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California Assembly Approves Internet Tax
ClientNine writes "California could collect more than $1 billion a year by taxing Amazon and other online retailers if a bill approved by the Assembly becomes law. Assemblyman Charles Calderon, a Democrat from Whittier, says his legislation doesn't impose a new sales tax, but extends one that California should already have been enforcing. AB155 passed, 47-16, with the support of one GOP lawmaker Tuesday. It now heads to the Senate. Other Republicans rejected the bill because they said it would invite lawsuits, drive business out of California, and get the state entangled in the messy task of regulating the Internet."
They're not wrong.
When you say you don't like taxes you say you think corporate America can provide everything you need cheaper.
Ever really think about that possibility?
Except they're now forcing businesses in other states to collect and remit taxes for items sold to Californians. This should be interesting because they're creating an interstate commerce tax which should normally be the jurisdiction of the Feds. Given the Feds got bent out of shape about Arizona doing the same with immigration, they either have to push a double-standard, or correct California's overstepping of authority.
Once upon a time taxes got us a Revolution. Now they just get us pissy and twittery.
They might lose that much however, as companies move out of state and leave people unemployed.
Maybe, but there are teachers, school employees, government workers, law enforcement, and a large number of other people working on tax dollars that are definitely facing unemployment too due to the budget shortcomings. The legislature should ideally weigh the harms of that against the potential disadvantages of actually collecting a tax they said they were going to tax and those companies should have been budgeting for in the first place...
But of course I'm not even fooling myself, this WILL BE decided based on lobbyists and how willing we voters are to believe that all taxes are evil things that only hurt us.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
http://money.msn.com/investing/fuel-shortages-hit-developing-world-jubak.aspx
Its working so well for Russia they closed down 700 gas stations in Altai, stopped running buses elsewhere because of rationing, and the average citizen can't fuel up his car.
If a liberal put a second of effort into the thought of repercussions for their actions we wouldn't have any liberals to screw up this country.
I can't think of a good reason why online purchases SHOULD be exempt while things you buy in a store should have the tax.
1: Amazon isn't using any state services such as street lighting, sewers, electricity, police protection, and the like that your state taxes pay for.
2: You don't get instant delivery the way you will from a local merchant (i.e. the playing field isn't totally tilted towards Amazon).
3: You have a much smaller carbon footprint buying from Amazon verses driving your car to the mall (a plus to the environment).
4: You have to pay shipping on top of your purchase costs (the unfair Amazon discount over not paying local taxes is substantially offset by this.)
5: If states get this tax, how long before they start trying to tax Amazon profits from every individual state?
6: Without Amazon and the like, your local stores have a virtual monopoly over providing you these items. How much do you think that is a good thing for the consumer?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The universal answer is the only thing that counts is where the item is being shipped. Taxes have to be paid for that locality.
Unfortunately, it isn't just at a state level.
Once you figure out which state gets the money, it would help to have some sort of file or server that sites can check to figure out how much tax to charge- sites shouldn't have to expend resources to stay on top of tax rates in all 50 states.
If it was just 50 states it would be simple. It isn't. There is a separate tax rate for every state, county, township, city, and village. This means you have to have an exact address - zip code doesn't really cut it I don't believe. There are several services that are available today that will compute tax for you, but they are expensive services that you have to pay for. Or, you can just turn all your sales processing over to Amazon who can obviously do it all now. Once you get to a certain size it makes more sense to just have your own files and staff to maintain them rather than paying someone else to do it at a higher cost.
But there is no mistaking that it is a huge problem. I know there are city/county overlaps where within a single city there are two different tax rates depending on which county you are in. Buffalo Grove, IL (used to live there) is split in two different counties (Lake and Cook) which have different tax rates. I seem to recall there being even worse problems in Ohio with townships, villages and counties all having their own tax rates and the final answer was the sum of the three for a particular address. No, there is no central authority for this - everyone that is doing nationwide sales tax collection today is either paying for a very expensive service or is doing it themselves. And it changes constantly.
My guess is that this will be a huge windfall for Amazon and a few other very large retailers that are able to offer shopping cart/purchasing services to other retailers that can't afford the services to compute the tax.
Logically, if all the voters who normally vote for taxes, just volunteered, then they would raise a bunch of money, right? Unless the people who vote for more taxes tend not to be the ones who expect to pay for them...
People keep saying things like this and thinking they're clever... It's a pretty stupid argument. Tragedy of the commons, perception of fairness, and all that. There's a difference between being willing to pay more taxes if everyone else at a similar income level is going to do the same, and volunteering to do it by oneself.
I don't have any ideological opposition to a government/welfare system run entirely by voluntary contributions, it just doesn't seem remotely practical at present. This makes me a dirty statist sheep by Libertariandot standards, no doubt.
Also as a minor note, you can already give money directly to help pay down the debt (http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm), and I believe the IRS accepts intentional overpayments as well. The former program usually gets a couple million per year at best, thus demonstrating both our points to some extent.