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Senator Wants to Tax Internet Shopping
tripleevenfall writes "A Democratic senator is preparing to introduce legislation that aims to end the golden era of tax-free Internet shopping. The proposal — expected to be made public soon after Tax Day — would rewrite the ground rules for Internet and mail order sales by eliminating the ability of Americans to shop at Web sites like Amazon.com and Overstock.com without paying state sales taxes."
I actually think this is a very fair move. While I'm not going to enjoy paying the CA sales tax it will at least narrow the gap that makes it so hard for brick and mortar shops to compete with online giants like Amazon. Many people buy produce at farmers markets to support local business, why shouldn't the same apply to buying electronics, books and everything else.
If I were Amazon, I'd start thinking of moving operations to Mexico or Canada. Free trade that!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
without representation
In case you haven't noticed, we all have senators and representatives elected by the people.
I didn't realize there was Federal Sales Tax. They have the constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, but the Constitution prohibits its tax:
Art I, Sec 9. "No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another."
I don't think that clause says what you think it says. 'Preference' being the key word, this means the feds, if they created a tax it would be even from state to state, not taxing one more than others.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If only there were a machine capable of storing all of that tax data.
A possible co-sponsor is Sen. Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican who backed a similar proposal before and did not respond to a request for comment.
then:
Update 10:30 a.m. PT: I've heard back from Sen. Mike Enzi's office. It sent me e-mail this morning saying: "Senator Enzi plans to co-sponsor the Main Street Fairness bill with Senator Durbin. As far as a timeline or drafts, you'll have to check with Senator Durbin's office."
So it's bipartisan.
Don't even think it's only Democrats that raise taxes, or you will be school in tax history.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ah, the supply side fairy tale.
http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/supply-side_spin.html
Neither one is a punishment. Taxes are the price of society. It is more sensible to take from those who can stand to lose it with the least amount of pain. Taking a few thousand from me might mean I go on one fewer vacation, from the working poor it would deprive them of all their disposable income if they have any. Ever noticed the scumbags that support these regressive tax systems are the ones who would benefit the most from them? No banker is going to support anything that deprives him of even a penny.
The last two years they were trying to stave off another Great Depression, brought on by the crazy policies of a previous administration.
Look at every budget since Carter:
Republicans = Spend Like Mad Without Paying For It.
The Democrats have been the fiscal conservatives for the past 30 years.
There is, but it involves geocoding every single address. And then updating it every time any one of the 60,000 tax districts change their boundaries or rates.
Here is the problem, you can have two houses on opposite sides of the street be in two different tax districts. So a simple 'if zip == xxxxx, then tax = Y' type of lookup table will not work.
You then have the issue of the corporation needing to potentially apply for a sales tax license in jurisdiction before they can collect the tax.
Then you have the issue of having to possibly send the check to 3 or 4 different groups on different schedules for each customer in a different.
And finally there is the question of what gets taxed. In some states, some items are not taxed (usually basic food). So if I order a 10lb tub of powdered gatorade from amazon.com it may get taxed in one state but not another, both of which have a sales tax.
To call it a mess is an understatement. This is the main reason why the courts tossed out the states requirement to collect the tax: the burden was simply too much. If memory serves me correctly, that same court decision left the door open to enact a simplified sales tax scheme (if shipping to NY, then charge X% and send it to Y address and be done with it).
Clinton raised taxes, leading to full employment, an economic boom that for the first time in decades raised incomes from top to bottom rather than just at the top, and a budget surplus. Bush cut taxes, leading to a fall in employment, economic stagnation aside from the real estate bubble which was aided by Bush failures of regulation, incomes falling in all brackets except the top, and record budget deficits.
Sufficient taxes to support government programs lead to a healthy economy all around. The average economic performance is way better under Democratic presidents than under Republican. The notion that we can have a health country without sufficient taxation is like the notion that you can have a healthy body without sufficient food. History proves the Republican position that taxes must always be lowered, and lowered again, just doesn't lead to the Promised Land. It's a lie invented to serve the ultra-rich, who, having most of the money, have the most to lose from taxes. Average people, and the economy as a whole, prosper when taxes are higher.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Speaking of facts: The fact is that Bush kept the Iraq and Afghanistan wars off of his budget, and didn't fund his Medicaid bill. Obama put those wars on the books, that's why the budget looks so huge now. We're actually counting 2 wars, for once.
See Amendment 16 regarding the legality of Income Taxes.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Federal revenue normally increases every year. In fact, revenues have declined in only five years since 1962. The 35 percent growth between 2003 and 2006 is significant – the last major growth in revenue was between 1997 and 2000, when the economy was booming and federal receipts rose 28.2 percent. But the recent three-year period also comes after three years of decreases, a drop Viard attributes to the 2001 tax cuts and the start of a recession that same year.
The economy does not turn quickly. A huge recession started after the dot com bubble popped, then the tax cuts came in 2001. It takes time for that kind of change to see an economic impact. In the short term there will be none, in fact in the short term you will simply see a reduction in revenue. in the mid term, a year or two later you sill see the increase.
Three years after the tax cuts, the tax revenue returned to the 40 year average of 18.4% of GDP, with the lower rates So, no, lowering taxes will not immediately raise revenue, but it will increase GDP and help lower unemployment, which is what you need in a recession. The fact that they lowered the rates but are still collecting the same percentage of an increased GDP tells me that lowering taxes did in fact increase revenue, because historically the feds collect about 18% of GDP as taxes.
Summary: They lowered the tax rate, GDP grew and they still got their 18%. Sounds good to me.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
That's essentially what the whole Tea Party movement was about initially. It was a "what the fuck are you doing GOP party?" movement. Many Republicans value a fiscally conservative government above all else. Other value a socially conservative government above all else. The 1996 elections brought both sides of the Republican party together because they promised to reign in spending and be socially conservative at the same time. They won big. Over the next 12 years, the Neo-Republican Party that was in office went AWOL and started spending as if there wasn't a limit. They completely left the roots of their party's political motto.
That's part of the reasoning behind the huge 2006 and 2008 election loses for the Republicans. The fiscally responsible ones became disillusioned with the whole bunch and didn't want to vote for them. They were just as angry about the deficit growing from $4T to $8T.
As a fiscally conservative republican/libertarian, i don't give a shit if it's a republican, democrat, or the Pope himself. This spending spree in Washington has got to stop. And the tax code needs to be completely restructured. There are too many damn loopholes for the super rich and corporations to get around, all while the middle class gets raped because they make enough money to get by, but can't afford these big name tax consultants.
Now, I'm no fan of a lot of what the Tea Party has become. There are a lot of rednecks involved in it, and a lot of the socially conservative Republicans are trying to take credit for it and take it over. But if you really want to know what is at it's core and the root of it, you'd have to read Ron Paul's book The Revolution.
This is truly a rare thing to see - congress discussing laws that they are actually given permission to enact in the constitution. Interstate commerce.
or else!
I'll go with C: a government that doesn't spend money like a heroin junky. And it's the same principle too. The more they get, the more they need.
I mean if we're gonna punish someone for spending money on shit they don't need, it seems we should START with the government and not the citizens. Just a thought.
if they want more revenue how about they go after real corporations like GE, Exxon, and Bank of America that cook their books to pay no taxes. They have profits so where is the tax revenue.
The two wars together have cost about a trillion dollars total over the last decade, which is about how much Obama increased the deficit in one year.
> But stores have had to deal with this before the Internet anyway.
Yeah. For a SINGLE jurisdiction: the one they happen to be sitting in.
> You had mail order catalogs and you had to pay sales tax when you used them.
Ummm. No. Were you born yesterday? I mean really.
The "mail order tax scofflaw" problem has existed for a very long time. In
some respects, Amazon is nothing more than an extension of the mail order
operations from the 1880s. The catalogs are just snazzier.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Deficits don't matter. --Dick Cheney
Funny how when Republicans were in charge they didn't care about the deficit. It's also funny that you say Iraq/Afghan were funded over the last decade as if they were paid for. They weren't. Bush also passed TARP and the tax cuts for the rich. He also passed his Medicaid bill into law without funding it.
Umm, bank bailout? You may think they paid it back, but umm actually no. And any that did still just drew interest on U.S. treasuries for quite some time.
Bush's wars cost us $1.6 trillion. Obama's stimulus bill cost us $800 billion. All the economists told Obama to spend double that, btw.
By & large, the stimulus bill kept states afloat and transferred some state debts to the federal government. You may complain all you like about the obvious moral hazard there, but the state's were all set to close shit down. And state run services actually impact people's lives, unlike most federal services.
It goes without saying that the federal budget could be fixed by eliminating the corrupt transfer payments, like farm subsidies, subsidies for military contractors, etc., but that'll never happen under either a Republican or Democrat administration.
In fact, the only progress that has ever been made was when Clinton actually implemented a fiscally conservative program just to embarrass a Republican majority. No Republican president, or even a Republican speaker, has ever put forward a serious fiscal conservative program.
I'll take the Republican claims of fiscal conservatism seriously when they make someone like Ron Paul speaker. Until then, the only formula that's worked has been a powerful Democrat in the white house and a strongly Republican house.
We can argue about whether disagreeing with Obama's avalanche of spending means you endorse Dick Cheney, but I won't bother. Nobody is still talking about Bush 3 years later except those who won't judge Obama based on his performance. The point was merely to draw attention to the fact that the wars are not some huge percentage of the government's budget. At best, they are a few single digit percentage points or so annually, meanwhile, Obama is raising spending annually by ten times that amount.
Sorry but ever single time someone tries to put this stupid law up I see another politician who has no grasp of current economic forces.
The Internet has essentially removed geographical boundaries that enabled things like local sales tax. Sales tax can only exist if you are able to regulate ALL product sales in a confined geographical area. So you must either tax at point of sale or at point of entry into the geographical area.
Point of sale is simply impossible. As most markets on the web operate completely outside the jurisdiction of US law makers.
So this leaves you with essentially a manual customs inspection of every box coming into an area. And then processing each item and attributing tax and billing an appropriate party. This method would be prohibitive in expense and time. Effectively hand cuffing the local economy.
Lets not even start on digital goods which require no physical transfer at all.
There will always be massive holes in any system that tries to implement a sales tax on the web. The honest people will only be priced out of existence. Kill this law before it wastes any more time and money.
Sorry but the days of arbitrary taxation systems are gone.
It's so infuriating to hear people like you try to make excuses for your greed and jealousy instead of just doing more with your life and earning as much money as you wish you had.
Its infuriating to hear people like you suggesting things that simply are NOT POSSIBLE.
An individual can work harder, and accrue more purchasing power relative to his peers. But it only works on an individual level.
As a "system" it falls flat on its face. What happens if EVERYONE who was poor jumped on your bandwagon and started "doing more with their lives and earning as much money as they wish they had"? I mean EVERYONE.
Simple: money is devalued and their buying power stays the same; aka price inflation.
Better still, as their collective production and value increases your own relative wealth and buying power decreases; as you are already "doing more with your life" and cannot "work even harder" by the same relative amount to maintain your relative advantage.
So your solution to the problem, if everybody got on board not only wouldn't solve the problem, but would more then likely take you down a notch in the process.
I prefer solutions that address the realtity that in any sort of capitalism the majority of the people will be at the bottom. If you move everyone out of the bottom, you just establish a new bottom, and everyone ends up in the same relative place.
So instead of vainly trying to suggest poverty is a problem that can be eliminated if only everyone worked harder its better to spend your time figuring out how to make the bottom livable, with as much opportunity for motivated individuals to escape it as possible.
Increasing income taxes to 100% would barley make a dent and would not keep up with spending. The only way to fix the problem is to fix entitlements, kill subsidies and fix the tax system.
Ugh...and to think that I just used my last mod points. I wish that more people understood this. Advocating higher taxes at this point is just pure political posturing being done by politicians without the willpower to cut entitlements. We do not have a "revenue problem," we have a spending problem.
Social Engineering Expert: Because there is no patch for stupidity.
I agree. The web could be considered an electronic catalog and ordering system, but it is still mail order.
If you truly want to be fair, then it must go both ways. Every brick and mortar store should be forced to card every customer to determine where they live. They may be tourists that should have to pay sales tax for another jurisdiction. The B&Ms would cry like babies, if they had to do that. That is funny for they are asking web stores to do that for 7500 jurisdictions.