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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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The reason why this is stupid is because the tax would be going to the wrong place!
If I purchase something online, then the tax, if I am required to pay it, should go to that small city in Pennsylvania where their warehouse is located, not my local municipal. That's the place I am buying from, anyhow. The internet is like a magical doorway that teleports me into their store, all the way across the country, where I browse around and make a purchase. Then the internet teleports me back and I wait for them to ship it.
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. Which makes the whole argument even more ridiculous.
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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.
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.
We? Speak for yourself. I do want federally controlled healthcare. I want private sector medical insurance to be illegal, and medical care to be universal just as education is universal, only more so. I am delighted to see we've taken a few baby steps in that direction. A society that doesn't put the health and education of its citizens first is, in my opinion, wrongheaded - and I'm trying to be polite about it.
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We? Speak for yourself. I do want federally controlled healthcare. I want private sector medical insurance to be illegal, and medical care to be universal just as education is universal, only more so. I am delighted to see we've taken a few baby steps in that direction. A society that doesn't put the health and education of its citizens first is, in my opinion, wrongheaded - and I'm trying to be polite about it.
Thats because you credulously have faith in the federal authorities. Do you not realize that they don't really care about citizens in your state because they don't spend time living among them? So you get exactly the level of representation that you deserve when you put all your faith into the establishment responsible for fighting wars. The talk about death panels might be conspiracy theory but it's the same government that tested viruses on it's own military. It's the same government that gets paranoid and sees everybody and everything as a potential enemy.
Do you really want the Pentagon, DOD, and individuals like this to be in control of healthcare? Do you really believe this could be better than having your neighbor who you grew up with in control? Do you know any of these people in the Pentagon to have faith in them like this?
You can put the health and education of your citizens first by focusing on reforming your local government to put this first. You probably have no influence on the federal government which may or may not be influenced by foreigners. So you could end up with federal agendas which promote ignorance and sickness because. Not everything coming from the federal government is free from corruption because the federal government operates on the international level and other nations can easily influence politicians in DC, perhaps even more easily than you can.
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.
I mind it a lot for several reasons:
Sales tax shouldn't be expanded. Sales tax should be reduced and possibly eliminated. It is pretty much the worst kind of tax you can create because it discourages spending that is necessary for a healthy economy, is hardest on the people who can least afford it, and has a tendency to drop off steeply when the states need the money the most. Pushing for expanding sales tax betrays a lack of even a basic understanding of economics. It's the sort of thing politicians like because it "closes loopholes" instead of "raising taxes", but in the long run, it will only harm the U.S. economy and drive sales tax revenue down.
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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.
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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