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Amazon To Collect Indiana Sales Tax In 2014
An anonymous reader writes with this quote from an Associated Press report:
"Amazon.com will begin collecting Indiana's 7 percent sales tax from customers in the state in 2014, under an agreement announced Monday. ... Gov. Mitch Daniels' office said Indiana will become the fourth state with such a tax collection agreement with Seattle-based Amazon. It follows a lawsuit by Indianapolis-based shopping mall owner Simon Property Group against the state over the issue and a lobbying push on state legislators by traditional retailers to end what they call an unfair price advantage for online retailers. The deal doesn’t include any other companies, but Daniels said the state is asking Congress to require all online businesses to collect state sales taxes."
Well good for them. I don't really see a problem with this.
Amazon are about to open a new distribution center near Richmond VA, and local retailers are a bit pissed that Amazon will not be collecting sales tax from VA residents.
Amazon purchases to remain free of Va. sales taxes
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The state I live in, Texas, doesn't just have a state sales tax, we've also got county and city sales taxes- and each city and county sets their own, within guidelines set by the state. This is going to be a nightmare for retailers to keep up with, especially the little guys.
Oh well. It couldn't last forever. Stock up while you can before the feds step in.
I actually agree it's an unfair advantage over brick and mortar stores but I'll still miss nontax purchasing anyway.
This, along with the other states that already got in on this, sets a really bad precedent. Taxing companies that don't exist in that state is really overstepping the bounds of the U.S. Constitution. Can each state start setting their own tariffs next?
The only beneficiary of this will be the state of Indiana. Amazon's prices are already (typically) lower than what I can get them for in a store and I don't have to put up with parking lots, shitty cashiers, nor someone trying to pressure me into getting the "extended warranty". I don't have to wander around the store trying to find it, and I don't have to deal with my items either not being carried by them or else out of stock. And now Amazon has the right to demand the same level of government services that the brick-and-mortar retailers are getting. So 3 years from now, when the anachronistic "main street" retailers finally figure out that sales tax wasn't the issue, it will likely be too late for them to do anything about it.
Retailers gripe about people using their shop for browsing, then buying on Amazon --- but nobody mentions the people (I'm one) who use Amazon for reading reviews, while they're shopping and buying in the retail store.
As far as the tax goes --- I don't buy it. Local taxes help pay for local services. The fireman will come if there's a fire in their shop. Amazon already pays taxes in the location where they do business, and the fireman will come if there's a fire in their warehouse. And UPS and other shippers pay taxes where they operate, too.
And Amazon has been collecting taxes from me for ages. What the hell were those taxes?
First off, none of us like paying taxes, including sales tax. This legislation in question won't do away with sales taxes, and the discussion here should not really be about the legality of sales taxes.
With that disclaimer out of the way, I agree with the business owners. If I can buy something on line and not pay sales tax so get the good cheaper, how is that fair to a local store that must charge the sales tax? Simply put, it's not fair at all. Taxes should be based on the consumer's location, not the outlet's location. We do the same with insurance premiums, some interest rates, etc..
The loophole for internet stores hurts smaller businesses. It favors large companies that can pack up and move to places with the lowest tax rates to attract consumers. Much the same way that interest rate premiums favor the state with the highest legal rates *caugh* Delaware *caugh*.
As long as taxes are legal, I am all for making them as fair as possible.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Amazon had a nice sell today on Kindle versions of several textbooks, and I noticed that I was charged my state's sales tax to download them (no Amazon datacenters are in my state). IMHO, Amazon should place the name/picture of the legislator responsible right next to that line item. Preferably holding money bags.
This is really overdue. Not only does sales tax exemption create an unfair advantage for out-of-state retailers (which is bad for the local and thus national economy), it depletes funding for civilization. And yes, Amazon does use public infrastructure to operate its business and no, shippers do not pay the Amazon's share of that infrastructure. Amazon uses all sorts of local services. Amazon operates as part of our civilization and thus should be contributing to its upkeep.
They tax your money when you earn it. They tax it when you spend it. And they continue taxing you so long as you keep what you spent it on.
Also, they tax you extra for living in specific regions and again for working in specific regions, sometimes.
The only to escape taxes is to be very rich.
Humans are awesome.
Expatriate ripoff. The kids are living in the US receiving your mail including online bargain sales, or vice versa. With periodic pickups from travellers either way, state use/sales are a form of extortion, ripping off out of state residents. The "commercial license" or "refund application" bs just doesn't work. Guess we should buy direct from China or India, skip the middle (tax)man.
What service does the state provide that justifies charging a sales tax rate to out-of-state-businesses comparable to those of in-state businesses? While there is some use--i.e. the roads--for the most part the out-of-state business requires fewer state resources, and the state is not justified in collecting that tax on the basis of the business presence. That being said, sales taxes are formally taxes on people, which makes them superior in certain ways to income taxes--because they're closer to taxing *consumption*. Thus the state taxes the consumption of things consumed within the state. The problem with this, of course, is that it isn't nearly so redistributive as the income tax; the advantage is that it actually taxes monies other than ordinary income.
Meh. I'm not going to think about this now.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Yes, we probably need to raise taxes, but what we really really really have to do is cut spending.
I disagree that spending cuts are the major priority; we could cut plenty of things plenty deeply, yes, but there's really no sustainable path on which we can continue to charge as little as we do in tax. It's basically impossible to charge the lowest rates in the developed world while simultaneously dominating the planet in military power AND science AND culture AND economic production, yet people seem to believe we can do just that if only we cut spending and lower taxes even further.
But so long as you admit taxes should go up, I can agree with looking at spending first. It's certainly responsible to use what you have more carefully before you ask for more. Just so long as you're not one of those dumb fucks who thinks cutting spending alone can fix the problem we'll get along fine....
I know that's inflammatory language, but seriously: who can be stupid enough to look at our federal budget and think we can even balance the deficit, much less pay off some debt, with spending cuts alone. It's a truly asinine notion, one which any fourth grade math assignment can easily refute, and yet it captivates (imprisons, at this point) a major political party.
My brain almost refuses to believe that anyone could be so ignorant, so selfish and deluded, as to think fully 30% of our federal budget is waste and inexcusable handouts, all of which can be slashed without any remorse or negative consequences at all.
And if you really want to have fun, look at the things Republicans want to cut out, and then look at the fraction of the budget they represent. The NIH, the NSF, foreign aid, the national endowment for the arts, public broadcasting money....all of that put together isn't even 0.5%, and yet they harp on each of those things, individually and extensively, like they're the pinnacle of waste and socialist excess.
God dammit, I'm gonna need some heart medication soon.
If you ask me, it's becoming more clear all the time that it's not as simple as the American public "getting what we voted for, or not voting at all" that's caused the mess we're in.
The system has always been heavily biased towards only the wealthy succeeding in a political career, but that's evolved from a perfectly acceptable reality (where wealthy folks who actually cared about the future of the country could dedicate some of their time and resources towards steering it in what they felt was the right direction) to a playground for the uber-rich. Today's leaders feel like they're above the law, entitled to any self-serving deals they're able to strike, and are part of an elite who only care about success for their own political cohorts and connections.
We're not really given realistic options to vote for, in most elections. It's very polarized, with candidates standing on the "right" or the "left" and pretending either of the two choices are the only sane/realistic ones a voter can make. All we get at the presidential level are lies and empty promises, about concepts as basic as caring about the "poor" or more recently, "the hard-working middle class". In reality, both sides only see the "poor" as a useful political tool and the "hard working middle class" as a group to sap resources from while it lasts. Heck, we've got numerous instances where a politician was a well-known Democrat yet he ran on a Republican ticket at some point, because nobody else was on the ticket for a given election. The political ideologies be dammed ... they're just treated as available slots.
The claim that our taxes aren't really that high for a developed nation is VERY questionable. When I see that claim thrown around most of the time, someone's trying to do an "apples to apples" comparison of percentages of income paid out in Federal income tax, or something along those lines. It's much more difficult to determine what the average American really pays, total, in taxes - because we've gotten so creative at taxing in little chunks, all over the place. Gasoline tax, sales tax, property tax, inheritance tax, retirement tax, import or export taxes, tax on profits earned from investments, govt. licenses of various sorts, and even traffic tickets all play a role. Additionally, some of these taxes are increased by an order of magnitude depending on the situation. EG. Sales tax suddenly jumps up in some parts of my community, if you buy from stores in special "tax corridors" where the local community voted to take in extra funds for some project or other.
I'm vigorously opposed to sales tax in general, and thus despise the idea of paying taxes on Amazon goods.
That said, I'm getting very tired of the several dozen comments per Amazon-related thread about how hard it is to manage the different tax zones, what a massive unfair burden it is for online retailers, how even attempting to comply would obliterate any seller smaller than Amazon or eBay in a blinding flash of red-tape, etc.
It's not that hard; not even at this moment is it anywhere near as difficult as you claim, but under any decently written law it would be a complete non-issue. The state could simply require the municipal party responsible for any layer of sales tax - mayors' offices, county commissioners, etc. - to enter their tax rules and proportions into a state database in a standard format. Then any moron could write code to parse that database, populate their sales system, and correctly tax a solid 95% of purchases with no further effort. In fact, it would be perfectly reasonable if the state required cities and counties to enter into my hypothetical database the correct tax jurisdictions for each and every property they contained. They already have to assess and charge those lands correctly for property and utility tax; it's just one more small step in a dance of surveying, assessment, and classification they already perform every year.
So there's no good reason sales taxation couldn't become easier, for physical and online stores alike, under a properly written e-commerce law. Come up with some real arguments, please. I may agree with you on the underlying point, that sales tax and complex taxes in general both suck, but it makes me nauseated seeing supporters of my ideals hiding en masse behind such a piss-poor construct.
The last version of quickbooks I have installed doesn't have the option to pay appropriate taxes for all government entities involved for a small scale E-merchant. I know my local bookkeeper can't handle that either. I imagine Quickbooks could start adding features for this but damn, sending checks to every city/state/town is gonna be annoying as hell. I know I have to pay my local township taxes in a check or money order and assume this will be the case for almost every entity. More expense, joy!
Then you get to the harder issues. Forget writing your own ecommerce site. Forget using open source e-commerce software. To keep track of this data, which could end up making a company liable for large fines, means you'll have to hire a company since you can't trust to be indemnified otherwise. This is actually a huge win for amazon, you're going to have to use amazon or ebay or other large companies just to keep your small businesses e-commerce operating. That could up the cost significantly.
It unfair to local businesses so we have two choices:
1) Tax Amazon sales .. ahhahhahahhhahahh! )
2) Lower/eliminate the Indiana tax ( hahahahahahahahahahaha! hoooo... shit thats funny
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
Agreed. I have resided in and worked long-term in many countries including the US, Australia, several Asian and European countries. I definitely paid less tax in the US than I ever did in any other country (on a similar income).
US income taxes are generally lower than other developed countries for most income brackets. This is especially true at the middle-high income level (the top US Federal income tax rate is 35%, compared to 50+% in most of Europe and 45% in Australia, and it kicks in at a higher income). The exception is low-income earners, who pay more in the US than in other countries (many countries have a 0% tax bracket for the first $x of income per year, but US income taxes kick in from the first dollar).
US sales taxes are lowish too, compared with, say, 15-20% VAT seen in much of Europe, or 10% GST in Australia etc. (As an aside, they are also ridiculously complex, varying from State to State, county to county and even city to city - seems like a massive administrative burden compared to the single, flat rate seen almost everywhere else. In fact in most other places, the sales tax/VAT/GST is included in the advertised cost of the item, so if it says $20 on the shelf, it's actually $20 when you get to the counter ... not $20 + 5.75% or whatever random percentage the state/county applies. That always drives me nuts when I'm in the US)
Sure, but the flip side of that is the people screaming "make the rich pay their fair share!!!" as if that will fix the entire problem. That's not going to be even close to enough.
That's quite true. Making only the rich pay more will not be enough; not by most persons' definition of 'rich', anyway.
What bothers me most about the 'rich paying more' debate, however, is the lying responses from the politicians and think-tanks paid to glorify the wealthy, justify flat-taxes, and vilify the bottom 2/3 as selfish profligates sucking at the socialist teat. You see bullshit statements like "even if we took the entire income of the top 1% every year we'd only solve 1/6 of the deficit" or "even if the marginal rate on the top quintile went up by 15% a that would only fix 1/2 of the deficit alone, much less the debt" or one Republican candidate's favorite "54% of Americans pay no tax at all.
First, the top 1% generally have assets far in excess of their yearly 'Income', or even their real income. It's almost outright lying to look at a guy with assets in the billions and say that taking all of his Income every year wouldn't help because his income is only in the tens of millions. Not to mention that tons of that money - for many of the 1% virtually all of it- stays permanently in investment vehicles or goes through enough (technically legal) money laundering to make a Mafioso blush. It's either never technically income despite being economic power, solely controlled by an individual, which is equal to the lifetime output of dozens or hundreds or thousands of people working at the median national salary, or it was hidden from taxation outright. Either rewrite the tax code literally from scratch, or punish their decades of shirking by taxing the extremely wealthy on their assets (even as a one-time event), and the top 1% could indeed put a huge frickin dent in our budget problems.
Second, quintile-based arguments conveniently ignore the fact that even the second quintile from the top bottoms out at $55,000. That's already an acceptable living in all but a handful of cities, and the numbers only go up from there. In most cities the top 40% can easily afford to pay another 1 or 5 or 10% in federal tax per year, to say nothing of what the top 20% and top 1% can afford. I am not saying it wouldn't hurt, but real taxes - the kind that can actually sustain a first-world nation with 350 million people, the world's best educational and scientific capabilities, and a military bigger than the entire planet put together ever had up until the first world war - might have to hurt a bit sometimes.
But the worst of all is probably the argument that the bottom x% pay nothing at all (those greedy little parastic fuckers!). The truth is, the bottom x% pay no final income tax, after their deductions and refunds are processed; when you ask non-partisan analysts and think-tanks who specialize in tax they'll tell you that even the very bottom 1% pay at least 15% of their income in various taxes on property, utilities, retail sales, where even the top 1% pay only 30-35% across all types of tax.
I just can't seem to feel bad that people with six, seven, eight, and fucking nine figure incomes pay twice as much tax as the dirt poor. Can you? A lot of people, from the filthy rich to the upper-middle-middle class who just wish they were, need to shut up and pay their damn share. Before hey find people with pitchforks at their doorsteps. I'm not some militant communist whacko, not in the least, but I'm also not kidding when I say that. Just because the standard of living is so high that only the destitute in America have any serious complaints to make versus any other nation or time in history doesn't mean people don't notice the looting and abuse going on. Just because they have TV and cell phones and generally have heat in the winter doesn't mean the bottom 40% are happy struggling to pay for their healthc
As a person in the "second quintile" you noted above (though at the very bottom of it) I can tell you that a 10% increase in tax rates would essentially obliterate any ability for me to save for my retirement. I am intelligent and frugal about my spending and live in an area with a pretty low cost of living (and in Indiana, in fact, so I now get to pay this tax. This annoys me, but I don't have any deep seeded issues with it, aside from being a naturally cheap, err, frugal, person).
I am in agreement that we need to review what happens with the most wealthy in this country, no doubt, but the very defining of wealthy is difficult. A high percentage of the people protesting AGAINST the wealthy have lived pretty easy lives in comparison to some of my friends.
It's a difficult game to play, and no one can agree on the rules, which is why I don't see how this is going to get resolved anytime soon.
Just another ignorant American.
I would argue that property taxes in many cases are too high when I can look at the waste that city governments have. Also you do realize that in the US we spend more per student than every other nation on education so I wouldn't say it is a lack of money. This is especially true when you look at charter schools. I don't know how they are in other states but in Minnesota they can't pick and choose students and made worse by the public schools. A favorite tactic by the regular public schools is to use them as a dumping ground for difficult students by suggesting to parents of difficult students that they enroll them at a charter school where they can get special attention. They also only get state and federal money, no local money, yet when run properly do show good results, Granted there are a number of them that are run very poorly which tarnishes their image and makes them more difficult to be accepted.
Time to offend someone
You seem to be confusing federal sales tax with state and locality taxes.
The US has no sales tax. At all.
Individual states and localities do.
Here in Indiana, the sales tax is 7% (except on food items), then in my county there's an additional 1% food-and-drink tax for restaurants. Thanks Colts!
The exception is low-income earners, who pay more in the US than in other countries (many countries have a 0% tax bracket for the first $x of income per year, but US income taxes kick in from the first dollar).
That's kind of disingenuous. Low-income people have lots of deductions and credits. When I was a poor broke college student earning $15,000 a year in a part-time job, I actually had negative tax liabilities, one year to the tune of about $350.
Not saying I'd rather be poor again, just saying, it's not as extreme as you make it out to be.