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Internet Sales Tax Gets a New Champion
Archness1 writes with an excerpt from Declan McCullagh's piece at CNET about the recently renewed push for a sales tax on Internet purchases, led by Massachusetts Representative Bill Delahunt. "At the moment, Americans who shop over the Internet from out-of-state vendors usually aren't required to pay sales taxes. Californians buying books from Amazon.com or cameras from Manhattan's B&H Photo, for example, won't be required to cough up the sales taxes that they would if shopping at a local mall." That could all change, though.
Who always get screwed by our over-taxing, yet somehow insolvent, state government.
*insert pithy sig here*
Legalize pot and tax that instead please.
Yeah another hurdle for business where the cost will be given to the consumer as it always is. That's what I find to be most funny. Give the business's any sort of tax and the tax goes upon the heads of the people. So in the end the consumer is taxed the most. Which means the majority is taxed the most. Would it not be better to let the people decide where their money should go. So that maybe people could have money to make a hobby a business or even to have a hobby.
Taxation is the power to destroy which means they constantly want to destroy us the people, on capital hill.
Stop killing us with theft and extortion.
http://luminosity.livejournal.com http://www.zazzle.com/unixarcade*
Good. Buying online results in externalities which most people are simply too selfish to care about. I'm all in favor of closing this loophole.
I don't respond to AC's.
What is the difference between mail/fax/phone order and purchases made through "teh intertubes"?
Mail order has never had to collect sales tax except for in-state customers. Why are web based businesses any different? Why were states not clamoring for sales tax collection in the heyday of mail order? Politicians act as if web based businesses are getting special treatment.
They aren't. They never did get special treatment.
So what's going to happen now? Internet sales are going to be taxed but mail order won't be? Because I certainly don't hear about mail order sales being slapped with a tax in any of these discussions. It's all about skimming off of internet sales.
Fine.
I'll just slap a stamp on it or fire up the fax machine and send orders that way, like I did 15 years ago.
It was nice knowin' ya, Internet commerce.
--
BMO
Instead of allowing them to constantly add new programs and new spending, how about electing some folks on the platform to reduce spending until you have a balanced budget (which means you won't need any new taxes), and then reduce spending, which means you'll need less taxes.
Make some noise. At the state level, you might even get something done.
One of the biggest problems our government has is an inability to revisit past decisions; bad law, bad spending, obsolete law, obsolete spending. All they ever do is add; that's a key reason why taxes go up, freedoms narrow, and law-books only get heavier.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
As nice as it is with cheap stuff, I cannot come up with a good argument why internet sales should be except from tax while in-store sales still pay. Internet stores can compete just fine on actual efficiency improvements over physical stores.
In Australia we pay GST, a federal tax on all goods purchased which is then handed back to the states. This eliminates all of the inconsistencies amongst states and also gets rid of this so called loophole of companies not having a presence within the state they are selling to.
All internet purchases from Australian companies get a 10% GST charge, all purchases from other companies like B&H pay customs and import duties which depend on the cost of the import. The downside to buying from B&H is that UPS charge a customs handling fee too, but hey the Australian dollar is so good at the moment the cost covers itself.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
To collect that revenue, some states require you to report sales tax due on out-of-state purchases when you file your income tax every year. Most people try to play ignorant when it's pointed out to them however.
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I certainly don't hear about mail order sales being slapped with a tax in any of these discussions.
I did. From the article:
If the states wanted to argue that they needed to tax goods coming in from other states that would be one thing, but that isn't within their constitutional powers. Interstate commerce is governed by the federal level of government.
Then the federal government has the power to tax interstate business-to-consumer mail order and use that to fund currently unfunded mandates. I probably won't read the bill until it hits the House floor, but a federal interstate sales tax sounds like one way to implement what the article discusses.
Bookstore owners have to pay sales tax. Amazon doesn't have to. End result: said store owner goes bankrupt because Amazon has a competitive advantage because of tax differences. More unemployment and less tax-income for the state because of less sales-tax income AND because less people have a job. So actually this means a smaller amount of people have to cough up the taxes the state needs, while if you have regional businesses, all that is smeared out over more people. This is just plugging a loophole.
This issue of interstate sales tax is nothing new, it's just exacerbated by the internet.
The ban on the "internet tax" is about taxing ISP, period, end of story, have a nice day, blaah blaah blaah, yadda yadda.
he is open to all comers what with not having to face the voters again. Bought and paid for. Good riddance to this asshole.
"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff."
This doesn't mean that the tax doesn't burden the business; eventually, the total spent for the product begins to edge into the "unreasonable" zone for the consumer, and they stop buying. You can't pass along a cost or a tax if the consumer won't pay it. And lets face it -- for most people, "must have" means food, medical needs, utilities, fuel/transport, basic clothing, and (for this group) Internet.
Amazon and other Internet retailers have an edge (the tax and storefront things) but they also have a serious downside - your local folks can hand you the item. Amazon and crew have to ship it to you, generally speaking, and that's a counter-force working against pervasive "I want it now" mentality and the in-your-face shipping costs.
Take away the tax benefits, and you'll see some Internet businesses fold, as their gains from advantages drop beneath their losses from disadvantages on the overall ledger. The smaller, niche businesses will go first, as they aren't doing enough volume to obtain deep discounts. I can think of quite a few I patronize that I would *really* hate to see go.
The real problem here is the political concept of "we can always spend more for a 'good' idea." No. They can't. There is a limit, and when you're doing spending into the future based on credit, along with very high tax rates, as most states and the federal government are, you're well past that limit.
Get people on board with a "spend LESS" platform, and elect them. Throw out the incumbents, they think *wrong*.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
State governments are horrendously inefficient. In addition to the patronage and short hours, most of them still provide defined benefit pensions to their employees, which are extraordinarily generous compared to 401Ks that most people in the private sector get. You have retirees "earning" high five figures, even six figures in annual pension benefits. These are the same programs that forced General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy, but instead of getting rid of them, state governments can turn to raising taxes and fees on their residents and businesses. And now, thanks to Rep. Delahunt and co, they can get the Feds to help collect a new tax on Internet sales.
WTF? Why don't state employees get 401Ks, like everyone else has for the last 20-25 years....? It's because they make the rules, and most of them have been out of the private sector for so long (or were never there to begin with) they don't realize how pampered they are in government.
State governments love revenue windfalls (casino gambling is a good example), it means they can put off making difficult budget decisions for another year or two, while the spending continues to spin out of control. Especially spending that lines their own pockets and secures their leisurely retirements. Don't give this to them.
Because a state knows whats best for it's citizens better than the feds. Tax sales and use it to pay for healthcare rather than having the feds tax people in Mass to pay for people in Ariz. Let each state spend as much or as little as they want on social programs. Let the feds focus on national security. If you don't like high taxes then move to Texas.
Each state has the right to run itself as it deems necessary for the survival of it's citizens. If it wants to be run in a socialist manner or not is entirely up to the state and I say that as a libertarian. The point is to have minimal interference from federal entities who know nothing about the dynamics of the states they interfere with.
Healthcare should be handled and paid for by individual states for the citizens in that state. If individuals live in states which don't have universal healthcare then they should move to states that do. If the feds want to help the states which provide universal healthcare they should be allowed to. What we don't want is federally controlled healthcare.
One of the reasons that out of state merchants haven't always had to collect sales tax is to prevent a small shop from having to find the rates and file a return in every distant state where they do a single transaction.
The problem, now, is that your local businesses (if you have any left) have to pay taxes in your state even if they only sell a few hundred dollars of merchandise a year while online merchants don't have to pay taxes even if they ship millions of dollars of product into that state.
This is easily solved so long as the following conditions are met....
* Every state has a single tax rate for out-of-state merchants no higher than the lowest rate inside the state (no county-by-county rates)
* Simple categories. If a state makes groceries exempt but taxes ready to eat food, then all out-of-state food is exempt
* Either a national clearinghouse (upload month, total, and first 3 digits of zipcode) or a consistent mechanism (visit salestax.XX.gov)
* In not using a national clearinghouse, either exempt anyone shipping less than a certain amoung ($5000/year?) to a state or have carriers (usps, ups, etc..) handle the tax process as part of the shipping process for little guys who ship one or two small things to some state and shouldn't be bothered with filing even online.
* Require carriers on imports to assure that the tax is paid. (They already do this with import duties)
You have to pay for cops, for firefighters, for medics, in some cases for healthcare and schools.
The problems start when one state has to pay for another state. Why would people in one state want to help people who aren't even their neighbors, who don't contribute to their state at all, who don't benefit their state in any direct way?
Libertarian socialism is the answer. Tax locally. Govern locally. Fight wars federally. Build infrastructure federally. Maximize individual liberty.
And stop using the feds for social programs? We have state governments for social programs. The state reps who actually are our neighbors have a better idea of what is best for our state because they actually live in our state rather than in Washington DC like the majority of Senators and establishment types.
Healthcare is not something the feds are qualified to handle. The feds cannot even handle public education. That being said if the feds would like to fund it without any expectation of control that is something I can support as a libertarian, but then you have the problem of how much money to give to each state which causes problems in itself.
Ideally the local governments should handle the social programs if we are to have any form of socialism at all. The federal and global government should focus on winning wars and building infrastructure.
Unheard of.
I thought the dems were the party of the little guy, you know you fools. How could they be doing this to you?
How come all their programs end up hurting the little guys, did you ever wonder that?
Taxes up, little guy pays. Healthcare, affects the little guy not the elites. Can and trade, will increase costs to all the little guys (you fools). Card check - again afffects the little guy.
Conservatives give tax cuts, and the taxes of the little guy go down, but you fools call them evil.
You dumb leftists don't know your asses from a hole in the ground.
They want the economy to do better but yet they keep making things more and more expensive for the American people. When does it end? I mean seriously.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
The U.S. government is built on what is called the "Federal System." The individual state governments have far more power and responsibility than they do in most countries, where the states are little more than administrative regions. As a result, they have different revenue needs, and have individually decided on different means of meeting those needs. Some states don't charge income tax at all; they choose to collect their revenue from consumers through property and/or income tax. The individual states tax, spend, and borrow according to their own plans; they have their own unique sets of criminal and civil laws. (One state, Louisiana, bases their civil code on an entirely different system of laws, and this is perfectly allowed.) Most day-to-day government services that a citizen interacts with are provided and funded by state (and by delegation, local) governments.
One thing the article doesn't mention and most people here don't seem to understand is many states that have a sales tax also levy a "use tax" on out of state purchases. In my state you're supposed to report your out of state purchases with your income tax form but almost nobody does it.
There needs to be some way of leveling the playing field for local businesses. If a local business has competition from online businesses it has to reduce its price to make up the difference in local sales tax. That is becoming a major market distortion. Online sales are taxed, if the seller has a brick and mortar store in the same state as the purchaser.
Get an agreement between feds and states to do one reasonable rate. Then apply it, while cutting spending. Pass a balanced budget amendment as well. We need to balance our budget. And then start paying off this massive debt. It was our deficit spending during good times ('83-'90; '03 -'07) that accounts for a major chunk of where we are today.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'll be the devil's adovacate on this one - but to an extent. I think to consider a web sales tax still based on a single locality is a bit silly. Make either a universal web tax rate (flat rate for all purchases from online businesses based in the U.S.) or make one specific to if was purchased domestically or foreign (based on billing or shipping address?). The drawback I see though is the advantage this gives foreign (non-U.S. in my case) markets, but some already have the advantage as it is with cheaper labor so perhaps it wouldn't be a major shift anyway.
Different states have different rates of tax, and also some goods are exempt. I live in a state where food and clothes aren't taxed, so I mostly buy them locally.
Anyway since the summary and many of the comments refer to Books, lets look at it from that angle.
Books, music, games and videos are information. You can't effectively put a tax on information content, since the 'seller' can set up offshore somewhere, and if you are downloading the files (which is how I buy books and music these days) then there is no extra cost of 'shipping' or any physical goods to be charged with import duty at the 'border'.
No difference. The big difference is between local or remote purchases.
A purchase made locally puts more demands on public infrastructure. You have a physical store where they display the items. That store needs police, firefighting, street maintenance, all supported by the local government to exist.
In comparison, mail/fax/internet purchases bypass all that. The store window is virtual, goods go directly from the wholesaler's warehouse to the final consumer.
It makes perfect sense that remote purchases of any form receive special tax treatment, since they demand less expenses from the government, but it makes no sense to create a different status between mail and internet commerce.
I'm not for this tax, though I must point out, the tax burden is shared between the business and consumer. Very generally speaking, the tax burden tends to shift to who has the more 'competition' (I think the more proper term is inelasticity or something, I think. Then again, I'm not an econ major).
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
In this area, they've earned it -- it isn't that I'm credulous, it is that they are credible. What do I mean? Well, let me tell you:
They've managed to keep my meat inspected, get my kids a basic education, prevent most infected/infested fruit from reaching my table, built a really outstanding interstate system in a country of huge extents, put our citizens on the moon and in orbit and gotten pictures of far away galaxies, give me clean water to drink, and even paid for treatment of my sweetheart's breast cancer -- and I still have her for that specific reason. WRT the military, I don't like what they've got it doing at the moment (though WW1 and WW2... good job!), but I am forced to admit that it's damned good at being a military force, so yeah, they get considerable credit there as well.
In the meantime, the private sector would not insure either of us (we're oldish... 50's, and we have pre-existing conditions... she's diabetic, for instance, and has been absolutely uninsurable) and emergency room "care" is not in the least bit comparable with a normal course of treatment under a doctor and with access to the correct drugs, etc. So yeah, I'm for the feds kicking the insurance industry under the rug and starting over. They (the insurance industry) have made a complete cock-up of the opportunity they had, and so they can take a long walk off a short pier as far as I'm concerned.
Do I think the feds will get it right first thing out the door? No. Hardly. But I do think they'll nudge, wiggle and tweak their way to something better than what I have now, which is... nothing. Maybe in time for my kids to get medical care if and when they need it.
Insurance companies have a built-in conflict of interest: They make more money when they don't pay for care, and they are for-profit corporations. That's a recipe for disaster, and so I can't say that I am surprised that it is a disaster we have.
As it stands, because healthcare is private, I pay for the health care of everyone above me - the people employed by the utilities, the city employees, etc., before I get to spend a penny on my own. Which leaves me without any, as it turns out. I'd much rather see everyone taxed for healthcare, and everyone getting it when they need it, than the current, I pay it for the utility or corporate employee because it's built into my prices, but I don't *get* it because I don't have anything left and there's no one I get to say "pay me more" to in order to cover those costs.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's not because California has gotten better, but because Illinois has pretty much collapsed.
States don't need any more more for schools! They're already WASTING record amounts of money on schools and still failing to educate some.
Bottom line here is that not all children are equally educatable nor should they ALL be expected to attend universities.
Not to mention in our state most local municipalities fund their schools through property taxes, with only a few getting state handouts(mainly a certain large and highly corrupt city along with some rural BFE areas) which ought to be pretty well covered by the stupidity tax(lottery).
You'll notice the states moaning the most are the ones with big welfare programs, i.e. California, Massachusetts, and New York which also, oddly enough, tend to have the highest number of illegal immigrants.
Bill Delahunt is... a Democrat.
Come on /., we know you lean left, you & your submitters could at least be consistent with party labeling.
I don't know where you live, but here there are still plenty of local stores. Nearly everything other than groceries I can easily buy online and not pay tax, yet there are local stores selling the same things. This includes big ticket items like TVs, where the tax is a lot. Best Buy has a whole fucking wall of HDTVs for sale, and they've got multiple locations in town. People are free to order them from Amazon or Crutchfield and pay no tax, yet Best Buy not only makes sales, they apparently make enough to warrant a massive amount of their space being taken up with them.
What it really comes down to is if states find that they are not getting enough revenue because sales tax is dropping, they should simply tax different areas. Property tax is a good choice, you can't move property, payroll tax also works, so does income tax. All depends on how you want to distribute it and what you need the money for (it generally makes sense to collect taxes for what they are used on, like taxing vehicles for money for roads).
Please remember that sales tax isn't mandatory. There are states that don't have it. Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon all have no state sales tax. You will notice none of them have crumbled and went away. They simply derive their tax revenue from other sources.
Taxing inter-state purchases is just a nightmare. Especially if you really wish it to be "fair" as in "everyone gets the same cut if it was local". Ok, well you then need to have tables with state, county, and city taxes. It can be levied at all those levels. A state can have a 5% tax, the county 1.5% more and the city 1% on that giving a 7.5% effective tax. Talk about a nightmare to maintain data on all that. Also, how do you make sure it goes to the right place then? Does the company have to cut a check to each city, county, and state in the whole US each month?
If you say "Just do the state tax," well what makes states special? Your argument is local businesses, so why shouldn't the city also be getting its cut?
What it comes down to is we shouldn't tax interstate purchases. States just need to adjust their tax structure accordingly. Nobody says they have to get their money from sales tax. Here I pay sales tax to the state, county, and city (it is collected all as one, but there are three separate ones). I pay property tax mostly to the city but the state as well, I pay income tax to the state, I pay a vehicle tax to the state, and so on. It isn't as though sales tax is the be-all, end-all. They get funds from me in numerous ways. If they are losing out on sales tax, then adjust the others accordingly.
While the Constitution is vague about some things, interstate taxation it is not. The regulation of interstate commerce is one of the rights granted explicitly to congress, and not to anyone else. This was important because there was a real worry when it was written that states might try and stack taxes all over each other and screw up the forming of a union. Hence the "You don't pay sales tax out of state," thing.
Ok well they may call it a "Use tax," but it is extremely clear what they are trying to do is tax goods from other states which they can't do. You'll note there's never been a real push to enforce it and that is probalby because the state AGs are smart enough to know if it went to the federal courts, they'd likely get slapped down.
If it must be done, please levy the tax on the shipping, not the products. Shipping companies already have the infrastructure in place to handle this sort of thing. By levying a sales tax on every online ma-and-pa shop you will be placing additional burdens on small businesses --and many will close their doors because of it.
:T:R:A:N:S:
Oops, there's that little piece of paper interfering with again : P
AFAIK, interstate sales taxes are unconstitutional.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Said brick/mortar owner can also sell online, and get this advantage you speak of. People shop differently than they used to, so let's not make online retailers sound like the bad guy here. They have responded accurately to a changed consumer model.
Reply to That ||
Tax in a way such that the taxes are related to the use. A good example are vehicle and gas taxes. You use those to pay for the infrastructure to support vehicles, like roads, traffic lights, the MVD, etc. In that way, if you have more vehicles, or more usage of vehicles, you get more money.
Likewise federal income tax to pay for federal programs. They are things done by the federal government, so tax needs to be collected for them no matter where you live. Thus it makes sense to simply collect the money from all US workers.
I'm not saying you can have perfect 1:1 mapping of tax to use, but you can be smart about it. Also if things change, so that one source of taxes isn't so useful anymore, then change where you collect the taxes. Nobody says you have to get taxes from a particular source. Sales tax not working out so well? Change to another kind. However, that isn't so necessary if taxes collected are related to the things they are for. They will tend to naturally increase and decrease as the need for their services does.
The name gives a clue: The United States. The US is a federal republic of independent states. Each state has a great degree of autonomy in many things. As such, each state has its own budget to deal with.
Also, there's the fact that the federal government has a long history of using money as a way to brow beat states in to doing something. As an example, take the US's 21 year old drinking age. If you read the laws, you'll discover that this isn't federal. The federal government has no authority to make such a law. When then do all the states do it? Highway money. The federal government said since drunk driving is a concern to highway funds, they can withhold them if a state refuses to pass a 21 law. So all states did, because they need that money.
Well, this could be taken to a much greater extreme if the federal government controlled even more of the state's funds. They could force the state to do things that they actually have no authority over by just saying "We won't give you your sales tax money if you don't do as we say."
Of course there's also concerns about if it would be handled fairly. What happens if the federal government decides that California needs more money, because their budget situation is a disaster, even though it is a disaster of their own making? They ten take money away from other states and hand it over.
The states have good reason to want control over their own money. That doesn't mean it is 100% that way, as I noted there are things like federal highway funds. However given how many strings are attached to federal dollars already, the states are in no hurry to give the feds even more control.
If you don't like high taxes then move to Texas.
Thanks,but if that's the choice I will live with my high taxes.
I think the best way to resist taxation is to boycott the taxed activity. Let the idiots sit around scratching their heads, wondering how to stimulate the economy when they in fact discourage economic activity every chance they get. Given the current levels of taxation, it's time to greet each new tax initiative with a royal smackdown.
The amount collected in Internet sales tax won't cover the unemployment for the workers who lose their jobs when sales volume goes down the toilet.
Given that their citizens can deduct their state income tax from federal, why do states even have the sales tax? It would seem that they could get some of their citizens federal money back by shifting away from sales tax and into income.
Fuck you, filth. We have a system that guarantees only fucking sociopaths ever get elected anymore. They're so gerrymandered in that even with term limits the shit just gets replaced by fresh shit. By the time we get to the ballot box phase, any sane people have been weeded out and all we have left to vote for is a collection of shitbags that we have to hold our nose to even consider. So take your "it's the voter's fault" cliche bullshit and shove it into your skull to fill up the vacuum there.
And, yeah, some people do vote for the spenders, but the SS receiving elderly are an easy target. Will you speak the same to the uneducated filth that suck our system dry, sitting around like fucking turds while productive people get their wallets and purses raped on a continual basis? At least SS recipients can make the "way paid into the system" argument. what about all the leeches who never produced enough to pay a fucking dime in taxes? That's the part so many people miss- that millions never pay any fucking taxes. They are fucking eternal leeches.
"It is being shipped to X where it will presumably be used in X. Therefore, you owe tax in X on that purchase/use."
why? I mean that.... what did X do?
infrastructure? like the roads? sure- the delivery company (*ups for example*) operations should cover those costs.
why does X deserver a piece of the sale? did they supply infrastructure in y? the sellers zone?
imagine the economic evolution if it stayed status quo- stodgy states with unenlightened taxation have less new wharehouses/shipping centers, and enlightend places that are friendly get more business
fuck "everyone gets taxed thusly" lets leave sales tax independent across state lines, and have the STATES compete with each other for a balanced and fair market.
if delaware does not charge tax, and I order from delaware- then YEA for delaware business enviroment!
leave my state OUT of the equation.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
People who buy things over the net from out of state are *already* subject to sales tax.
At least in Florida, where we call it "Use tax", and you're required to pay it yourself at the end of the year on everything you bought and didn't pay retail sales tax on.
it's just that a) nobody really does it, and b) there are too many people for the state to crack down on it. So they're going to (probably unconstitutionally) attack it from the seller end.
Sellers *hate* the idea: do you *know* how many sales taxing jurisdictions there are in the US? *Multiple* entire companies make a living keeping track of that.
Far better that the Internet tax Massachusetts than Massachusetts tax the Internet.
Alaska, Florida, South Dakota, Washington, Nevada, Wyoming - none of these states have state income taxes either. New Hampshire and Tennessee limit it to dividends and interest income. I live in Florida, the tax structure here is regressive because it focuses on sales taxes, but my incentives seem a bit better than when I lived in Philadelphia and my income got taxed by the city, state, and federal government. I really have no idea where it went either, as the streets were filled with potholes and most of the sidewalks were covered with ice all winter long.
Hmm live with high taxes or live where people push there bias into the school books. I'll take the taxes
Thank you for staying away. One less stuck on stupid geographical snob to worry about. When you fuck up your state, you should have to live in it and suffer. Don't move to another state and fuck it up too. Stay put and suffer.
Straight from the source:
Purchases made by buyers in Kansas, for example, have to pay sales tax on Amazon purchases, because Amazon maintains a distribution center just north of Coffeyville.
The quote from the summary is incorrect - Americans who shop over the Internet from out-of-state are currently required to pay sales (or use) tax. The problem that the government has is that (1) the vendor often does not collect those taxes for internet (or mail order) sales, and (2) most people don't report them on their annual tax forms.
It's interesting to note that the summary quoted a representative from the state of Massachusetts. Massachusetts has a line on their state tax form specifically pertaining to out-of-state on-line purchases & sales tax. The state tax form requires you, as a citizen of Massachusetts, to (1) either pay the exact sales tax on items purchased on-line, or (2) pay a safety net "default" tax on your purchases if you can't itemize yor purchases.
But we all know the real issue here - it's the underlying infrastructure. Congress knows that large retail establishments (i.e., Amazon) can set up reliable taxing system. If the individual states have to rely upon the tax-paying individuals to truthfully report their purchases (as they do now), they fear (read: know) that they will not collect as much in taxes. They want to shift the burden to the retailers in order to make as much money as possible.
I would be much more sympathetic to these issues if the lawmakers would simply come out & say what they mean in a straight-forward, truthful manner. As it is, they look like weasels because they have to lie about the current state of affairs in order to get bills like this passed.
I think you mean, "Hmm live with high taxes or live where people push their bias, instead of mine, into the school books..."
Would there be a "scandal" loophole?
Here in the EU, it doesn't matter what country you live in, you still pay taxes to the state where you bought it from... And those are ~18%, not sub 10% like in the US. I always wondered why the stuff is so cheap in the US.
Thank you for staying away. One less stuck on stupid geographical snob to deal with. Stay in the screwed up irresponsible state you're from. It pisses me off that my tax dollars will have be used, once again, to bail you idiots out of mess you created for yourselves.
Ahhhh... no sales tax. Life's better here.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Funny, I seem to recall paying tax on every Amazon.com purchase I make, and I'm in CA.
I believe Amazon has a nexus in CA.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I could argue that even intra-state commerce should not be taxed either. In the dawn of humanity, people just traded their goods with whatever form of money they were agreed to -- no tax. The only logic that applies to politicians and to every human being is "if I'm desperate, I will do everything conceivable to fix that, rather than being the starving philosopher."
You *are* required to pay taxes on things you buy over the Internet. If you don't do it, you're a scofflaw, albeit a common and not particularly bothersome one.
Anyone who promotes a law like this by using the statement that you don't need to pay taxes on things bought out-of-state is either a liar or an idiot.
Everybody wants their cake and eat it too. Cut this, somebody whines. Cut that, somebody else whines. It never ends. Budget is so full of earmarks and entitlements a balanced budget is but a pipe dream. It's not by accident that nobody ever cuts social security for the retired, despite all their contributions are long gone, decades ago. Retirees generally outlives their contributions, yet they're all still receiving their benefits. Cutting that is like licking the electrified third rail and nobody that wants to remain in elected orifice would dare to even suggest touching it.
Watch all the whiners about how Democrats is bankrupting the country would abruptly change their tune when their benefits are on the chopping block.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Yeah another hurdle for business where the cost will be given to the consumer as it always is.
Do you really think amazon.com would not have already charged a higher price right now if it could?
At work, we've been working with our accountants to figure out some tweaks to the tax law the federal government is bringing in with their harmonized sales tax. What struck me was that the reworking of the law now very clearly means that any merchant, no matter the medium, must collect the recipient's province's taxes.
It struck me quite clearly that this was a way around an explicit "internet sales tax" and, in fact, is a much more powerful tool to enforce collecting tax in any given scenario, whether offline, online, in-state, intra-state, etc.
So, guess what, Canada is already getting an internet sales tax and there's no fuss about it because it's relatively hidden just by clarifying the law text about collecting tax.
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
I think you mean, "Hmm live with high taxes or live where people push their bias, instead of mine, into the school books..."
More like "Hmm live with high taxes or live where people intentionally push their bias into the school books..."
Everyone has biases, and they are bound to make their way into the books. But when a group of people who have no business messing with textbooks in the first place go in with an agenda, that is a problem
Who do you owe Internet sales tax to? To state of seller? To state of buyer? To state of warehouse it is shipped from? To state of company that employs seller or owns office of seller? Or maybe you owe sales tax to state that recieves it from far east? Maybe you owe sales tax to state that houses web server?
So far, none of several politicians have been able to answer my first question. So my second question is what did you provide me that I should pay tax for to get this item shipped in? They answer road use that is already paid in truck & fuel taxes, to pay police with same tax sources, to pay for airports already supported by airline fees & federal $. So politicians can name no expense caused state by me buying product. Pay to play is not a concept they understand. Farmers understand pay to play, not politicians.
So I tell them they just want to tax me because I let them get elected again & politician then looks confused.
Quit electing professional politicians. A house full of newbie farmers would do us better than what we have elected.
"They've managed to keep my meat inspected" Last recall was how many million pounds of ground beef & how many in hospital? Recall was due to sick people, not some ispection that did not get done.
"get my kids a basic education" now we have one federal sorry school system that has to graduate seniors that cant read diploma. Graduates on average are so well educated for today, they can't pass 8th grade test from 1890. Government is trying to stop home schooling because home schooled children consistently do much better than public schooled children.
"give me clean water to drink", my local water is inspected & filtered down to federal standards. ph 8.5, 500 ppm conductivity & heavy metal contamination not measured. Water authority refused to further test or treat water because it meets federal standards.
I could go on about services managed by politicians, but why waste my effort on people immune to logic.
err...well said coward?
I was beaten to the punch on bring this up but it's important. What no one seems to remember when they talk about the "internet sales tax" is that unless the federal government decides to put their own tax on internet goods this isn't a new tax. The problem is that they don't collect the tax, you are still required to pay it when you are a state citizen using it there (or some legal ruling of the sort) generally in the form of the use tax. Some states I believe still count it as the sales tax and just say that you have to self report/pay it yourself, the end result is the same though it the same % and you are supposed to pay it regardless. The problem? No one does. The general argument from internet companies is that they shouldn't be required to shoulder the expense of collecting and paying ever state their share, this has generally been accepted as a legitimate argument in the end but always gets brought up again because the honest fact is that it IS a tax on the books that never actually gets collected (and always gets extra looks around budget time for that reason). It isn't interstate taxation and has been upheld as that multiple times. The reason is simple: It only applies to you when you bring it in and only applies once. This is why you are asked if you have paid tax to other states before. If you pay the sales tax of another state you are not supposed to have to pay the use tax for it when you bring it into your state. If your state has higher tax you are supposed to pay the difference. The problem with internet sales is that for most states you don't pay it at all. I'm not going to lie, I haven't paid use tax but the fact remains that you ARE supposed to. Some cases of it are easier for them to catch. I know many states hit you if you can't prove you paid tax on your out of state purchased automobile for example (when you register it).
EXACTLY! Furthermore, welfare states like TEXAS couldn't survive without all the money they take from NY, CA etc and complain when those states get back any of their money while trash talking about leaving the country etc-- sounding like total fools.
We have a reality problem in the USA; I think its often a sign of a problem when somebody keeps overstating some characteristic of theirs - it often means they short on that attribute. "Keeping it real," "candid" etc crap being professed is just a bluff; most the nation is out of touch with reality - their huge personal debts to maintain the quality of life that used to exist should be a clear indicator but most are still living the dream... refusing to wake up. Politicians constantly professing a return to previous growth rates that are unsustainable..
Say you tax cars by weight and for a larger amount that does actually handles upkeep of the roads... then you have an uproar over car costs, gas costs etc. truckers charge more for shipping, trains get more affordable and compete more with trucks and people start to live in a way that reflects reality instead of dreamland. City planning reflects transit instead of building factories in stupid locations and shipping stuff needlessly and in costly ways... it doesn't today and we all end up paying more for such subsidized waste. The market can adapt; people will find profit somewhere, but when these bad feedback loops form, the market promotes them because they don't like unnecessary risk or costly transitions since they were competing in tainted marketplaces. Some may go out of business; but we can't allow that!! we must protect dead end jobs at all costs to ourselves... Roads is just 1 area. Energy is another one with even more problems.
Sometimes I wonder that if tobacco's problems started now would we ever be able to achieve the victories we had in the last 30 years.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I guess this will stop people from flocking to NH (No sales tax) to make major purchases.I wonder if Bill would have mentioned this if he was running for re-election!
In addition to source of revenue for Govt, tax system should also create employment.
Will Internet Sales Tax create new jobs?
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
...as long as it preempts all state sales/use/etc. taxes on internet purchases (i.e. whatever state you're in, you pay the x% federal internet sales tax and not any state sales tax) and then the money is redistributed to the states.
This would really make a lot more sense than the current system (in which companies with a physical presence in only a few states have a huge advantage and residents of those states get screwed over). (It would also surely be constitutional under the federal government's power to regulate interstate commerce.)
Who this comment supposed to piss off, corrupt law enforcement officials? I'm pretty sure they don't spend a lot of time on /. anyway. Everything this comment says is dead on, except the part about the military budget: I think we should have a powerful military and I'm fine with us paying for it, but what the government decides to do with the military is what's wrong. If instead of investing a trillion dollars and many lives in an overseas war, they should invest that money in alternative energy, which would quell our need for oil and hence our need for the war. The war on drugs is a huge waste of money, too. Legalize pot and instead of punishing possessors of other drugs, require that they go to rehab/counselling. This would reduce spending on prisons and swat teams, drastically reduce violent crime, and topple the south american drug cartels which have gotten insanely rich only because drugs are illegal.
way to kick the country when it's down - bill you f*er i!ii
Only problem with this is that the power to tax is the power to destroy.
That wall of separation? It needs to go both ways.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm has some interesting sources of revenue for Govt
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
How many of the big tax-and-tax, snend-and-spend, liberals, on both sides of the aisle, actually were or are lawyers? How does their percentage compare with the percentage of lawyers in any given elected legislative body, federal or state? Remember, Shakespeare's character who is often quoted for "First thing, let's kill all the lawyers," was bent on creating a dictatorship. Nobody likes taxes, and they only encourage the big spenders to spend money for the primary purpose of getting themselves re-elected, i.e., buying votes with the people's onwn money, but sooner or later the issue of giving Internet selelrs and sales a tax avantage over local stores must be aderessed somehow.
I moved back to Tesxas between college and law school after researching different states' legal and economic, etc., situations. No state or country does everything right but Texas does some right. However, what does whether one likes or dislikes Texas, or prefers to live in some state with a very different philosophy of government ascendant, have to do with the subject of the comment on taxation of Internet sales that started this thread?
Schools are not financed with sales taxes in Texas, making the comments irrelevant to the issue of taxation of internet transactions and unresponsive. I attended public school in Texas and then Pennsylvania. D.C. refused both my sister and me admission to public school as "uneducable" due to physical disabilities, which did not prevent both of us from graduating elsewhere and getting college degrees and from professional careers. One of my biases would include teaching students to read and having them read a wide range of things rather than limiting themselves to whatever was in the dumbed-down textbooks, teaching them to think for trhemsleves, teaching them to write coherently, and to avoid life-threatening behaviors. I've seen the local, State of Texas, and national data on life-theatening behavioirs by students, and hired several, and it doesn't seem to matter what the textbooks say because the averagbe high school graduate can't read, can't balance a checkbook, can't name their two Senators, and huge percentages of them are involved in life-threatening behaviors. The ignorance of the average Ivy League or other colelge student is appalling and dangerous. Teachers shold be paid better if they do a betetr job but I'm not convinced that throwing money at the problem owuld help, and the laast rounds of taxes and lotteries sold as helping improve education never reached anyone I know involved in working wiht students.
Internet taxes and spending have little to do with what gets into textbooks or lesson plans. Off-topic, irrelevant. Who has no business "messing with" textbooks? I tought we lived in some kind of representative government. My mother, two sisters, and wife were professioanl educatiors, and we have a lot of them as friends, but the idea that only those with certain degrees in education have any business providing input into the textbooks and the education process is wrong. So is the idea that public school students should learn only whatever is in their dumbed-down textbooks rather than reading a wide range of sources of fact and opinion. The average Ivy League student, like the average student at the second-tier state university here that emphasies teacher training, can't name the five things guaranteed by the Frist Amendment or two sitting Supreme Court justices, tgheir two Senators, etc., and it's not because of any actual or alleged conservative bias in textbooks anywhere. I've also seen the local, state (Texas) and national data on life-threatening behavors among public school students and something completely unrelated to any conservative bias in the textbooks is to blame for this crisis. You could, of course, put "John Wilkes Boothe shot Kennedy," in a textbook--don't laugh, it already happened and was not caught for months after they started using them--without doing all that much damage because the average student cannot or will not read and the ones who can and do would catch it. I attended public grade school mostly in east Texas and junior high and high school in Pennsylvania and the differences were minor. Much of what was ultimately most valuable that I learned from teachers was way outside the "lesson plan" and textbook.