Congress Takes Up Online Sales Tax

head_dunce writes "A bill introduced Thursday by a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers seeks to make it easier for states to collect sales taxes stemming from online purchases. Amazon is among the e-retailers supporting the proposal, while a lobbying group representing eBay and Overstock.com stands opposed. From the article: '"Small businesses and states alike are suffering from the inability to collect due -- not new -- taxes from purchases made online," said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., adding the legislation is a "bipartisan, bicameral, common-sense solution that promotes states' rights and levels the playing field for our Main Street businesses."'"

Comments

Amazon's strategy

[crazyjj]

I've been noticing that Amazon has been spreading out physical presence in a lot of states in recent years, and in the process cutting deals with those states to suspend sales taxes specifically on them (though a few states wouldn't play ball). So it makes sense to me why they might actually support this. As a big employer in a lot of states, Amazon can continue to create and extend special deals to exempt themselves at the state level, while sticking competing online retailers who don't have so much local presence with a new tax burden. Plus, it also standardizes the now chaotic process a little more at the federal level.

Re:Capitalism

[Attila Dimedici]

A. It's called a cost of doing business. B. There's this stuff called "software" that is really good at tracking numbers automatically.

So, how much is it going to cost me to get that software? Who is going to update it every time one of those many municipalities changes their tax laws? How much will that cost me? Do you have a clue how complicated it is to keep track of the sales tax laws all throughout the U.S., with different municipalities charging sales tax on different things? Not everything is taxable in every municipality and what is taxable, or not taxable varies from location to location. In addition, How do I keep track of what tax jurisdiction a customer is in (hint, zip codes won't do the trick)?
Sure, you can say, "That's a cost of doing business," of course when you say that what you are saying is "I don't mind stacking the deck in favor of big business."

Re:Idiots gives suspended taxes

[Kelbear]

I support it...for businesses with high enough revenues. Small online shops are too small to bother with and the state tax calculations are too cumberson

States need tax revenues. Physical retail locations collect sales taxes, that provides tax revenues to the state. If online retail is able to bypass state taxes, that puts the retail locations at a disadvantage, and sales tax revenues drop for that state.

The State ends up with lower sales tax revenues, but they still need tax revenues. So they just end up raising my property taxes again, and physical retail continues to get screwed over. They're going to get their tax revenues one way or another because they have a budget to pay for, if high taxes are a problem we should fight them on their budget.

So in the meantime, we should just level the playing field with regards to collecting sales taxes. If physical retail should go out of business because it's inefficient, let it. But it shouldn't get pushed out of business by unfairly granting an advantage to online retailers. We're going to pay the same total amount of tax either way.