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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%.
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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
As has been said here before, if I, an Ohioan, buy something from Newegg.com in CA, my state of residence has no idea about it. They can't compel Newegg to collect tax on my behalf like they can Best Buy.
Ohio is not allowed to tax purchases I make across state lines per Article I, Section 10. They get around that by taxing the use of the item rather than the sale. So on my Ohio taxes, there's a line where I declare any purchases I made that were not subject to sales tax. They then tax me on the use of the item at the same tax rate as if I'd have bought it locally. It's all entirely voluntary. I can put down $0 and they'd never know the difference. It's tax evasion, but it's really hard for them to prove.
This bill "would allow states to collect sales taxes from remote sellers if they sign on to the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (SSUTA), a 12-year-old effort to meet the Supreme Court's requirements to simplify sales tax collection, or if they adopt a so-called alternative tax simplification plan." [quoted from the article]
So that's why we have the bill.
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.
Makes sense from that perspective, however the fact that the interstate commerce clause is used for so many things other than interstate commerce makes it seem like if they are going to use selective application of the constitution and selective enforcement of certain measures, we might as well just have another constitutional convention in which all of our current governing bodies get together and take turns defecating on the current document and then write a new constitution that says:
"Section 1.0: We make the rules. Nothing you can do. Voting changes nothing. Get back in line citizen."
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Sales taxes disincentivises consumption, something that our nation is has no shortage of. Capital gains taxes disincentivises savings and investment, something that should be encouraged.
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!
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!
Sales taxes disincentivises consumption, something that our nation is has no shortage of. Capital gains taxes disincentivises savings and investment, something that should be encouraged.
If your only goal is to improve your financial position, yes. However, keep in mind that the sole purpose of saving and investment is to enable future consumption of a net present value greater than the opportunity cost. There is a natural balance between present consumption and deferred consumption (saving), and targeting either with a tax to encourage the other results in misallocation of resources and consequently a loss of wealth.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
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
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.
You are insane if you think teachers are making $100k/year in retirement. My wife used to teach elementary school and was making ~$40k/year with a masters degree in education. If you take a look at the national teacher averages that's right in line:
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary
Ok,l lets look at police:
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Industry=Law_Enforcement/Salary
Wow. Lots of $100k salaries there.
'Cause teachers always get paid overtime when the schools are open on holidays... I won't argue that there isn't fraud and corruption, but if you're looking at teachers working in the classroom for it - you're looking at the wrong place.
+1 Disagree