary.)
It i
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Welfare for people who don't want to work? I'm sorry, but with unemployment as high as it is, there are a lot of people who want to work and can't find it out there. I am lucky and have a nice career, but others not so much
Sorry, I am not referring to anyone who is out of work. I am referring to folks who professionally game the system. Folks who haven't worked a day in their life and get a check. I lived next door to a house full of folks getting subsidized housing and monthly checks for various "disabilities". Apparently attention deficit means you cannot work and get $700/month (that is what the 21 year old kid bragged about). His mom got money for taking care of him and reduced rent. They had other family members with other "problems". Didn't stop them from playing basketball in the street at 1:00am, getting girls pregnant and making themselves a nuisance.
Now contrast this to a friend of mine. Profoundly retarded. He has a case manager and also get subsidized rent. he however works about 25-30 hours per week. The work he does could be handled by a five year old and I am sure the employer is subsidized to make work for him. Yet I don't have a problem with this at all. He has the dignity of contributing to society. He has legitimate problems, yet still has a desire to "pull his own weight". I have no problem with society helping him pull that load.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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
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.