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Bipartisan Internet Sales Tax Bill Introduced
jfruhlinger writes "Four senators, including both Democrats and Republicans, have introduced a bill that would allow (but not require) states to collect sales tax on items purchased by residents online, even the seller has no physical presence in that state. Sellers would be able to pay through either the existing Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement or a new alternative tax simplification plan. Battle lines are being drawn predictably: brick-and-mortar retailers love the idea, Internet-only sellers hate it."
Because the one thing all politicians can agree on is that they want more of your money.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
The question was only when the pressure from state governments for the revenue became strong enough. With state revenues still down because of the economic downturn, it seems likely that its time has come.
With the battles between California and Amazon as a foreshadowing, it may be that there will be some sort of phased in deal first.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
I wonder how long until all of the big retailers are no longer in the US.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
It's as though a billion potential businesspeople in China collectively cried out, "Horray for 0wn3d U.S. Congressmen enacting a clever tarriff against their own country!"
Any time you do a sales transaction over a border, even by phone or snail mail, both places should get paid but each at half their normal rate. Example: You're in a state that wants 7%, and the seller is in a state that wants 4%. OK, your state gets 3.5% and the seller's state gets 2%.
They're inherently regressive devices that tend to suppress economic activity. A progressive income tax is the best solution, for all states. But until they realize that, I'm for this proposal. Let the sales tax apply to all.
I wonder how this will fly in states that have a long history of successfully defending it's 10th Amendment rights, where sales tax is unconstitutional.
Furries make the internet go.
According to this article it was ten senators—six Republicans and four Democrats.
I find it very amusing that it will 'allow' states to collect sales tax on online purchases. As if any state would pass up an opportunity to collect taxes on something.
I'm still undecided.
Conservatives love a good sales tax because it is nice and regressive.
What part of "Bipartisan Internet Sales Tax Bill Introduced" and "Four senators, including both Democrats and Republicans" makes you want to point at just conservatives, besides demagoguing a single party? Almost all politicians love a good tax on whatever. Like the Christmas tree tax that just got added into all the other ridiculous Agri-taxes the fed has imposed over the years to prop up industries the free-market would otherwise have let work out on its own, this is just another federal manipulation of market desires for the wrong reasons. I'm for regulation, but taxes are an area that need 100% overhaul. Not incremental change. Sweeping reform. For the most part we never see taxes being removed. And that is a bipartisan ailment. Regressive taxes favor all the good-ole-boy club members, and their unfairness or however you view it is perpetrated by both parties.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
They could balance the budget in less than a year.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Make the USPS the handler of the sales tax system. They are already in position to id your house, down to the City, County, State and whether it is actually city, county, state, federal or other jurisdiction.
Since we already have laws that make the drive of the truck responsible for the items. Then make the carriers which include FedEx and UPS, be the collector, since they are persons handing the package to customer.
This way the calculation of tax, is part of address validation that all these systems use along with freight charges.
This is coming, we must deal with it. I'm no happier about it than anyone else, but states are broke.
None of the Senators who proposed this are, by any stretch of the imagination, conservatives.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Yeah we needed a way to push more business overseas. [/sarcasm]
I've long thought that the federal government should simply define a sale in the United States as taking place at the location of the buyer. This would allow states to tax every business selling the same thing to the same person exactly the same way. There certainly is no fairness in taxing some sales differently than others; effectively it is a subsidy of business models that do their selling remotely. Plus, practically speaking, as sales move from in-person exchanges toward inter-state, online transactions, this forces states to tax the remaining local businesses at a higher rate, even as they now have to compete with a whole nation of online sellers, thus making it impossible to compete and putting the local employers out of business. We may not like taxes, but I would rather see a lower rate applied evenly than a higher rate applied just to one set of merchants. It is both fairer and stops discouraging businesses from remaining in a state. This hasn't happened up to now mainly because of concern over merchants being able to successfully know and apply all the tax rules in every jurisdiction they sell in. But that's always been a requirement of doing business in a locality, it shouldn't stop now, and hopefully some framework such as this will encourage states to simplify their tax rules in order to take part.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is a bill that would actually allow the sales tax to be collected and hence close the loophole of people not self reporting their "use" tax??? Thus the gubermint will be able to actually collect on the money it already has claims on???
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
And citizens want police & fire departments, better schools, better public transportation, better water supplies, better sewers, better roads, better bridges, etc. What they dont want is to have to pay for any of it.
Wrong. What they don't want is a vast gulf between the amount of taxes collected and the quality of the services and infrastructure provided. For example spending more money per student and getting some of the lowest test scores. Its not that people are unwilling to fund education, its that money is obviously not the problem with education. Something else is broken and perhaps we should fix that first before evaluating what an appropriate level of spending would be.
:-)
Or if you prefer, a car analogy: They don't want to pay Cadillac prices and have a Chevy Aveo delivered.
I'm not sure if this bill is the answer, but it's about time you guys fixed this issue over on your side of the pond. It's just plain stupid that some businesses collect sales tax, while other businesses don't.
All businesses should be paying the exact same tax, under the same laws. Anything else is extremely unfair.
There are states without _any_ sales tax. I would be surprised if they implemented this.
Since when is Roy Blunt not conservative?
Or do you just make things up to support your political agenda? Not surprising.
According to this article, the full list of senators who introduced the bill is: Enzi (R-WY), Durbin (D-IL), Alexander (R-TN), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Boozman (R-AR), Reed (D-RI), Blunt (R-MO), Whitehouse (D-RI), Corker (R-TN), and Pryor (R-AR). Six Republicans and four Democrats.
If the SCOTUS rules that the health insurance mandate is constitutional, this discussion is moot. In that case, it is difficult indeed to imagine anything which the Feds cannot regulate, mandate, or legislate. After all, EVERYTHING you do affects someone, somewhere, somehow; and therefore could be construed as "interstate commerce".
This isn't the same. That was the state issuing the law. This is the Federal government. The problem before has always been a state attempting to tax interstate commerce, something they don't have the authority to do. The Federal government however does.
I can see why a state can't do it, but can't Congress do just about anything they want with interstate commerce?
"Partisan Hack" is the part that makes him want to point.
Om, nomnomnom...
Just once in my life, I'd like to see our government do something that doesn't piss me off.
Although I'm only vaguely familiar with the so-called Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement, I've read enough about it to know that calling it "streamlined" is a major misnomer. The rules behind SSUTA are sufficiently complex as to require computer software to calculate taxes due on particular kinds of items purchased by residents of particular states. While I'm sure this wouldn't be a problem for major online retailers, smaller retailers would almost certainly need to outsource tax calculations to third party services. It's a ridiculous burden, especially compared to the much simpler sales tax model adopted by the European Union.
I'd rather get rid of sales tax altogether (novel idea: let's tax people in proportion to how much they make instead of how much they spend), but if we must have a Federal sales tax I'd rather it be a flat tax per state than the awful mess that is the model proposed by the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
wasn't there an email about this a year or ten ago?
rewriting history since 2109
Everyone knows that if you want less of something you tax it. Sales tax disincentivises purchases and costs our economy jobs.
If that argument works for capitol gains taxes it should work for sales taxes too right?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Good thing we're not talking about a state then you dumbfuck.
Congress didn't pass the law struck down in that case, that was an Illinois state law.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
What part of "Bipartisan Internet Sales Tax Bill Introduced" and "Four senators, including both Democrats and Republicans" makes you want to point at just conservatives
Because the D's are pro any-tax? I think GP was explaining the reason why it was bipartisan (whether correct or not is another matter).
offered by a seller who has no physical presence in the buyers state is a federal tax by any other name.
heres how its worked so far:
1. corrupt financial sector bankrupts millions of americans. staffed with conflicts of interest, the government sits politely on its hands
2. facing bankruptcy themselves, numerous banks receive loans, then lobby to have them forgiven by the american public. some pay them back, not many.
3. paid politicians acting on behalf of major corporations then insist government spending has spiralled out of control, after pissing away billions in lemon socialism to major multinationals like jp morgan chase
4. social programs are cut at all levels and public works projects are halted until we get our "debt" under control
5. george bush racks up another game of boggle with the missus in a crawford ranch livingroom
6. new taxes like this are designed to catch up with older tax policy and pay said 'debt', but fail miserably as theyre written by people who barely understand angry birds
7. repeat this cycle in approximately 40 years. 8. pretend everything from the lincoln savings and loan crisis to the tech bubble are just the result of cyclical market behavior and as such, completely normal. enjoy grinding poverty.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Let's assume for a moment that it is only fair that online retailers pay sales tax too. Put aside the fact that online sales of anything physical requires shipping. And shipping involves many other taxes, such as fuel taxes.
Now the problem that arises is not so much the tax in itself (that will just serve to raise consumer costs approx. 6%, but benefit state coffers). The real problem is in administration of that tax. Not only will it cost small retailers more to sell on the internet, it will be effectively IMPOSSIBLE to do it on one's own. It will simply be too burdensome to manage all the sales brackets and filings. So prices will rise even more cover the new administrative overhead. The inevitable result will be the erosion of small online retail companies and the loss of more high-tech jobs.
What's really sad about this, is that there is a simple solution to at least preventing the admin overhead cost.... have the shipping companies levy the tax. They are already fully equipped to levy charges per zip-code. There are only a handful of companies involved, and they are all large businesses. So the new overhead for them would be negligible.
:T:R:A:N:S:
Please Master! It isn't fair that I get whipped while your other slaves get out of their whippings! Please whip us all some more!
Seriously, if you are a brick/mortor, you have a number of disadvantages. Being the business that is supporting the local economy esp. when you have a competitor that can avoid the taxes.
I would rather see the US create a singular tax, from which the feds take a cut and then gives the rest to the state. The state then decides how to divy it up i.e. all state, part state, part local, etc. From a businesses POV, a simple 10% tax is easier to deal with then have to deal with all of the nightmare of figuring out what area gets what tax.
The real issue is that we now have to deal with remote tax. Seems to me that it should require a stamp. Once you have a stamp, you can send the item.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Retailer enters that customer A at X location spent Y. Then the customer is billed biannually or something like that by their state's department of revenue.
That would infinitely simplify things for retailers.
I think the public should vote for their salaries, benefits, retirement. Their salaries should be tied to the economy. Any law they pass for the country, MUST be followed by them also. As long as our "leaders" can vote what they want, it will continue. And why not? They have pretty much no fear of getting tossed out of office, even with a dismal approval rate.
Mod +5 insightful.
Maybe it's time we stood up to these asshole bullies and refuse to pay their taxes. It's time to revolt. Fuck the government.
Oh, we've seen this before . . . . . . . it's was called "voluntary" safety belt laws.
Slowly turn up the heat on the frog rather than toss it in the boiling pot.
Paying for some lard ass to taser everyone he sees
I would pay for this. Is it like some sort of new reality tv show? "Chubby d00dz taser random people", tonight on Fox.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
1. There is very little in the way of details as to how REPORTING is to be conducted by retailers, which is by far the most important part of this equation. If you've read over any of the SSUTA stuff, the implication is that you'll have to register AND file a return in every state in which you expect to make sales, as well as keep up with every rate/rule change.
2. SSUTA is meant to "streamline" sales tax code and bring in some uniformity. Sounds great, except when it comes to digital goods. The SSUTA only outlines three classifications of digital goods that count as tangible (and therefore taxable) property: audio works (ie. music), audiovisual (ie. video) works, and electronic books (err.. books). The problem here? The states get to decide how EVERYTHING ELSE digital gets treated -- that goes for software and all the other products and services you can get digitally these days. So, good luck figuring out if the service/product you're offering is taxable in Minnesota but not taxable in Washington, and I guess it's just too bad if the rules in Kentucky change on you and you're audited.
3. The only solution to make this unreasonable overhead go away? Use software/services provided by a "certified" third party tax service (also known as a toll booth). I believe there are like, 6 at the moment.
In short: If you're a small to medium sized business on the Internet, either bend over and prepare for an onslaught of tax reporting overhead, or pay up to one of the tax services that have been anointed.
PS: Yes, I'm well aware there's a $500k cap on remote sales, but there are MANY small businesses that cross that figure yearly.
You know, for a long time I have been telling people that is the very reason the right is so fucked up. I would think a true fiscal conservative wouldn't be so upset about the amount of money that is taxed, but that it is spent as efficiently as possible, getting the maximum bang for the buck, as it were. It seems to me that they are very confused about what they should be focusing on.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
As a foreigner living in the US, I'm curious as to whether these internet taxes are the similar or different to interstate mail order. That's been going on a lot longer. Can I make an Amazon competitor using snail-mail?
Why do we even like the idea of sales tax again?
It still seems silly to me, I don't see why we can't just have income tax. Of course, we can also tax some luxury items/things we want to deincentiveise, etc.
Sales tax ends up being a sort of flat income tax on most lower income people anyway, at least In states where it applies to food. It seems that it would make a lot more sense to only have the people that can afford to pay taxes pay them (that is, people that have income to spare).
As is, sales tax makes it that much harder to survive at the lower end in the US.
I remember back on Usenet, people would barter for Magic the Gathering cards before ebay came out.
Ebay came out, and it was useful even though it had big fees.
Paypal came out and things got easier, but there were more fees.
Then the government is now taxing your ebay sales
Add interstate tax, and you're looking at about 20-30% loss in value in goods bought and sold over the Internet.
So an idea would be for someone to make a bartering website. This way there would be no taxes or exorbitant fees.
God spoke to me
This isn't the same. That was the state issuing the law. This is the Federal government. The problem before has always been a state attempting to tax interstate commerce, something they don't have the authority to do. The Federal government however does.
But does the federal government have the authority to grant states the authority to tax interstate commerce?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Property tax increases have their growth rate capped by prop 13, they are not themselves capped.
When a property is sold, the value is assessed, and the tax rate set, so change in property ownership tends to raise the taxes on the property being sold, well in excess of the normal growth rate cap.
The failure in this scenario is that, as a corporate owner, like the Kaiser family, at the time prop 13 passed, they took all of their properties and incorporated a separate holding company for each one of them. When they want to sell the property, they instead sell the holding company, and the ownership on the property remains the same (the same holding company owns it), and therefore falls under the growth rate cap.
Thus individual property taxes go up, and commercial property taxes do not.
If you are buying a house in California, it's probably worth checking out zoning and corporate ownership over a period of several years compared to increases in the non-capped property assessment over the same period of time, and decide whether you will make more money off selling a property without a drastically increased property tax from a change of ownership, but with mortgage deductions, vs. selling a company which owns a property with a relatively low tax rate which will stay relatively low for the new owner of the corporation. You might be better off creating your own holding company, like the big players do.
My personal take on this would be to have prop 13 not apply to commercial properties, which was a very late amendment to the proposition in order to enable exactly this kind of corporate ownership loophole for commercial properties.
-- Terry
Any attempt to tax the internet is just going to result in markets getting shifted around such that interstate taxes are going to be replacing some amount of local taxes.
It's impossible to regulate alternative markets on the internet and this will have the effect of pushing more people into such informal markets as opposed to businesses in formal markets that pay taxes based on location instead of distribution.
Better idea: Raise taxes on business income beyond costs of supplies and living-wage (above poverty) labor, reduce or abolish sales taxes in exchange.
This puts physical and digital retailers on even ground while making things easier on consumers while businesses have nothing to lose and only less to gain from dodging taxes through intentionally taking a loss.
A sales tax on items ordered via the Internet? Fine, then. Time to go back to good ol' fashioned mail-order by catalog.
That Christmas tree tax you mentioned is WANTED by the majority of tree growers, and is 15 cents per tree. The tax money would be used to promote natural Christmas trees. Once it got framed by the media as a Christmas tree tax, the Obama administration canceled it.
What part of "Four senators, including both Democrats and Republicans" makes you think they aren't all conservatives?
People not paying use taxes
Why do you call state sales taxes "new"? They've been around a long time. Its only that recently people have started not paying them.
That's highly inaccurate. Many people live on the no-income-tax side of borders and drive over the border to shop in their no-sales-tax neighbors. For example, there is a huge economy based on this principle right at the Washington/Oregon border. The same principle applies to a lesser extent to differential sales tax near tax region borders.
Enforcement on collection of these taxes is pretty lax, and is generally down to the person doing it themselves, which doesn't happen unless you are pretty scrupulous (yes, I've paid use tax for big ticket items).
This seems to me to be an opportunity for the state to hire more people in order to collect use tax. If there is that much revenue out there to be collected, it's worth spending a fraction of it on creating jobs for people to act as collectors. If there's not that much revenue, a small amount of revenue siphoned off as an unfunded mandate on small businesses expected to act in loco as your tax collector is definitely NOT going to help the stumbling economy right itself.
In general, there are literally tens of thousands of different sales tax zones in the U.S., incorporating state, county, city, and special economic zone taxes and exemptions. The only people who think it's a good idea for a company to have to collect and remit taxes to all these varied authorities are the varied authorities themselves, and the people selling the databases of tax rates and remittance addresses and procedures.
Personally, if I had a company that was selling over the Internet, and a given state/county/municipality tried to enforce collections as an unfunded mandate on me, I'd simply stop selling in that region. My response to customer complaints would be that they live in a region which made it impossible for me to do business with them, and that they should perhaps move somewhere else.
Practically, even when such taxes are collected by brick-and-mortar stores, people in the zones who are making a big ticket purchase are willing to drive 15 minutes to another jurisdiction to save the city sales tax on their purchase. I know people who have flown across the country to buy cars, then driven back, with the rationale that the difference in the sales tax was enough to pay for their flight, a couple of nice nights out, and the gas and motels and restaurants for the trip back (plus they get to see the world's largest ball of twine or the Grand Canyon, or whatever Americana floats their boat).
-- Terry
So that explains why all the options players are betting on a big time eBay fail. Anything that disturbs eBay's revenue stream sends more sellers away from the site.
I think that I have just gained a reason to shop at home
Cross border shopping has been going down hill as it is (free trade / political BS)
Get your binoculars out again...
Over here in the US, we have these things called States. And each State has certain ways with which it can implement sales tax, including exempting it altogether depending on the good. If you think passing a online sales tax for every state is a good thing, I have ocean-front property in Arizona to sell you.
For your information, the US tax code is one of the most convoluted and fucked up systems on the planet! Possibly even the worst, though International trade law is it's own brand of absurdity and could be in the number one spot at the moment.
Everything you mentioned has not improved from raising taxes. The roads are not any better, I don't see any sewers being upgraded, the majority of the bridges in this state are barely holding their own weight. When schools raise taxes do the grades go up? Don't give me this bullshit argument. I bet half the politicians could die in their sleep tonight and it would still have zero impact on my every day life.
Giving money to politicians is like giving booze to an alcoholic.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I live in Oklahoma and we already have a tax on items bought over the internet in the form of a "use tax" that we figure into our state income taxes every year.
is regularly free for cheap items, yes even $1 items. Parcels received look like they passed through customs but I suspect these are local sellers (in Australia) who pay zero sales tax or GST and use offshore bank accounts. Stamping parcels with a customs stamp and using local couriers to deliver bypasses pretty much all traceability.
Both parties are conservative. I wouldn't call either liberal.
free market? a group of christmas tree companies lobbied for the "christmas tree tax"!
it would have been no different than the beef checkoff that goes to the Beef Board (a fee collection on beef producers and retailers to provide for industry marketing, put in place be the USDA so that it is quasi-law). Most ranchers I know or have known are pretty conservative. if you sell cattle into the meat factory system, you pay it, as it is lopped off your sale check.
goat-fucking anti-tax/conservative bullshit hypocrites!
It will create jobs
in other countries
This. And also, six and seven and eight figure salaries in corporations, yes, those same corporations who won't hire anyone, but are delighted to offshore production while at the same time offshoring income so they don't pay the amount of tax they were intended to, thus putting more of it (taxes) on the backs of the middle class.
But, hey, keep electing rich fucks to political positions, and keep wondering why the tax laws/loopholes favor the rich, while your household budget shrinks every year. It's a frigging mystery, isn't it?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What happened to the whole "No New Taxes" commandment? =\
The truth is somewhere in the middle.
It's too bad, they should have made it $15 per tree instead. Having natural trees instead of artificial ones (which you can reuse for years or decades) is wasteful.
Oh good fucking grief. The "Christmas Tree Tax" is 15 cents (on a $40-$60 purchase), that was being imposed by some advisory board, in order to fund the advertising of Christmas trees.
You don't bitch about the "Milk Tax" that goes into paying for those Got Milk commercials, do you? Because it's definitely in there, and you're paying for it.
This is great for foreign sites. You can keep your laws, they don't apply here, and all the 'sell stuff over the net' sites move away from where they have all these crazy taxes.
It should be taxed at the place of sale which is where the business is located. If I buy cheese from France I should pay french taxes.
Otherwise your going to get businesses like Amazon start an official proxy purchasing service for residents similar to the import/export business where you legally empower someone as your business proxy to do business in another location on your behalf as if you were the one doing business in that location.You can't prevent someone from traveling to another state or country and making purchases. Point of sale.
It would just be better if congress designated a national sales tax. If it crosses state lines then the feds collect. The fed can keep it or give it out to the states as it sees fit. More than likely keep it once they get a taste of it. Bad part of this is states with significantly higher sales tax will lose a bunch of revenue if the national sales tax is lower since everyone as much as possible is going to do business across states lines just for the tax break.
The simplest solution is if states abandoned sales taxes and just adjusted income taxes.
This goes out to both of you idiots:
How about the reason for this being:
- Tax-fuckin-breaks for the rich? (How fucked up is that, in itself??)
- Waging not one, not two, but *three* wars? (And a load of covert trickery.)
- Bailouts for companies that throw the money out of the window, but debts for regular people who do the same.
Ever single one of the above mentioned things ALONE could balance your whole fucking budget right there!
Add them up, and you could live like kings!
It boggles the mind how, again, there are only two sides in your country, acting like they are polar opposites, when in fact they are both on the same extreme side of insanity. How can you all be that ignorant? I know you're not *all* stupid. Come on, smart people in the USA! Man up, kick some asses, and rule this shit again!
Conservatives love a good sales tax because it is nice and regressive.
All taxes are regressive. Google 'embedded taxes' to move beyond the high-school economics concept of what 'regressive tax' means.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Taxes are necessary; but too many people are too selfish to be mature about this issue so we continue to have stupid things done and no solutions.
I've said it to years, including writing and talking to officials-- what we need is a SHIPPING TAX for all home shipping from out of state! If you have sales tax then you apply it to all packages being shipped to people based upon insured value - now obviously, there would be ways around this which would result in a higher minimum tax. For high price items the insurance disclosing the value will be worth the tax. Commercial shipping would be exempt (and you could get some people into serious trouble for using that as a loophole.) This is still a sales tax but it prevents out of state businesses undermining local ones and the collection issues because every delivery company must operate within the state! If there is a reasonable carbon tax then shipping will be taxed for its pollution anyhow-- at least this will not impact businesses like that will (although I'm for a carbon tax too and any form of pollution tax because bad externalized costs need to be eliminated so "the market" can work for us instead of against us. There is no incentive for doing the right thing as it is now lacking costs for outsourcing, pollution, etc.)
If you want to discuss sales tax as a revenue source, then I'd also be for its complete removal. Sales tax is unfair to all when on essentials like food and unfair to the POOR (who just need more help as it makes the poorer.) The complexities of it are a mess and businesses actually MAKE MONEY collecting sales taxes depending on which games they play. (here they get a deduction of some sort which if you removed would lower sales tax by a noticeable amount; plus collect interest on it while waiting to hand it over.) Actually, what we COULD REALLY USE is to replace sales tax with credit tax-- that is, kill sales tax but use all those computers that have been reporting sales tax on our bills to start reporting credit card taxes on our bills-- because the credit card companies bar businesses from itemizing their fees on the bills!! If you knew that 2.5% of your bill was going to VISA you may pay cash. People here get upset at a 0.5% sales tax hike... but know nothing of the private credit tax. Businesses can't give you a CASH price because that not only is a logistical issue but it ultimately tells the customer the VISA tax and that is a big no-no. So-- even when I pay CASH I'm paying extra to make up for the credit card users.
Exactly what came to my mind when I read his comment.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
Yes but the question is can the federal government pass on its powers to the state legislature to decide? Me thinks they need a constitutional amendment for this to work.
AccountKiller
in our government, especially in the public sector unions. There are more and more horror stories coming out how many retire from the public sector as DISABLED and using overtime tricks to upkick their retirement benefits to incredible values.
We have plenty of money coming in, the simple fact is we spend ONE AND HALF TRILLION DOLLARS A YEAR to pay TWENTY million government employees and their retirement benefits PER YEAR. This is all all levels of government.
Tell me we aren't Greece or Italy when one in seven people work for the government at some level.
There are two one percent groups here, those who do it on Wall Street and those doing it through public employee unions. Sorry, but my local police officer does not deserve a 100k a year RETIREMENT, neither did my teacher, let alone the politician who got it for himself and his union buddies
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
So if I own a business in the UK, and ship a product to an american, who is responsible for the sales tax?
Big online retailers have to tax people in several states as they often have physical spaces in several states. But small online retailers do not tend to have multi state addresses and have a tiny pricing advantage. That enables the small to compete on a slightly more level playing field with the large sellers. It would be a shame for that to be taken away from small sellers. Then we have the problem of product needing to be shipped too individual addresses which offsets the savings available by not having a brick and mortar sales outlet. Taxing online sales might tilt the table so badly that most internet sales are dead meat. Maybe we would all be better served if no internet sales are taxed. Keep in mind that international sales bring money into the US. Obstruction of sales by taxation costs us money and jobs as well.
For me, I don't really have a problem paying taxes on stuff I buy on the Internet. Sure, I'd rather not, but I understand that eventually it's probably going to happen. However, where I have the problem is who gets to collect. I mean, if I live in Michigan, a place that has a horrible infrastructure and does so little to create business (other than claim it does a lot while offering very little incentive for businesses), the State of Michigan should NOT benefit from something I ended up buying from a company in California that has the infrastructure to foster an actual business that was able to put the products online. If the State of California wants to charge me sales tax for something I buy from California, then the right entities actually benefit. Some fat cat bureaucrats in Detroit or Lansing shouldn't be benefiting from my tax dollars for doing absolutely nothing to foster business but voting a tax benefit for themselves. Sure, that money COULD help my state, but because my state doesn't do anything to foster business, it WON'T do anything to help my state but will probably end up with more 8 figure salaries for state and local government cronies who serve themselves at the behest of the state citizens.
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
What about the states that have no sales tax? If a business in one of those states (say one near California) catches fire, should that owner call the fire department in CA to request assistance (since that is where the money went to)? This type of tax would unfairly penalize sellers in these states of whom are taxed in other ways.
As to the comment that "Sales tax is applied to the consumer...", okay, if that is the case, then why are those states coming after out-of-state businesses and not their constituents that are not paying their tax? This is the basic principle and test that will fail the constitutionality test. One state can not force a person or business in another state to pay a tax. That would be like NJ trying to tax residents in NY for their prime seaside location.
Local brick and mortar stores already get my business far, far more often for one primary reason: convenience. OK, a second reason too: shipping costs often drive the cost of goods up to what an item would probably cost with a sales tax anyway. The time when it's really useful to buy an item online is when it's a generic item being sold without the massive markup certain things get in physical stores (cabling, I'm looking at you). Local small businesses have much more to fear from chain retailers than they do from the internet.
Sales tax is a particularly frustrating tax, as it's fairly regressive and I'd personally rather see property taxes and the like be the big way to raise money for local government. Unfortunately, my state is one of the states in which the voters shortsightedly decided to cap property taxes.
notice they never want to enact a tax that would force the rich to pay closer to their fair share of taxes? They subsidies big business, what is wrong with continuing to stimulate the economy with a subsidie for middle class and poor people.
simple as that.
"Sales and Use Tax Nexus
For a state to subject a vendor to sales and use tax (SUT) collection obligations, the vendor must have nexus with that state. Nexus is a connection between the vendor and state such that subjecting the vendor to the state's laws is neither unfair to the vendor nor likely to harm interstate commerce â" requirements stemming from the due process and commerce clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
In the 1992 Quill Corp. v. North Dakota decision (504 U.S. 298), the Court ruled that due process and commerce clause nexus requirements were not the same because they were âoeanimated by different constitutional concerns and policies.â Due process nexus requires âoeminimum contactsâ with the jurisdiction. The Court found no due process concern where a vendor not physically present in a state purposefully availed itself of the benefits of an economic market in the state, such as Quill did, by sending catalogs into the state.
The Court held that the commerce clause required âoesubstantial nexusâ as indicated by physical presence. The Court noted the existence of over 6,000 state and local jurisdictions in the U.S. that imposed SUT without consistent rules. Requiring non-present vendors to collect SUT could harm interstate commerce."
see: http://www.cpa2biz.com/Content/media/PRODUCER_CONTENT/Newsletters/Articles_2007/CorpTax/UseTax.jsp
I didn't realize that the Internet was owned by the United States or that they had any right to legislate on it.
How about some JOBS?
I believe the original poster's intent (which wasn't said, but i'm reading between the lines) was that Republicans "Hate" taxes, except when they are regressive. Of course, they really just hate spending... but that's another topic for another day.
Democrats "love" taxes too, but are at least realistic and understand that things need money to run, and that those with the most money have... well, have the most money.
Should come out of the one percenter's pockets.
If the item is domestic, perhaps the tax is not justified, but if product is from an import, taxes should apply.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
The thing that concerns me is what I've seen happening to Obama the last few years... He played the social network to ride the election, and promised many things he should have been able to deliver. Instead, it seems that the relentless political tides have worn him down, and I see him reneging on his core values. I wish it weren’t so, but it seems to me that the only way to fix the system is by replacing much more of our government with political leaders in touch with their constituents needs.
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