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Amazon Pushes For National Internet Sales Tax
SonicSpike writes "The Governor of Tennessee struck a deal with Amazon.com to allow their operations to move to TN in exchange for Amazon.com not having to collect TN sales tax for the next 2 years. However the Governor noted in his press conference that he is working with Amazon.com to push the US federal government to impose a national Internet sales tax."
Searched for "used for" could not find.
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
I'm sure Amazon does want a Federal Internet Sales Tax--a nice low one that would preempt any state from adding anything additional. Very bright folks there at Amazon.
RTFA: It nowhere says Amazon is pushing for this, the tenesse governor is, and hoping to work with Amazon for this. Amazon is not pushing for it, typical slashdot fud.
Of the state's rights issue Amazon is on. Next up -> the Amazon Library of Congress.
The complaints of online businesses are that each state has it's own laws and it requires too much work to comply with 50 different sets of laws. It seems a simpler solution would be a national tax policy instituted at the federal level with a single set of rules. In order to not infringe on state's rights, allow states the option of using this policy or sticking with their own. If they choose this policy, online retailers will be required to charge tax as appropriate and send it to the state. Retailers won't have to deal with the hassle of tracking numerous different laws and won't have to worry about shutting down their business presence in entire states. If the state chooses not to adopt this policy, they can continue with their current system and rely on people to pay the sales tax with their annual income taxes. Seems like this would work for everyone.
It's not the rate that needs to be uniform, merely the administration and rules. It would be quite possible to have a federal sales tax, with collection outsourced to the states and rate dependant on delivery address. The issue is when every municipality has their own tax and more importantly rules for applying that tax. It's this abundance of differing rules and regulations which make doing business across territories difficult, rates on the other hand can be determined by a simple lookup table.
The other major problem lies with the states that rely on property taxes for their income rather than a sales tax. This is harder to fix but may be doable as long as you allow the rate to vary to 0.
Amazon doesn't care where the money goes, nor do they really care about the rate. A federal tax could quite easily be collected and kept by the states. The reason they want a federal pre-emption is simply the abundance of rules and regulations that must be obeyed for each different area's individual sales tax. For new enterprise, having to obey one set of rules for collection of sales tax nationwide would represent an amazing saving on accountants bills.
Well, precisely. It's easy to say "national sales tax," in fact (I just said it). But how's it going to be allocated back to the states? Why should all the purchasing from, say Chicago, subsidize roads in a little town in Mississippi? It's all nice and collegial, but note that the roads in Chicago would be severely underfunded. TFA does have very many details ( infact, it has none), so is this another sensational headline out of a non-story?
I like how businesses treat the south as the third world (or Caribbean tax shelter) of America.
tl;dr, version:
Online shops already have a lot fewer expenses, if they don't have to pay sales tax like brick and mortar stores have to, those stores close. Less tax is paid, there is less money to run a decent human society and you are fucked (unless you are one of the rich who doesn't give a crap about ordinary people)
Oh, and clearly Amazon is not in favor of this, evidently they are in favor of paying no taxes anywhere, because they don't care that much about supporting society, beyond selling people crap they probably don't need.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Nothing like a real Jobs Killer by imposing more Taxes! Gee lets see, I can buy this item online from the USA + Tax , or I can buy the same thing from overseas - Tax!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
If Amazon is based in state A, takes an order from a customer in state B, and ships the item out of state C, who collects the tax? Collecting on a federal level takes care of that problem, and gets around the constitutional problem of taxing articles exported from any state.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
...this kinda blows. It's more money out of your pocket. If you live in a state with sales tax, it sucks. It's more money out of your pocket, but at least some of it will fill in the gaps left by all the revenue that Amazon sucked out of your state without sending back one dime to support the commons. What? You thought the roads and other infrastructure that the brown trucks use to deliver your Amazon purchases just magically appeared? For free? Grow up and recognize that maintaining and protecting the commons is everybody's responsibility.
The Governor of Tennessee [Bill Haslam] [...] to push the US federal government to impose a national Internet sales tax
Dang those Democrats, always raising taxes! Oh well, at least we have Republicans to proudly fight against every tax and stand up for the American people.
Oh, wait a second . . .
Seems to me it would be far more effective for states to stop relying so much on sales tax and move to other areas of revenue such as property and income tax. In the event of a national sales tax, it won't be long before the federal government decides to keep the money and the states need to make up for the shortfall elsewhere anyway.
Because Amazon doesn't have a physical presence there and they struck the deal as a prerequisite for moving facilities there. Which ought to be blatantly illegal as it's essentially an agreement to turn a blind eye to tax evasion so Amazon will move to the state.
We are talking about the most expensive, most powerful government AND world empire (with military bases in some 150 countries around the world) that has ever existed. By any measure, the US government already has enough money, and if they don't, then the next question is obvious: if the most expensive, most powerful government in the world can't make things right, then logically, more money and more power are the absolute last things needed to make it right, and quite possibly the cause of making it wrong.
I'm all for making the tax code fair, but at the same time, anything that rakes more cash through the business of government is at best pointless, and at worst extremely dangerous. After all, everything evil that governments do and could possibly do is bound to holding the economic means to do it.
We never get rid of taxes, we just add more, and more, and more........
That would be my preferred option, but ever since SCOTUS threw ours out in the '30s we haven't been able to get one by the legislature or voters.
As someone from outside the US, why is national infrastructure paid for at a local level?
It's not a troll, I seriously don't really get the idea of a single country being run by so many independant states as the US seems to be. Here in the UK there are National Routes and Local Routes, with the local routes paid for out of Council Tax and a share of the nationally collected Income Tax, although there are arguments for getting rid of Council Tax in favour of either a Land Tax or a more direct share of Income Tax.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
If he is really REALLY hurt, well, then Ceiling Cat will come. Or Basement Cat.
The feds are pretty damn good at collecting taxes. It's the one thing they really try to get right. Gotta hand it to 'em.
you misspelled amber lamps
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
To hell with the virtual - why the frig should those of us living in states with no sales taxes in the real world (Oregon) have to pay up for everyone else's, and since when would we be forced to start paying one?
Dunno about you, but it would pretty much change buying habits for most purchases around here. Sure, some things would still be cheaper online after figuring in shipping costs and (now this proposed) sales tax, but things online would end up being far less attractive than before... including a lot of Amazon's stock.
OTOH, maybe it'd be the push needed to support local (offline) business more?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Just call the number on the website, order over the phone... tax avoided. I think perhaps Tennessee governers need a refresher on the deliniation between the jurisdiction of Tennessee governers and jurisdiction of Interstate Commerce. Nobody tells the US Congess what to do. Nobody.
The Admin and the Engineer
If you've ever looked at the patchwork of sales tax rules in this country you can quickly see this solves a major problem. There are literally 10's of thousands of sales tax jurisdictions in the US, pretty much every county at a minimum, and often each city or town inside of the county. It's not just different rates, but also different rules. Food is taxed in one place, taxed at a different rate in another, and not taxed in a third. And what is "food"? You don't really want to know the answer to that question, it's probably 10,000 pages long! Having one rate, or perhaps one national base rate and a per state "option"; but more importantly one set of classification rules would really solve a major hurdle for small online retailers, and make it practical for them to collect tax.
The largest problem this creates is who gets the revenue? Taxes generally pay for infrastructure (roads, bridges, fire departments, etc), so it makes sense for some of the revenue to go where the seller is located, and some where the buyer is located. In brick and mortar sales these tend to be the same place, but won't be for Internet sales. Plus, Internet sales depend on transportation. The goods are shipped by truck and rail, probably across many states in the middle. Some of the money needs to go to those states to build interstates and airports and rail yards to get the goods from seller to buyer.
There are some other small problems. For instance if the money is collected and distributed via the fed, can it be used as a stick to get the states to do other things? The tax may be regressive, depending on how it is implemented. Many localities exempt food for instance as a means of assisting the poor, squaring those rules into a national set of rules will be difficult.
Still, overall I think the country needs something like this to happen. The idea that we can collect no taxes on a significant fraction of the business activity is just crazy. Many other countries already have a VAT tax because of issues like this, so the US is really falling behind. No one likes taxes, but we all like the things taxes achieve (on some level), so let's find the simplest, least evil, and fairest way to collect them. Going from 10,000+ sets of rules and rates down to 1 would be a huge step.
...why is national infrastructure paid for at a local level?
It isn't. National infrastructure (Interstate highways, for instance) is paid for directly by federal (national) funding.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Sales tax is the only useful way to tax companies on. If you taxes revenue, middlemen would mean multiple taxation, by keeping the tax at point-of-sale the tax is only paid once and the cost of it is spread up through price-pressure to all of the involved companies. Tax on profit is even more useless as profit can easily be redefined by accountants, which means ordinary company tax is only paid by small companies with poor accountants.
Or are you under the false assumption sales-tax are meant as a tax on consumers?
How about we come up with a way to elect someone other than narcissistic sociopaths into office? Then we can worry about the minutae. Seriously, all this talk of taxes and policy seems so pointless with the crop of miseryshits we have in office.
Amazon is NOT pushing for a national sales tax! This article is about Governor Haslam's agenda, not Amazon's. The headline is inaccurate and misleading.
"I either want less corruption, or more chance
to participate in it." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
I already pay taxes when I shop at just about any online retailer, I don't want to pay ANOTHER tax.
Fuck off Tennessee.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
We need fewer taxes and a smaller government.
A national internet sales tax would give us fewer taxes and less government. It would replace dealing with thousands of redundant individual local tax rates and authorities with a single system.
No doubt it would negatively affect Amazon, but how would the taxes be used?
Personally, I buy stuff at Amazon mostly for convenience and even if prices were higher than local stores, I would still shop at Amazon.
Stores don't pay sales tax... customers do. The stores occasionaly are nice enough to collect the tax from the customer for the state. You are still responsible for paying your sales tax even if the store does not collect it. Just like if you run a cash only buisness with no paper records you are still responsible for reporting all your income to the IRS to pay your taxes. If you chose to commit tax evasion, it is your own damn fault and not the responsibility of the retailer.
Tennessee has no income tax, so it relies on its almost 10% sales tax for a lot of its revenue.
So, yes, this is a big deal for them.
However, if this actually happens, I can see a cottage industry growing of sales tax databases. This would also include when states have "tax holidays", where there is no sales tax on certain items.
I don't get the argument, though, that it would be too complicated. All nationwide retail stores do it. It's just one more thing to deal with as a business owner.
Ah, so it's not so dissimilar to the UK setup.
I guess the next question then is, why does Sales Tax matter so much? I know Income Tax is lower in the US than the UK, but do the individual States not get any of that funding? Is there no equivalent of Council Tax (i.e. a tax collected solely for the use of the state)?
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
TN is a no-income-tax state: it derives its revenue primarily from sales taxes. Of course they support a federal solution that would require internet retailers to collect sales taxes – without it, the state government's main source of revenue is threatened as retail sales move online. I would be shocked if any governor of Tennessee, from either party, opposed such a law.
We do have national and local roads, also state roads and county roads. Each type can get funding from any variety of sources for many reasons. However I think the previous poster is commenting on how a nationally collected tax would provide disproportionate funding to federal infrastructure on a state by state or local level. There might be more online shoppers in areas of higher population and wealth, but that federal internet tax money would be applied to federal projects in areas that may not be contributing to the pot as much...in other words, like every other federal program in existence.
Really? The IRS gives out incorrect advice on the tax code, then penalizes YOU for it. People cheat them all the time, because you can only audit a small percentage. Charlie Rangel ripped off the IRS for nearly a decade. It's corrupt and self-serving just like nearly every government organization.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
So the feds will collect this money and hand it over to the states... for how long? 20yrs? 5yrs? Before they just start keeping it for themselves? It's just retarded. As usual, give the government more money and they will find better ways to either set it on fire, spend it invading a country or curtailing our almost non-existent civil rights even further.
To be honest... I'd much rather a sales tax than an income tax.
An income tax costs us many millions to support, police,etc- and it ends up that the very rich can find ways to pay very little tax through loopholes while the middle rich and the lower incomes pay higher percentages.
Most sales tax suggestions are not progressive- but they could be made so. (non-restaurant) Food untaxed. clothing items under x$ at a lower rate.
Luxuries taxed at a higher rate.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Which is why income tax has the 16th Amendment. No commerce clause needed.
In addition to the national income tax, most states have their own state income tax. In addition to that most, have property taxes, school taxes (also paid by property owners). Counties, towns, and other localities can also levy their own property taxes and sales taxes.
The national income tax goes directly to the federal government (which they then use to bribe the states into passing laws they can't pass nationally), everything else is local to the state and/or municipalities.
When you add everything up, I'm not sure it is so certain that our taxes are lower than anywhere else, but I have not looked at the numbers closely.
I suspect they've just realized that individually lobbying every single state, one by one, as they start running low on money and turn their greedy eyes to The Internets for income, is counterproductive. They're trying to head it off and approach the problem from the federal level, where they can toss out their bribes all at once, get a federal tax rate that's less harmful to their business than the weird-ass stuff the states keep proposing.
Further, county roads and city streets are funded by the county or the city that possesses that roadway. I live a quarter mile from a state highway. The federal government offers no funding for the maintenance of that highway. The county road (dirt road) on which I actually live, is maintained by a county employee, with a county owned road grader. And, the county roads that are paved are maintained by a couple of crews of county employees, again with county owned equipment, and county material.
Only in the rare emergency will I find a county crew working on a state highway, or a state crew working on a county road. (severe storms, in which the roads need to be cleared of ice, branches, or whatever, irregardless of ownership or responsibility, the crews just start wherever they are, and work toward town, or toward the next town, and keep on going)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
There's another rules problem with local sales taxes: in my area and perhaps in others too, the state and possibly the county and city will declare a sales-tax holiday for a weekend around back-to-school time, but won't make the decision to do so until a couple weeks or less in advance, and there are only certain things that don't have tax assessed.
I know it's crazy to so much of the leftward-leaning slashdot crowd, but is it so crazy to ask WHY a tax would be justified before implementing ANOTHER method of the government intruding into the otherwise-private transactions between people?
(And please note: our elected representatives being too stupid for several decades to balance a checkbook and spend less than they have available ISN'T ipso facto a valid reason to take more money from the public.)
To lay it out clearly:
- in terms of hard infrastructure, everything has already been paid for. There's no 'state-provided' street or sidewalk on which this business is taking place, nor a state-built thoroughfare upon which a consumer has to travel to visit a store. Yes, the US gov't invented the internet, but for at least the last dozen years every iota of bandwith on which our (consumer's) signals travel is paid for commercially, and the costs passed down to either we the consumers (through our ISPs) or the businesses (through their providers)
- whatever actual physical location a business has somewhere, the services that they consume (fire, police, etc.) from the government are already paid for in their property taxes. Self-evidently there's no need for police services for the sorts of store loss-prevention actions (shoplifters, etc) for internet stores.
- I don't see the government providing any specific security for internet transactions; there's no government-security function backing https, nor any other transaction security system with an official imprimatur. I'm fine with this, by the way, I'm just saying that one of the legitimate reasons we pay taxes is the security and stable society under which the transaction is able to occur. This isn't present, as far as I can tell, on the internet.
- sure there are some internet investigations going on but I see these as other issues - I don't see a lot of prosecutions for internet fraud (could just be my ignorance), certainly nothing to justify the massive amount of cash that would be garnered from a broadly-asserted internet sales tax.
In short, simply because the government needs money, and can take it, doesn't mean we need to tolerate it blithely like sheep.
-Styopa
unless you're Billy Bob the town sheriff. Then you can get millions of dollars in DHS money to buy machine guns.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Naturally, I can't speak for anyone else. But, when I'm shopping IRL and online, the sales tax (or lack thereof) doesn't even enter into the equation. Consider electronics and computer parts and peripherals. I simply cannot get the stuff I want/need locally. If I want the cheap crap that WalMart stocks, I can get that, of course. Very limited selection, at the very bottom of the quality spectrum. That carries over into very many other needs and wants. I simply can't get things, locally. So - I search for what I need online, locate several sources, and shop for price between those sources.
Sales tax? I just don't see it as a deciding factor. In fact, there have been a few cases where an online source collected sales tax from me, and I paid it, because even with the sales tax, they were priced lower than the nearest competitors.
That said - I really don't like the idea of paying taxes that I might avoid paying.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
> But how's it going to be allocated back to the states?
Easy: national sales tax goes to fund the FBI and ATF, and every state gets the privilege to have federal agents coming down to burn alive members of religious cults suspected to also be gun runners.
Every state would benefit from a better funded federal government. More money would fund more illegal wiretaps of civil rights leaders. Or it could simply be put in a savings account for the next war or bailout that the federal government creates to please its strongest supporters.
lucm, indeed.
Except there are states that don't. We like our "no sales tax" in Oregon. Screw you, Tennessee.
It's not a troll, I seriously don't really get the idea of a single country being run by so many independant states as the US seems to be.
Umm... Aren't you guys a member of the EU? You're just now seeing the beginning of how Federal and state powers and responsibilities manifested in US history. Shortly after the unpleasantness with the your Crown, the thirteen states banded together in something very like the EU under the Articles of Confederation. It became clear after a time that the Articles were insufficient to bound the states together, much as it is becoming clear that something more substantial may be needed in Europe (at the least many member states are concerned about how much everyone's economic policy diverges). So we upgraded the capabilities of the Federal government in the Constitution. Over the next two hundred years the States and the Fed (and the locals and the states) have maneuvered, pushed, and pulled (and in part fought a war) into the current system. The Federal Government's power have increased substantially over that time, but the states rather jealously guard what they have left.
The answer to your more immediate question of why local governments are building national infrastructure, the answer is they don't. States do. States are not local governments. Even ignoring the history above, remember that the US is relatively huge vs. the UK. England (indeed, the entire island including Scotland and Wales) would fit into some of our larger states. A certain level of mid tier government between "national" and "local" makes sense. Typically states maintain the larger roads (sometimes with mostly their own funding, called "state roads"; sometime with additional federal money called "federal roads" or "Interstates"), and local governments maintain the smaller local roads. State and local governments get a lot of their funding from sales tax (like your VAT, but collected at the local and state level). So the issues here are:
1) It's hard for states and localities to collect sales on interstate mail order purchases (as throughout the Internet). They are pushing to legally require this on any business which operates inside their borders. This is becoming a larger and larger issue as online ordering becomes a larger part of the retail profile of many people.
2) Sales tax rates vary extremely from state to state and locality to locality. I live in Massachusetts, we have like a 7% sales tax. It's higher in Boston which collects a local tax on top of the state tax. An hour north of me is New Hampshire which has no sales tax at all. Amazon and some other online retailers claim that this makes sales tax collection unduly complicated for them, so they want a national sales tax.
3) The difficulty presented by the OP is a real one. If the Feds start to collect a national sales tax on online orders as a proxy for states and localities how can you fairly divide up the proceeds. Should every state just get a percentage based on population? How's that work when many more people in say California or Massachusetts are much more likely to shop online than people in Mississippi? How do you handle getting local governments their share? Should people in states like New Hampshire, that have no state sales tax, have to pay? Should those states get any of the proceeds?
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
divided by sales?
tax on goods shipped (or billed?) to Illinois goes to Illinois?
"national" doesn't necessarily mean it goes to the Fed, it could just mean a common rate.
kinda sucks for Oregon (no sales tax) but could be good for California where sales tax is almost 10%
Dear Amazon: if you push this, and a national sales tax is introduced, I've made my last purchase from you.
f#ck him! blah blah blah blah... I'm so tired of this sh1t. and who is that b1tch anyways? :(
That was more reasonable in the days of catalog sales, these days we have these things called "databases" in which people can store records and information. I suggest businesses could rent access or create their own
But how would small businesses afford what the companies providing such databases (and updates to such databases in response to ongoing legislation and regulation) would charge?
When can we just get one simple flat tax for everyone?
giggity
There's definitely no longer any validity to the 90's moratoriums, as there's no longer anything nascent or emerging about internet retail that needs protection.
On the broader issue of taxes, if it were even possible to overcome all the vested interests to do a ground-up redesign of taxation in this country, it would only make sense for the state to be the single point of contact for a taxpayer. The state can distribute money to counties, and the federal government could tax the states, in an arrangement that's truly "federal". Preferably these taxes would not include income taxes, as per the Fairtax.
For great justice.
Let me rephrase --- we not only need fewer taxes, but also lower taxes. The government needs to downsize in a major way.
"why is national infrastructure paid for at a local level?"
it's not all like that.
each state gets Federal funds for things like interstate highways (those roads which cross state borders) - similar to your National Routes, I imagine.
so which tax are we getting rid of to offset this new one?
The local sales taxes that you're already supposed to be reporting on your state income tax return. A centrally managed internet sales tax system would greatly reduce your individual burden of keeping track of your online purchases, and computing, reporting and remitting the appropriate funds.
(I presume that you're not criminally evading these taxes right now, right?.)
what part of "physical presence" do you not understand?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
An internet sales tax wouldn't be that difficult, if done correctly. By 'correctly' I mean 'the way I think it should be done'. Of course.
Flat 2% tax on all internet sales. Tax will be allocated to the destination state.
End of each fiscal year, total up the taxes for each state and cut a check.
Done.
States can opt-out of/opt-in to the sales tax yearly. So if they don't want the money the vendor doesn't add it onto the order.
Since the vendors have a shipping address on record it's not rocket surgery to do the queries that calculate the taxes due to each state. State, not locality.
Addendum - I believe most states allow the vendor to keep a percentage of the collected sales tax as their fee for collecting it in the first place. Same thing here. Given the low amount of the sales tax letting vendors keep 0.25% of the 2% is reasonable. That would easily offset the cost of running a couple of queries and submitting them to their accounting department.
Seems like a little common sense might make this work.
Ah, so it's not so dissimilar to the UK setup. I guess the next question then is, why does Sales Tax matter so much? I know Income Tax is lower in the US than the UK, but do the individual States not get any of that funding? Is there no equivalent of Council Tax (i.e. a tax collected solely for the use of the state)?
It gets a little more complicated than just that: you have Federal tax, state tax, and possibly county tax and city tax.
The Federal Tax is mainly through income tax; there is also a fuel tax, but not currently a sales/consumption/value-added tax . How they dispose of those taxes is up to Congress and the President. Some does go back to the states in the form of "block grants" -- usually with strings attached.
States taxes vary by state and include (off the top of my head): income tax, sales tax, real-estate tax, and personal property tax. How those taxes get divvied up between state, county, and city varies by state. Some cities and counties have their own taxes in addition to the state.
Sales tax becomes interesting because if I live in California, drive to Nevada and buy something, which sales tax do I pay? The current answer is Nevada's. If I stay in California and mail-order purchase something in Nevada, which sales tax do I pay? California claims that I need to pay California sales tax, but it won't be collected by the Nevada establishment (there's a place on my California Income Tax form to specify out-of-state purchases). Now if I stay in California, connect to a server in Nevada and make a purchase, where did transaction occur? The general agreement is that I should pay California sales tax.
Complicating the matter is that the Federal Government is the only one that is allowed to levy taxes on interstate commerce. This is to prevent California from deciding to protect their citrus growers by imposing a 100% tariff on Florida produce. Does the sales tax fall into this category? That's for the courts to decide.
If you're still following (and care), if I live in a county in California and go to a different county to purchase a car, I have to pay the sales tax as if I bought the car in the county where I live -- not where the car dealer is located. This is to keep people in high sales tax counties from going to low sales tax counties to make car purchases. But this is all within the state of California so California makes the rules, not the Federal.
And speaking of cars, if I buy a car out of state and move it to California with six months, in order to register the car California demands that I pay the sales tax on the car as if I bought it in the same county that I am registering it in.
We can store a list of those rates.
Such a list would become outdated the moment a legislature changes a rate.
To hell with the virtual - why the frig should those of us living in states with no sales taxes in the real world (Oregon) have to pay up for everyone else's, and since when would we be forced to start paying one?
Dunno about you, but it would pretty much change buying habits for most purchases around here. Sure, some things would still be cheaper online after figuring in shipping costs and (now this proposed) sales tax, but things online would end up being far less attractive than before... including a lot of Amazon's stock.
OTOH, maybe it'd be the push needed to support local (offline) business more?
I can see it springing up "local delivery companies" that only deliver within the state. If these were included in the federal sales tax then it would be hard to see any justification for making ordering a book on line any different to phoning a local store and ordering a newspaper delivery or a pile of building sand to be delivered.
You're putting the cart before the horse. The government needs to hugely INCREASE taxes right now, to stop this crazy deficit nonsense.
You don't decrease taxes until AFTER you cut government spending. You don't complain that they should decrease taxes until AFTER you have accomplished cutting government spending.
Borrow-and-spend doesn't help your tax burden in any way. The inevitable result of this policy is that the government will print money to dilute the debt. This results to an invisible tax on peoples' cash savings. There's no such thing as a free lunch. (And if this Laffer Curve theory were true, we'd be running huge surpluses by now after all the tax cuts of the past decade. But it's not true: It's the biggest fraud pushed on the ignorant American public in the past quarter century.)
If you want the government to be smaller and spend less, go talk about that on a thread about government programs. Get the people signed up to cancel or cut those programs. Get the laws changed to implement the cutbacks. But don't talk about lowering taxes until after you get that signed into law.
Dunno about you, but it would pretty much change buying habits for most purchases around here. Sure, some things would still be cheaper online after figuring in shipping costs and (now this proposed) sales tax, but things online would end up being far less attractive than before... including a lot of Amazon's stock.
I have no idea why Amazon is behind this unless it is to ease their accounting systems. But you're 100% right, it is designed to protect the brick-and-mortar stores.
No doubt it would negatively affect Amazon
Probably much less than having every state demand tax be paid to them at different rates for direct deliveries. If it was worse than that they wouldn't be lobbying for it.
Our country is practically the size of your continent. It helps to break it up a bit.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congres ....
I guess they'll be lobbying congress then...
>>There are literally 10's of thousands of sales tax jurisdictions in the US, pretty much every county at a minimum, and often each city or town inside of the county.
Sure. A national sales tax would probably make more sense, especially if it would end local and state sales taxes, though that's a bit more of a pipe dream. Split the tax between the two local areas and their states, have the fed manage it, but not get a dirty penny out of it (or they'll expand it grossly, just like they did with the national income tax).
Unless we end up doing something a little more drastic and just moving to something like Herman Cain's flat tax proposal.
Actually, they suck at it. Have you seen the tax code? And, if they are good at it, it is only through intimidation and threats, and compliance under those conditions is the only way the protection racket works.
The only thing they (governments) are good at is making more rules and regulations.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
As someone who lives in one of the two states with no sales tax, this idea can go screw itself.
As someone who believes sales taxes are regressive and unfair, I can say that my fondest hope is that the internet finally forces the rest of the states to eliminate their unfair sales taxes and I welcome Amazon to move to my state and just tell everyone demanding sales taxes to fornicate themselves with an iron stick.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
Upon first reading this headline, I thought it was evil incarnate. Then I realized it only applied to sales, and BAM - instant reversal of my opinion of Amazon.
I've said it before - multiple currencies across the world creates unnecessary work, but this tax thing sounds 10x worse and unnecessary than even that. I created an acronym specially for this condition called UWS. It stands for "Unnecessary Work Syndrome", and arbitrary and convoluted tax collection schemes fit right into that.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
What about those states with no sales tax at the moment? Are those folks going to pay sales tax on Internet sales only?
Except that road infrastructure is already funded by gasoline taxes. So if you're moving around cargo, you're paying taxes on the gas used to haul it in the first place.
You're thinking of local projects being funded at the national level. Buying guns, for one thing, is not infrastructure development. For another thing, you're mentioning something that is the opposite of what OP asked about: national infrastructure being paid for by local funding.
Didn't you just make up that implementation? It's sure as hell not in TFA, which only says that the Tennessee governor (not Amazon... not sure where they got that) supports "a national solution".
Many proposed Internet sales tax implementations are just federal requirements for online retailers to collect sales tax for all states, based on the state of the purchaser.
It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to come up with a plan that divides the income between where the business is located and where the items are shipped (or alternatively, where the items are invoiced).
If you wanted to get complicated I guess you could try to determine which counties/states an item passes through and divvy up some of it there too, since that infrastructure is being used.
Don't make it for the internet only, make sales tax the same all over. While you are at it, make it mandatory to add the now-omnipresent sales tax into all prices displayed to consumers who are going to have to pay the tax anyway. It's a pretty "unique" situation to make every single transaction in a whole country more complicated and confusing than it needs to be for no apparent reason. Find a way to change tips into a commission for waiters too - so the commission comes out of the stated price instead of on top of the stated price. Then suddenly you won't need a math degree to go shopping groceries, buy a burger or split a restaurant bill! If it says 10$ on the sticker/menu, that's what it would actually cost instead of some inconvenient amount like 10.43536$.
Amazon will find another state that will give them tax free status.
I don't buy anything from Amazon. I don't mind if you do. I just like supporting small independent publishers like "Pragmatic Programming" directly and my local book store. Having a healthy competition with multiple vendors is the best way to create and keep jobs in this economy. Consolidation is what kills jobs. Taxes don't kill jobs. Government don't create jobs. Economy creates or kills jobs and by extension Banks influence job creation.
Taxes did not destroy jobs, nor did they cause this recession. Unregulated banking put us in this position and the republicans will do everything to try to divert your attention from that fact. Despite having a massive government bailout, the banking system decided to tighten up lending to businesses and reduce their "floor plan" portfolio. Without short term loans borrowed against receivables, business had to make labor cuts in order to continue to make payables. This effect reverberated throughout our economy.
Continue to support your favorite brand of bullshitter (republican or democrat) but please try to not let the rhetoric dissuade you from the real reasons why we are fucked.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
No, it's *subsidized* at a national level, but those funds don't come close to covering the total costs in most states.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
What you are observing here is a bunch of government officials congratulating each other, I am sure, this has nothing to do with some special tax breaks that Amazon will get from the Great State of Tennessee, while ALL OTHER online stores will have to collect these taxes, Amazon will surely be excluded for enough time not only to affect the small brick and mortar stores, but also any online stores that are selling to Tennessee.
What you just saw there, if you watched the video, was a bunch of racketeers, congratulating themselves on making plenty of money for themselves.
You can't handle the truth.
I guess the next question then is, why does Sales Tax matter so much?
Afaict the issue with sales tax and internet purchases in the US is not just the actual tax loss but also the fact that it gives retailers who sell to the whole US but only have a buisness presense in the odd state (preferablly states without sales tax) a massive unfair advantage over traditional retailers that have a buisness presense in most states. In theory people are supposed to pay an equivilent "use tax" to make up for the sales tax they didn't pay but afaict they rarely actually did so and some states even gave up and allowed people to pay an "estimated use tax" instead.
States cannot force out of state retailers to collect sales tax for their residence due to a supreme court descision that it would be an unreasonable burden on them (US sales tax is very complex with taxes being charged by many levels of govenment not just states).
Recently some states have been trying to put pressure on amazon to pay by widening the definition of "in-state" to include retailers with affiliates in the state. Amazon has been responding by dumping affiliates in those states (which hurts the affiliates in question far more than it hurts amazon).
One soloution for the states would be to do away with sales tax entirely (some states already don't have it) but to do that they would have to either reduce services or raise other taxes. In general those responsible for taxing people like to spread the pain so it's less obvious just how much of ones income is ending up in taxes.
I find this a slightly strange move by amazon. Maybe they think a level playing field wouldn't be so bad after all compared to the model theese states are pushing where online retailers that allow affilliates are disadvantaged relative to those that don't.
I know Income Tax is lower in the US than the UK
Afaict that depends on where in the US you live/work. The US federal income tax is lower than the UK income tax but many parts of the US also have income tax at lower levels (state, county, etc).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
And we like our "no income tax" in Tennessee. Screw you, Oregon.
One way or the other you're going to pay the piper, and having one national standard will make things much easier for all concerned.
Savings account? Good God, man, are you nuts? The last time we had spare money that we tried to save, we ended up receiving a massive tax cut that sent us spiraling into an outrageous deficit!
No doubt it would negatively affect Amazon
Probably much less than having every state demand tax be paid to them at different rates for direct deliveries. If it was worse than that they wouldn't be lobbying for it.
Back int the '90s I worked for a clothing retailer with physical stores in at least 20 states. They also had an online division selling their clothes. While it wasn't exactly simple, they had software that would compute the appropriate sales tax for the localities where their physical store were located, both in the store (so the customer can pay the tax at purchase time) and in the back office.(to compute the tax amounts to be remitted to specific localities/states).
IIRC the law was (this has changed in some states now) that local (based on delivery address) sales tax *must* be collected for online purchases in states/localities where the vendor [paraphrasing] "has a substantial physical presence." The company would also charge sales tax for online purchases where required (in states/localities where they had physical stores). This was handled with the same tools that computed sales tax for their physical locations.
This is still true in New York, where I am charged sales tax (8.625% in NYC) if I purchase something from an online retailer (e.g., Best Buy, Macy's, etc.) that has a physical presence in my community.
This wasn't a big deal to do 15 years ago, so I think it's not the complexity that is at issue for Amazon. I wonder what their angle is? My guess is getting that two year tax holiday in TN as referenced in TNSFA.
Let's stop kidding ourselves here. If the Federal government tried to implement a national sales tax, the states *might* (if promised a share of the proceeds) reduce their sales taxes, but the consumer will likely then have to pay both national and state sales taxes. So IMHO, a national sales tax is anti-consumer *and* bad for business.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Or are you under the false assumption sales-tax are meant as a tax on consumers?
Unless you're willing to exempt individuals from sales taxes, and only tax companies, corporations, etc, then it is a tax on consumers. A highly regressive tax on consumers.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Of-course as more and more sales taxes are collected, the income taxes are not going anywhere.
It was pathetic to watch all of the TV actors (so called 'journalists') asking Ron Paul - what about FEMA?
Well here is what about FEMA: if federal government didn't take all that money from the pockets of people who live in different states via income taxes, the local governments or whatever institutions that people would set up, would have access to more revenue. In USA people pay taxes on many many levels, not just federal, but also state and municipal and sales and excise and import and fuel and who knows what else, not including all sorts of things that are not generally understood to be taxes, but they ARE - like parking tickets, speeding tickets, anything that cops are used to collect. All sorts of other fees, based on government monopolies.
In reality the people in USA are extremely overtaxed and over-regulated, which combined with inflation via destruction of currency by printing, are the main causes of the economic demise of USA (same with Europeans, but they don't spend as much on a number of things, because they do those things completely publicly, rather than creating a monopoly and then giving the job of providing that monopoly service to some for-profit organization, which now has government monopoly handed to them, of-course health care and education and wars are more expensive).
In reality USA needs to abolish income and corporate and payroll taxes, stop all government subsidies, stop all subsidies to all individuals and to all corporations, all wars, including terror and drug and war on poverty, because regardless of what war is fought, it is always lost.
You can't WIN a war, which is profitable as long as it is IN PROGRESS.
Wars should be UNPROFITABLE, that's why it's important to have Congress vote on them and have taxes raised on them (or bonds sold domestically to raise revenue.)
Wars must NOT BE PROFITABLE. Otherwise they will never stop, and wars, regardless of what Krugman believes, are NOT a good way to fix the economy.
Half of the population loading cartridges and another half emptying them out, while some dark-skinned people are killed and assets destroyed is not a good way to run an economy, it does not produce any wealth, only poverty and misery.
--
Back to taxes - I am sure that Amazon is going to get some tax breaks here, while other small online competitors will be forced out of business because they won't be able to collect them over the Internet. Just one more nail in the economic coffin.
The ONLY way to make this a good thing is to STOP all income taxes and only THEN introduce some sales taxes.
You can't handle the truth.
This sort of thing happens -- albeit on a MUCH smaller scale -- all the time. When a town is courting a large industrial company, there are frequently negotiations to temporarily forgive property taxes and things like that; it's assumed that the added jobs will more than make up for the temporary loss of tax revenue from the industrial company's new plant.
notice that the US government has no problem giving huge subsidies to big oil, big ag, big pharma, but when the regular person might benefit from a subsidy they drool over how to screw them.
VAT in the US is inevitable so preparing to evade it is a wise idea.
The Tea Party idea of strangling government by denying it money is good, but we need a Democrat anti-tax movement to attack what the Tea Party will not.
The way to starve the enemy is to cut its funding.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
And more wasted money on trying to implement this system. The IRS can't even handle it's own tax codes, so let's add some more in! Create a whole new department just for internet sales. Spend millions of $s trying to figure out every state's, county's, and city/town's tax codes. Spend millions keeping it updated.
What could go wrong?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
And Keyboard Cat will keep on playing his sad, sad song.
I think, technically speaking, you're supposed to report any online purchases on your taxes so that they can tax you on them. Nobody ever does, of course. I don't know, maybe that's just a Wisconsin thing...I pretty much skip that line every year (as does most everyone else) so I can't really remember.
I live in a state that collects sales tax. I'm not sure if the idea discussed in the article is the best solution, but something does need to be done. I can think of two main problems with the current system.
First of all, my state technically requires you to keep track of all of your untaxed internet purchases and pay sales tax on them at the end of the year. Almost no one actually pays. Even if money wasn't a concern, who really wants to spend the time to keep track of everything? The state doesn't seem to follow up, but I'm not sure what would happen if you end up being one of the unlucky few that is audited...
The other issue is that internet retailers have an unfair advantage over local retailers because people "don't have to pay" taxes on purchases from most internet purchases, and, especially on expensive electronics, shipping is often cheaper than taxes.
I don't like to pay taxes anymore than anyone else, but the states have to make their money somehow. And the current system is kind of messed up.
Or are you under the false assumption sales-tax are meant as a tax on consumers?
Since in every state I know, consumers are liable for paying sales tax if it was not collected by the seller, I can't see how you can claim sales tax is not a tax on consumers.
States set their own tax rates, including property taxes, income taxes, excise taxes, and sales taxes. Some states have no sales tax (but higher property, income, and or excise taxes), others have high sales taxes (with lower income, property, or excise taxes). So the tax rate and total taxes paid by residents of each state vary, and sales tax is only one part of those taxes. A national internet/interstate sales tax would upset that balance. There is no way Congress can levy a national sales tax that does not upset that balance.
Furthermore, for states that have sales tax rates lower than whatever rate congress set, in-state sellers would have the advantage of lower sales taxes, while states with a rate higher than whatever Congress set would still be at a disadvantage compared to out-of-state sellers, and those states would still have the burden of trying to collect the difference in taxes as part of their "use tax". Such a system would be no better than what we currently have.
Finally, no state can impose taxes on a resident of another state if the transaction occurs outside the jurisdiction of the taxing state. Therefore, any tax would have to be imposed uniformly at the national level by Congress (and that money would all go the US Treasury, not to the states), or would require an amendment to the US Constitution (and probably some state Constitutions). Any other approach would be unconstitutional. As shown above, there is no way to such a tax to be levied fairly. It would impose a greater burden on purchasers in some states than in others, and the burden would be greater on some states than on others. And if you think the states are going to benefit by getting any significant portion of that money back from the US Treasury, you're delusional and/or haven't been paying attention for the past 50 years. Even if they earmarked that money for the states, the would use it as an excuse to reduce other payments to the states and Congress would spend the "additional revenue"
Any such attempt will drive mail-order suppliers from states with higher total property, income, corporate taxes into states with lower total property, income, corporate taxes and moderate to high sales taxes since that would be a benefit to the seller, while yielding the same sales tax rate for the buyer.
In theory, it may sound like a good idea, but without a constitutional amendment and some major changes in the way our government works, it's a REALLY BAD idea.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
I recall people started companies to track and administer tax collection by zip code as early the mid 1990s. Its not rocket-science, just good database keeping. This would be trivial for one of the largest cloud computer companies in the world like Amazon.
Split the "Federal Sales Tax" into 3 pieces. One for the feds, one for the state where the goods are going and one for where they shipped from. All the merchant would do is report the dollar amount collected each month/quarter etc and what ever the percentages the law covers would be handled by the agency managing it. The smallest portion should be for the feds to run that agency. It would then be up to the states to figure out what to do with that money. It beats what most of the states get now which is nothing. States that don't have a sales tax could opt out. This would fix the problem of the sending state getting shafted and the feds having to run it for free. Of course, the government being the way it is, this will get abused to no end. One thing that bugs me about the deal that amazon got is that a small business would not get the same because they are just not big enough.
more money!!!!
Screw you Amazon, for supporting another tax for the feds.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I agree, but I want to cut the military, farm subsidies, oil company tax rebates, and federal highway subsidies. Most "small government" types I've met are want to cut social programs instead and consider their entitlements to be absolutely necessary and worth everyone else paying for.
My question then becomes: how much will it cost to distribute the money? (How much cost to administer the tax collection system?)
If (admin cost > revenue collected) it's a net loss.
So what you propose is to shove a sales tax down our (Oregon's) throat so you can keep your state income tax free. If you (Tennessee) swapped from sales tax to income tax, you wouldn't be having this discussion.
Oregon has many times rejected a sales tax, largely because the proposal never includes doing away with income tax. Once you allow a tax scheme to be instituted, government has a vested interest in keeping it going.
With income tax, you catch the income as it is coming in to the citizen. With sales tax, you catch the income as it is going out from the citizen. "Use tax" is a bandaid meant to try and recapture that portion of tax that residents spend out-of-state.
Since that other state naturally charges sales tax of its own, you have the choice of either not buying out of state, ignoring "Use tax", or getting taxed twice.
Guess which solution most people choose. Don't come to me, crying "Use tax" unless you also are going to defend me against "foreign" sales taxes.
That might not be a big deal if you are only computing sales taxes exactly where you have physical stores, since the physical store managers will have to figure out the local taxes anyway. But if you are a small internet start-up, it will be almost impossible to keep track of all the locations you might sell to, and you'd have to keep track whether or not you make any sales to there, just in case.
For example, I work in downtown Chicago. There is a state sales tax, a County sales tax, a Chicago municipal sales tax, and, since Chicago would rather tax visitors and suburban commuters than citizens, a special taxing district between McCormick Place (a convention center South of downtown) and Navy Pier (a tourist attraction North of downtown). Now, some of those tax codes have exemptions for food and medicine, but don't always agree on what exactly counts as food and medicine (fruit juice? pop? granola bars? is a Deli a restaurant or a grocery store? does a given over-the-counter drug, dietary supplement, or remedy get an exemption? etc.). Surrounding municipalities and counties have different tax rates and structures. Now multiply those possibilities by 50 states, hundreds of counties, thousands of municipalities, and try to manage the year-to-year changes in the laws.
Any state that want sales taxes collected must provide a RESTful web service that, given the address/9-digit zip (for internet it is... shipping?), and a correct categorization of the product and cost(s), the service feeds back what the tax(es) are and a transaction #. It should be wrapped in a PGP/GPG private encryption as signature, etc. But if the states don't provide that then they aren't allowed to complain about any missing taxes.
There, solved.
That would assume that everyone has the same idea of what 'fair' is. Oregon has decided that an income tax is the way to go. Tennessee has decided on sales tax. Now I have a choice. Do I pick income or sales? I can chose to move to Oregon or Tennessee. Or do we want every state to be like California?
The UK's (sorta) part of the EU, right? So why isn't the EU government paying for UK infrastructure, instead of the UK government?
Think of each US state as a separate country, and things will make more sense to you. The difference is that, while our States did have about as much sovereignty back before our Constitution was written, that sovereignty has slowly eroded over the years, to where there's not much left, but even so, we still do a lot of things on a state-by-state basis, including infrastructure (which is partially Federally funded but mostly locally directed), and especially pre-college education (which can be wildly different state-to-state).
Umm... Aren't you guys a member of the EU? You're just now seeing the beginning of how Federal and state powers and responsibilities manifested in US history. Shortly after the unpleasantness with the your Crown, the thirteen states banded together in something very like the EU under the Articles of Confederation. It became clear after a time that the Articles were insufficient to bound the states together, much as it is becoming clear that something more substantial may be needed in Europe (at the least many member states are concerned about how much everyone's economic policy diverges). So we upgraded the capabilities of the Federal government in the Constitution. Over the next two hundred years the States and the Fed (and the locals and the states) have maneuvered, pushed, and pulled (and in part fought a war) into the current system.
I think current problems show that maybe this wasn't the best course of action. Why do we need unity at all? Back in the 1700s, it made sense because there was still a big threat from the British, who made good on the threat by starting the War of 1812; the colonies needed unity to protect themselves. Those days are over; no one's going to militarily take over any advanced country, whether it's part of the US or someplace as small as Andorra or Liechtenstein. The only real benefits to being part of the same nation are free trade and common currency, but as the Europeans are seeing, that might not be all it's cracked up to be. Why not just split up the USA into a handful of smaller countries (no, not 50 of them, but maybe 10, each with state-size regions), and enact free-trade agreements? What we have now is far too much infighting, which is inevitable any time you have too many people with different opinions and ideas; it's like having a giant ship but no one can agree on where it should go, how things should be run inside, and they keep electing captains who try to please everyone but end up going nowhere because there simply isn't a way to please everyone, or even a majority of everyone because there is no single group that comprises a majority.
There are some other small problems. For instance if the money is collected and distributed via the fed, can it be used as a stick to get the states to do other things?
"Small problem"? Why do you think the answer to your question is anything other than "yes"? The stick of federal funding is one of the biggest threats to US federalism and the Constitution today. In turn, that makes it one of the biggest threats to the US public's freedom. US states are supposed to have considerable freedom of action in deciding how they tax for things and what those taxes pay for. A powerful central government forcing states to comply with a fixed standard for everything takes that power away.
The idea that we can collect no taxes on a significant fraction of the business activity is just crazy.
Why is this "crazy"? To the contrary, I think we shouldn't tax activity at all, business or otherwise. Instead, we should tax assets. But if we're not going to do that (and constitutionally, the federal government can't tax assets), then a one-time income tax is pretty fair. VAT doesn't make sense since nobody knows what the "value" is until the final good in the supply chain gets sold and the overhead of keeping track of who pays what is silly.
Going from 10,000+ sets of rules and rates down to 1 would be a huge step.
Except that's an inexcusable imposition of federal power on the states and local government. The Constitution isn't merely something you can bend at a whim.
I have an alternative here. Have the federal government maintain an easy to use database of tax information. Sales tax for a location is federally recognized and imposed on internet transactions, if the sales tax data is in the database. We still have the problem of determining where people are and whether a federal bureaucracy has the ability to boot states or local governments from the database (and hence, refuse to collect sales tax for that government) on a spurious pretext, but I think those issues are addressable. There's still significant possibility of other government abuses (an issue which I will always be sensitive to), but it's greatly reduced over a single VAT and having the federal government handle an even larger portion of each state's budget.
I guess your locality has a lack of decent stores then, and your sales tax may also be low. Here in Phoenix, I can certainly buy most things I need locally if I want. For electronics, for instance, there's tons of Best Buys, Costco, Walmart, and best of all, Fry's Electronics. However, our sales tax is nearly 10% here; that's a large part of the purchase price. So it usually pays to just buy online from someplace that doesn't charge tax, depending on the price of the item, as the shipping is probably less than the tax, plus the prices online are usually a little better than Fry's. With something really expensive, the difference can be ever more pronounced, though if it's a large item (like a TV) shipping may be a bigger factor.
I didn't say it was easy. I did also mention that this retailer also had an online division which collected sales taxes where required.
My point was that if it was doable 15 years ago, it should be easier to do so now.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
When we discuss taxation as a whole not just income the US runs about 10% behind western countries as a whole. If anything though the support of a higher corporate tax on internet businesses makes far greater sense since they can choose to increase prices to offset the tax (which isn't really true in the sense it's proportional but for the sake of argument) or make due with less profit to remain cheaper than the B&M stores. A national sales tax as all sales taxes disproportioniately affect the poor & middle class as those taxes eat into their disposable income and generally don't reward at the same rate.
I guess the next question then is, why does Sales Tax matter so much?
In theory people are supposed to pay an equivilent "use tax" to make up for the sales tax they didn't pay but afaict they rarely actually did so and some states even gave up and allowed people to pay an "estimated use tax" instead.
Perhaps I am naive but the use tax is on the books in every state that has a sales tax, based on my work paying use tax in many states for a corporation many years ago.
Instead of writing new laws, is there not a way to use technology to collect the proper tax?
One idea, right off the top of my head: At the time one places an order, it is not completed until the buyer is directed to a page that, based on zip code (or however they define local taxes), requires the buyer to submit the appropriate use tax to their state/locality. Tables can easily be kept up to date with the latest changes in tax rates and the vendor could collect the tax and submit it monthly to the appropriate tax collection agencies. I don't see this as a terribly difficult process to implement.
Like I said, maybe I'm just naive. I welcome other thoughts about this or other ideas that don't involve passing new legislation.
Do you think there are more or fewer tax laws than there were 15 years ago?
I don't care where you live, no store has the selection of a company like Newegg. I have a Microcenter locally and while they have a lot better selection of computer components than Best Buy, it's still a miniscule fraction of what's available online.
If Amazon concedes that states and localities have enforcement powers beyond their borders for taxing purposes, will Amazon also need to be subject to ALL of the sales regulations imposed by their customers' jurisdictions? Will I get a big pop-up saying that a switchknife of the length I've chosen isn't legal in my city? Will they have to check ID for M-rated games?
Having a "national standard" makes it easier to raise taxes. Having every state set their own taxes makes it easier to move to a better run state.
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
Fry's comes pretty close. I've never been to a Microcenter, but Fry's is pretty much legendary; even when I was living in the east coast I knew of it, and my coworkers in Ohio are all jealous that I live about 3 miles from one.
It became clear after a time that the Articles were insufficient to bound the states together
I have never heard or read a good argument to make this case. I have read arguments against it, however, such as that from Rothbard.
Fortunately, we can go back to the Articles when this federal government debacle implodes.
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FizXGoPkVs
Hate to say it, but that particular horse has been dead a long time.
In MA at least, it's asked for onthe income tax form, but you get to ignore it unless you buy a shitload of stuff online.
Were that I say, pancakes?
I have no clue as to the exact number of tax laws on the books in 1996 vs 2011. I'm not your secretary. You google for it since you seem to care. I'd venture a guess that the number of taxing authorities in the US hasn't increased very much. I'd also hazard a guess that even if the number of tax laws has increased significantly, only a small percentage are new *sales* taxes implemented by existing or new taxing authorities. I do know that TCO per gigaflop is orders of magnitude cheaper than 15 years ago. I do know that data management and analysis tools are much better than 15 years ago.
So tell me, are you just being a dick because it's /. or do you actually have a point to make?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
And we like our "no income tax" in Tennessee. Screw you, Oregon.
One way or the other you're going to pay the piper, and having one national standard will make things much easier for all concerned.
I like my "no sales tax" and "no income tax" in New Hampshire. Screw you, everyone else!
Do you have any idea how fluid tax laws are? Computing power isn't the issue.
The state doesn't tax food but the county has a special tax on junk food to pay for a special project, but only in incorporated parts of the county, unincorporated parts of the county do not pay the tax. First define food. Then define junk food. Then I suppose you want to determine what zip codes fall under incorporated vs unincorporated. Too bad zip codes have nothing to do with taxation. Are you going to sit and draw polygon maps for every tax jurisdiction and attempt to classify every possible consumer product known to man to conform to tens of thousands of different tax laws put into place by special interest groups?
You don't have any idea the magnitude of what you're talking about. There is software out there, the one I'm most familiar with is Vertex as I've implemented it. Depending on the breadth of products an online store sells and the possible classifications and constantly changing tax laws in tens of thousands of potential tax jurisdictions, it's a gargantuan task. The company I was at routinely got calls from people complaining about the tax rate we charged them because they were in a different part of the county than the software said they were in, or that their city classifies a certain product as food and how we're ripping them off because they didn't get charged sales tax on that product by their local B&M.
You're ignorant, and until you become less so, keep your uninformed opinions to yourself.
Ok, here is how it will play out.
1) Institution of a National Sales Tax
2) Measure to revoke local sales taxes abandoned.
3) We start paying local AND federal sales taxes
Also, consider the flat tax idea. Will it RAISE your taxes or LOWER them? I betcha a frosty cold domestic it will raise YOUR tax burden( an lower Herman Cain's )
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
Amazon is a traitor to the consumer.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You're right. I know very little about collecting sales taxes. However, assuming that every point you've made is valid, my point (in case you forgot: "It *should* be easier now than it was 15 years ago.") hasn't been refuted by anything you wrote.
You mention the complexity. That complexity was there 15 years ago. You mention that software to do this exists today. Software existed for this purpose 15 years ago. One would hope that it's improved over the years. I know that underlying technologies have improved significantly over that period.
You called me ignorant and told me (essentially) to shut up. Perhaps I am ignorant, but you haven't refuted my main point. Did you just miss it because you were so hot to insult me?
In any case, I will continue to express myself. Please feel free to ignore me. I certainly don't mind. I won't tell you to shut up because I think you're an obnoxious jerk. Please continue to spew bile. I'd only request that if you're going to tell me I'm wrong, provide some details as to *why* I'm wrong -- not just re-stating the issues associated with the discussion and calling me ignorant.
Have a nice day!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
OTOH, maybe it'd be the push needed to support local (offline) business more?
The problem is that for consumers who are price sensitive enough for sales tax to make the difference, the "local (offline) business" is Walmart.
So, the juicy tax break goes to the big corporation who will bring in a few thousand jobs and treat the politicians to steak dinners. As for the thousands of small businesses who employ many times more Tennesseans than Amazon ever will, they are screwed when it comes to trying to compete with the retail giant.
This is the sort of corporate giveaway that should outright be unconstitutional.
Retailers will solve that by incorporating in Vancouver.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Naturally, I can't speak for anyone else. But, when I'm shopping IRL and online, the sales tax (or lack thereof) doesn't even enter into the equation..
For cheap items like a USB jump drive or a couple of specialized SATA cables, I can see the point. But if I spend $1500 for a MacBook Pro, a 6% sales tax (which I paid in Utah when I lived there) comes to $90, and will definitely enter in the equation.
I get what you mean about availability, but that aforementioned ninety bucks would cover the markup for a local Mac reseller (even if they ordered the item), or even make a 1.5 hour drive to the nearest Apple Store a lot more feasible (especially if I have other bits in town I need to pick up).
To give you an idea, my last purchase online was for an $850 wiring harness kit to repair my old Jeep. That aforementioned 6% tax is just over fifty bucks. Instead, I used that $50 to buy supporting items, such as tape, terminators, some plastic tubing, spare wires, a Chilton's manual (which includes schematics that allow me to recycle the existing ECU) and etc.
It would have cost me $900 to buy the harness locally from a nearby 4x4 shop (and again, here in Oregon sales tax is a null figure). That 6% sales tax online would have made the harness cost about the same either way, so buying locally would actually now make more sense (especially since I needed to get other bits for the job anyway).
Like I said, I agree perfectly for small items, and impulse buys. But once you start talking about larger purchases, that sales tax begins to make a big difference.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If you're still following (and care), if I live in a county in California and go to a different county to purchase a car, I have to pay the sales tax as if I bought the car in the county where I live -- not where the car dealer is located. This is to keep people in high sales tax counties from going to low sales tax counties to make car purchases. But this is all within the state of California so California makes the rules, not the Federal.
Actually, I think that Washington State (which has a high sales tax) has something similar for its residents who purchase cars in Oregon (which has no sales tax) - they collect it when you register the car (not 100% certain since I'm an OR resident, but I believe this to be the case).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I would probably have the individual states maintain the databases. Then the states can decide how complicated or even workable their sales tax rules are. The databases should be the last word as far as mistakes in favor of the vendor/buyer go and if the state overtaxes, the state should pay a penalty. If the database is unavailable do to the state's failure, then taxes during that time should not be applied.
I would probably have the individual states maintain the databases. Then the states can decide how complicated or even workable their sales tax rules are. The databases should be the last word as far as mistakes in favor of the vendor/buyer go and if the state overtaxes, the state should pay a penalty. If the database is unavailable do to the state's failure, then taxes during that time should not be applied.
I'm good with that. But keep in mind that regulation of interstate commerce is strictly a function of the federal government. My view is that it is reasonable function of the federal government to establish a standard of sales taxes and prohibit collection of sales taxes for internet businesses operating in particular regions, if the government managing that region has sales taxes which don't meet the standard.
Regulation of interstate commerce is certainly a function for the federal government but setting up the standards that states would have to meet to do it themselves is one means of doing that.
It is another way of seeing it, but yes it is directly on the consumer, but it operates in practice as a tax on companies.
First assumption is that prices are set in sweet-spots by market forces. When prices are set by any other mechanism than as-seller-demand, the price can not just be altered by the seller. So a tax put on top of the selling-prices will have to be taken off the sellers revenue. To an outsider it will look like the tax is added on top of the base price, but in reality the base prices is forced lower to make the total prices still hit the sweet spot commanded by market-forces.
If the price were set poorly, the tax is paid by the consumer, if the price was set as aggressively as possible, the tax is paid by the company.