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Senators Vow To Renew Bid For State Taxes On Remote Internet Sales
jfruh writes "A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators are working hard to make it legal for U.S. states to collect sales tax on any sales made to their residents, even if the sellers live elsewhere. They tried to add an amendment making the change to an unrelated defense appropriations bill, but the attempt was defeated. They have vowed to try again."
We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Unrelated riders on politically hot button bills and earmarks on important budget issues are how the most heinous of legislation is often passed. Should be illegal, but it will never be.
Silence is a state of mime.
By forcing web sites to collect sales tax for all 50 states and the territories will create an accounting nightmare. The only companies that can afford to hire the people to do it would be the dominant players like Amazon. So, all the small start ups would be stifled right out of the gate. The end result will be a near monopoly and very few start ups bringing new ideas to market.
Having heard, with my own ears, Democrat Senators and Congressperson tell the whole country that they would never support a tax on the Internet, I am surprised that they would so quickly change their highly proclaimed position.
Of course, they promised me that I could retire with full Social Security benefits and have changed that also--now that they have raised the retirement age.
They promised that Medicare would provide for senior health-care needs and the Democrat President is set to take $1,116,000,000,000 out of Medicare.
I guess the cost of "Obama Phones" is more than expected.
Those who propose and vote for Internet taxes have lied to the USA citizens and taxpayers. They have lost their morality (assuming that they had any to begin with.).
Seems to me that the states shouldn't be trying to deal with the taxes on this, and instead congress should be doing it under the mantle of "Regulating Interstate Commerce". Pass a law that says all sellers must collect and report both federal and state income tax on sales as if the sale were occurring at the buyer's physical location, or the location to which the product is delivered. (Whichever is easier to make into an enforceable law).
Simple, clean, unambiguous, very few loopholes, and understandable to customers.
Allowing the states to collect a tax isn't the same thing as imposing a tax. Not quite. Besides it's either that or the states will have to raise income and property taxes.
If the states really wanted to collect all that sales tax, all they would have to do is enforce current law (requiring residents to pay the tax themselves) and increase the penalties for evasion. Random audits would reveal massive infraction - supposedly less than 1% of taxpayers in states requiring it report any internet or other purchases where the vendor did not charge tax. But they won't do this, they're too scared of the backlash from voters. In short, they want somebody else to do the dirty work for them.
Or they could just not spend without restraint in exchange for votes. I know, that's not an obvious solution nowadays.
I guess they could promise to cut taxes without restraint in exchange for votes instead....
We don't need another fucking tax.....we got plenty.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Why so? If the problem is on the spending side (which appears almost beyond reasonable doubt), then raising taxe rates does nothing to fix the problem, instead just impoverishing the nation and, if we're on the right side of the Laffer curve (also almost beyond reasonable doubt), actually reducing the revenue generated by taxation. So where is the problem with Norquist, exactly?
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
They want to raise taxes on the "rich" by 1.6 trillion over 10 years. That's about 180 billion a year.
The deficit is well over a trillion a year, but let's just say it's only $1 trillion. That leaves $820 billion left to make up with cuts.
This whole argument over taxing the rich is a waste of time and a distraction. I say let the raise it to where they want and then insist that Obama cuts $840 billion a year.
If he doesn't then, we are just rearranging the deck chairs on that well known ship.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The legislation in question requires states to create a simple sales tax compact. This means all the merchant needs to know is the state to ship to. They don't have to worry about city, county, special tax zones and all the other stuff that brick and mortar operations have to comply with.
Second, the legislation only applies to companies with large sales volumes online. It's not going to apply to some guy selling stuff on ebay.
Finally, I don't see the accounting nightmare. Most shopping carts are designed to accept a sales tax table. Run a couple reports, cut some checks. If you're big enough for this law to apply, you're big enough to have a staff accountant.
It's not 6% of his income, it's 6% of an amount based on his income, which is between $4-70 or 0.08% of gross income if you make more than 100k/year.
Details can be found on the actual tax form on page 3.
If you bought more stuff from out of state that cost less than $1000 each purchase than the number in the table says, yes, it actually is cheaper.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Allowing the states to collect a tax isn't the same thing as imposing a tax. Not quite. Besides it's either that or the states will have to raise income and property taxes.
Then they should raise income or property taxes. Sales tax is about the worst tax there is -- it's regressive, so it hurts poor people disproportionally, and it depresses retail sales and services. If states really want their businesses to compete with amazon, they should abolish sales tax so that purchasing locally becomes more attractive.