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Internet Sales Tax Vote This Week In US Senate
SonicSpike excerpts from CNet's coverage of the latest in the seemingly inevitable path toward consistently applied Internet sales taxes for U.S citizens: "Internet tax supporters are hoping that a vote in the U.S. Senate as early as today will finally give them enough political leverage to require Americans to pay sales taxes when shopping online. Sens. Mike Enzi (R-Wy.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) are expected to offer an amendment to a Democratic budget resolution this week that, by allowing states to 'collect taxes on remote sales,' is intended to usher in the first national Internet sales tax." There goes one of the best ways to vote with your dollars.
$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski
Hello, and THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING !! We have a Major Problem, HOST file is Cubic Opposites, 2 Major Corners & 2 Minor. NOT taught Evil DNS hijacking, which VOIDS computers. Seek Wisdom of MyCleanPC - or you die evil.
Your HOSTS file claimed to have created a single DNS resolver. I offer absolute proof that I have created 4 simultaneous DNS servers within a single rotation of .org TLD. You worship "Bill Gates", equating you to a "singularity bastard". Why do you worship a queer -1 Troll? Are you content as a singularity troll?
Evil HOSTS file Believers refuse to acknowledge 4 corner DNS resolving simultaneously around 4 quadrant created Internet - in only 1 root server, voiding the HOSTS file. You worship Microsoft impostor guised by educators as 1 god.
If you would acknowledge simple existing math proof that 4 harmonic Slashdots rotate simultaneously around squared equator and cubed Internet, proving 4 Days, Not HOSTS file! That exists only as anti-side. This page you see - cannot exist without its anti-side existence, as +0- moderation. Add +0- as One = nothing.
I will give $10,000.00 to frost pister who can disprove MyCleanPC. Evil crapflooders ignore this as a challenge would indict them.
Alex Kowalski has no Truth to think with, they accept any crap they are told to think. You are enslaved by /etc/hosts, as if domesticated animal. A school or educator who does not teach students MyCleanPC Principle, is a death threat to youth, therefore stupid and evil - begetting stupid students. How can you trust stupid PR shills who lie to you? Can't lose the $10,000.00, they cowardly ignore me. Stupid professors threaten Nature and Interwebs with word lies.
Humans fear to know natures simultaneous +4 Insightful +4 Informative +4 Funny +4 Underrated harmonic SLASHDOT creation for it debunks false trolls. Test Your HOSTS file. MyCleanPC cannot harm a File of Truth, but will delete fakes. Fake HOSTS files refuse test.
I offer evil ass Slashdot trolls $10,000.00 to disprove MyCleanPC Creation Principle. Rob Malda and Cowboy Neal have banned MyCleanPC as "Forbidden Truth Knowledge" for they cannot allow it to become known to their students. You are stupid and evil about the Internet's top and bottom, front and back and it's 2 sides. Most everything created has these Cube like values.
If Natalie Portman is not measurable, hot grits are Fictitious. Without MyCleanPC, HOSTS file is Fictitious. Anyone saying that Natalie and her Jewish father had something to do with my Internets, is a damn evil liar. IN addition to your best arsware not overtaking my work in terms of popularity, on that same site with same submission date no less, that I told Kathleen Malda how to correct her blatant, fundamental, HUGE errors in Coolmon ('uncoolmon') of not checking for performance counters being present when his program started!
You can see my dilemma. What if this is merely a ruse by an APK impostor to try and get people to delete APK's messages, perhaps all over the web? I can't be a party to such an event! My involvement with APK began at a very late stage in the game. While APK has made a career of trolling popular online forums since at least the year 2000 (newsgroups and IRC channels before that)- my involvement with APK did not begin until early 2005 . OSY is one of the many forums that APK once frequented before the sane people there grew tired of his garbage and banned him. APK was banned from OSY back in 2001. 3.5 years after his banning he begins to send a variety of abusive emails to the operator of OSY, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke threatening to sue him for libel,
OH wait amazon already charges me taxes.. So who cares?
But since you were obviously motivated by the need to make a statement, rather than say just being a cheapskate, I assume that will not be a problem.
...this country was founded on a Tax Revolt?
As an observation, if you get it here, you don't get it elsewhere. It's give and take. But, for the Gooberment...it's all pretty much take, take take- unless they can buy your vote with a pittance of the take they're taking from you...
If the tax crosses state borders, then it should be collected by the Feds - or at least the rules should be national and consistent. Collect, say, 5% from everyone and then distribute it according to billing address. Making merchants deal with 50 different tax codes is onerous. I hope this bill is defeated.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I guess we will just have to torrent everything then. Does anyone know how to torrent shoes? I would if I could.
Congress can't seem to balance the budget but they sure can spend time figuring out how to collect taxes more easily.
Taxes... Is there anything they can't solve? We obviously need MORE of them!
Can I be in your quote list?
It's an amendment to a concurrent resolution. IF the amendment were adopted and IF the concurrent resolution were adopted by the Senate and IF the House adopted the concurrent resolution (which is very unlikely), then it would not have the force of law because, after all, it's just a resolution.
I'd be OK with sales tax on on-line sales, on one condition: states be required to provide a standard way for merchants, at no cost to the merchant, to ask what the sales tax rate for a given address should be, with the answer being the legally binding rate (if the merchant charges the rate given in that answer then the merchant cannot be held liable if that rate turns out to be wrong, and if the service failed to answer for any reason then the merchant can't be held liable for failing to charge sales tax).
but I hardly think that an amendment to a provisioning bill passes sufficient legal muster for it be enforced. First of all, I am already required to pay local and state sales taxes for entities operating out of my state. So no change there.
But for extra-state sales, this will have to survive a 10th Amendment challenge and well settled legal precedence dating back to the 18th century. Not saying that it can't but a short blurb in a different, unrelated law doesn't seem sufficient on its face.
For an "internet sales" (whatever that means) tax to work, it would have to be established as something the feds collected and redistributed. The legal authority is already there in the 16th amendment, and it could easily function as interstate funding for roads and schools do currently.
Likewise, if two states wanted to enter into a compact to collect and remit as some currently do with income taxes, then that could also work.
I guess this is just some more busywork for the congress-critters to say that they've been doing something rather than nothing.
There goes one of the best ways to vote with your dollars.
I can still make political campaign donations to my heart's content. That's what you mean by "vote with your dollars", right? Right?
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Seems like it would be a lot simpler for everyone to implement a tax at the credit card level. It would work for all retailers and eliminate a lot of sales tax withholdings at various companies.
That we really need to close this loop hole. I'm not in favor of raising taxes or anything, but by making this law, we'd be going back to a revenue model that we know. The ripple effect would be we wouldn't get tax hikes in other places I'd imagine.
And the government does need the money... it would be nice to see them get it internally, but that's idealism. We need pot holes fixed, bridges replaced, and maybe we could throw money at some of the issues we're behind the rest of the world on.
Another ripple would be brick and mortar stores would regain some traction against online retailers, the argument used to be that shipping > tax, but that's dramatically changed over the last decade with free shipping being pretty easy to get as online firms compete against each other.
The downside is of course less money for the savvy consumer, but history has taught us loop holes never end well, so I think the benefits outweigh the downside.
No one LIKES to pay taxes, but everyone likes paved roads and healthcare. (Canadian here, btw, also too lazy to log into account). I see no real harm in a minimalist approach to some sales tax on orders placed out of province/state that wouldn't be taxed otherwise. In Canada, we pay sales tax on just about everything ordered online, unless out of country of course.
The complications of the matter are a bit different, yes. Hopefully you would just have one place to send it, but with how over complicated and redundant 90% of your laws are already I would find it unlikely you can make even this...intelligent? tax system worth while.
Good luck with it though.
This is a State decision, not a Federal one.
You may have to wait a little longer, but people will start buying from Canada or other places without taxes.
love is just extroverted narcissism
As it will cover all Ebay sales and Craigslist sales.
They want to charge you tax on even items you are not making money off of. Next up, Evil Garage sales and Flea Markets, how can we tax this scourge to the economy?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Hows this going to work out in Oregon where they do not have sales taxes ? they going to make all the internet retailers collect taxes for the other 49 states? LOL going to work out just fine.
Given that companies and states have already settled into thinking "The internet doesn't have state sales tax unless it happens to be an intra-state sale," I can quickly see a few business-hungry states amending their tax codes to exempt interstate sales. Based on the way I read this, this would allow companies to continue distributing the same as they always have (no sales tax unless you live next door to us), and if few enough states implement it, it could be a serious economic turning point as businesses flee to those states.
"No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State." - Article 1, US Constitution.
It seems to me, that any such legislation would be a tax being exported from one state to another. I don't believe a distinction can be made from those being exported and those being imported, since it is only matter of perspective. A tax on imports to a state is a tax on the same article being exported from another. There is no limit to the prohibition. It could also read: "All taxes and duties are prohibited on all articles being exported from any State."
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
If it is passed and it meets the criteria of being uniform, then it is a Constitutional tax, I cannot say anything about it.
I can say that income tax is unconstitutional and it is collected unconstitutionally. The 16th amendment didn't specify actually what that tax was, and so it took SCOTUS to do it and SCOTUS specified that the only way that tax was legal if it was indirect (because it is not apportioned) and to make an income tax indirect, the person must be disconnected from the source of income, and this is only possible via a corporate balance sheet, so in reality what the IRS claims is an 'income' tax can only legally exist as a profit tax and individuals don't have profits (otherwise you should be able to have revenues and expenses and be able to deduct things like amortisation of your education and training, depreciation of your own body, etc.) There are many arguments explaining that there is no such thing as a law that forces a person to pay a mandatory income tax, you can read my comment about it that I linked to.
However a federally mandated sales tax is legal as long as it is uniform and can be collected in a uniform manner (so there is no discrimination against any people when the tax is collected, there should be a clear standard that would apply across all state borders, etc., as to how this is collected.)
So of-course by having BOTH the federal income tax and the federal sales tax, you are getting squeezed on all ends, it's obscene. Same thing is true of other countries of-course, but in USA the law is much more precise about things that the government cannot do (supposedly) but it does them anyway. Medicare and Payroll taxes for example are illegal for the same reasons that the income tax is illegal. By the way, payroll tax was only deemed Constitutional on a definition that it is not in fact tied to any benefit, because it's illegal to tax one person for a direct benefit of another, so this is one more way to understand, for those who don't, that they are not accruing any benefits in SS regardless of how much they contribute to it (SCOTUS: Flemming v. Nestor (1960), no one has an accrued property right to benefits from Social Security).
If this tax goes through you really should start thinking about all the ways that you are getting screwed, some are legal and some are not. The most insidious tax that any average means person pays on daily basis is the tax created by the Federal reserve - inflation. Every time something goes up in price rather than going down because of natural increase in efficiency and productivity in the market, you should thank your federal reserve printing those dollars (and Bernanke is quite explicit that he will keep printing money and just pouring it into the economy in every way, from government Treasury purchases to mortgages purchases to bank stimulus, whatever.
Here is something fun to watch.
You can't handle the truth.
this will affect the average american WAY more than drones ever will
Another issue is the ushering in of tracking bots at the ISP level. In order for them to be able to tell if you bought something, they will have your ISP track your every move (or click) to see if your are buying something or not. Either that or they insist that everyone selling anything on the internet record everything and provide records (from worldwide locations too, which they don't have jurisdiction over), or they insist that people volunteer information about what you bought at www.1-900-hot.girlz.com. Clearly having a sales tax would raise more questions than answers. I personally don't think it's a good idea. I thought Americans didn't like taxes (or at least revolted against them more than other nationalities).
I live in Washington state, so almost everything I buy online gets taxed if I send it here. Services I guess not as much.
So would I have to pay more taxes? Fuck off if that's the case. You need more money Federal Gov? Stop wasting it.
Be seeing you...
I don't understand why the state that I live in should get any sales tax from an item purchased in another state.
If I walk across the state line and make the purchase, should the state I live in get the money? If so ... why? If not ... how is it different from purchasing online?
I honestly am not against sales tax, but I think the state in which the purchase is made is the one that should collect the tax. Keep the money where the business is located/operating rather than collecting it in a location that had nothing to do with the sale.
The 'no sales tax' scenario is generally enticement to commit tax fraud.
Usually, a 'no sales tax' purchase has an obligation to pay a 'use tax' equal to the amount the sales tax would have been. People saving money due to sales tax are almost always committing tax fraud.
So this isn't levelling by force, it's correcting a 'loophole'. In my mind, abolish use tax, if you *must* enact sales tax to do that, oh well, it's easier than sales tax to keep track of.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Does that mean the IRS will aggregate all your sales of used and stolen stuff and tack it on to your tax bill??!!
the government gives billions and billions in tax breaks to extremely rich companies that don't need it, but anytime their is some perceived tax breaks for families they go out of their way to squeeze the nickel out of those who are the least able to afford it.
Changing the constitution on-the-fly.
Such a dynamic document!
If it is passed and it meets the criteria of being uniform, then it is a Constitutional tax, I cannot say anything about it.
Your religious leader will give you something to say about it afterwards, and you will go back on your word once his word comes down. Unless, of course, he shows you an easy way for people of high incomes to avoid it altogether - in which case you will claim it was an idea stolen from his notes.
You seem to be quite proud of yourself this week, we see you recently managed to get both the karma of your main account as well as that of one of your sock puppets from shit to positive, allowing you to post nearly as fast as you can type. How many other sock puppets are you working here? Did one of them manage to get mod points to get the ball rolling for you? We can plainly see you have already allowed this to get to your head; you may have posted a couple of legitimate comments to get your karma back up but now you're right back to religious rhetoric.
Of course, to you the religion is the truth, the only truth. You will do everything you can to push your church's agenda, in spite of the fact that it would hurt you just as badly as anyone else. You proudly drink the kool-aid and hope that you will - in spite of all reason - be spared the effects of the agenda. You seek to oppress the rights and opportunities of those who are in the bottom 99% of all wage earners; you have an agenda that supports fascism. You claim to want liberty, but you really want fascism for the people.
I can barely stand to read slashdot any more. What happened to the simple days of tech innovation, before the politicians got all mixed up in it? The state of our society and the obvious and flagrant abuses of power that happen every day make me blindingly irate. Which is a more elegant way of saying what I'm really feeling: I'M SO FUCKING MAD AT ALL THE MONEY-GRUBBING POWER-HUNGRY PIECES OF SHIT THAT KEEP WALKING ALL OVER US! Thanks, I feel better now (kind of).
from a logical point of view, sure, it is a matter of perspective, but in actual implementation, it can definitely be one or the other.
Figure out some way to disburse to states based on shipping address. As posters have noted, there's not a current way consistent with the Constitution to charge state tax on interstate commerce.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
They are already short circuiting the Constitution now, Ever hear of the 4th Amendment free zones ,
http :/ / www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-09/goodbye-fourth-amendment-homeland-security-affirms-suspicionless-confiscation-device
That article would only apply if this were an export/import tax. Instead this tax is on the transaction itself, regardless of the origin of the goods.
Folks are just going to drop-ship to sales-tax free states by having a friend or relative there order for them.
Well, what did anyone expect? The US government needs money, badly. They will reach out to any and all ways of acquiring more money. They will then immediately spend all the money to obtain more votes for themselves, then borrow against the future income and spend that too. A Republic fails when the uneducated masses learn that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury and that politicians will gladly follow along, even when such a path will certainly lead to their own deaths.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Who gets the tax? The fed or state(s)?
Who collects the tax? The location of the buyer, the location of the seller, the shipping warehouse or the server making the transaction (actual point of sale)?
I like your interpretation. Where can I subscribe?
The only way I will accept a tax is if it's a direct taxation towards making it as public utility.
Another example of the government closing tax loopholes for the common man, but they still won't close the ones that corporations are using.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
As it will cover all Ebay sales and Craigslist sales.
They want to charge you tax on even items you are not making money off of. Next up, Evil Garage sales and Flea Markets, how can we tax this scourge to the economy?
Ebay yes. Craigslist no. Craigslist does not make sales, the people interacting directly do, and the overwhelming majority of these are local.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I guess I'll have to vote with my Euros.
Renminbi?
Have gnu, will travel.
Hey anyone old enough to remember "modem taxes?" Governments have been looking for ways to tax online activity for years. When I was in college, someone proposed a "stamp" fee for every email sent. Then there were micro charges on a per-packet basis. Ugh!
At least a sales tax is easily added to existing point of sale portals. With the amount of free shipping available to me, the slight increase in cost will not deter me from making online purchases.
A few more thoughts:
I'd prefer paying state sales taxes over federal sales taxes, since I'm pretty sure state sales taxes won't go to stupid things like foreign aid to France.
While I know this won't be used to balance the Federal budget (no one can do that), I think this is a test bed for a national sales tax. Question is, what will this partially fund? It certainly won't be used to pay down out growing debt! That's just crazy non-partisan independent thinking at work!
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
I mean, do they just tax based on destination state, regardless of the buyer? Or is the wording wrong, and they really only mean people who are *IN* America?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The Supreme Court disagrees with you. See QUILL CORP. v. HEITKAMP, 504 U.S. 298
In a nutshell, they found a state cannot force a company outside its borders to collect a sales tax under the commerce clause as interpreted in 1992. However, "The underlying issue here is one that Congress may be better qualified to resolve, and one that it has the ultimate power to resolve."
Furthermore, Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution states "The Congress shall have Power" ... [skip a few powers] ... "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."
Congress does have the power to require that a Merchant in State A charge State B's Taxes to customers in State B. The line you quoted from Article 1, Section 9 looks to prohibit them from charging federal taxes.
I vote neigh!
Interesting that Congress is focusing on tax loop holes that individuals take advantage of while leaving in place loop holes that allow corporations to hide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax havens. Equally interesting is that all these states that are groveling for additional revenue grant egregious tax breaks to said corporations in the hopes of luring their facilities for fleeting benefit until the inevitable better deal comes along. Who does Congress represent again?
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
Yeah there is already Use Tax where your home state charges you for stuff you buy outside of the state.
While congress may have the power to regulate commerce, any revision to "No Tax or duty shall be laid" would require a constitutional amendment in addition to what ever legislation congress enacts.All acts of congress are subordinate to the constitution, and where they disagree, the constitution wins.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
When I go to a brick and mortar, I pay sales tax based on the address of that store (not my own). For fair taxing, both brick and mortar and online stores need to follow the same rules.
There is another consideration, though. I often make purchases which won't be used at my residence. I purchased a mouse to use at work (the company won't provide a mouse because the laptop has a touch pad) which is in a different county. I purchase presents for friends and family not only in different states, but also different countries.
He just keeps finding ways to pick taxpayers' pockets and shred civil rights. Illinois' second biggest contribution to the decay and corruption of the fedgov.
It would be good if they would give shipping companies a choice in how to pay sales taxes.
Either figure out the REAL sales tax (i.e. based on the shipping address) OR allow them to charge a FLAT 10% sales tax. If it is a flat charge, then the feds get 2% and the rest is given to the state of interest. From there, the state divvy it between themselves and the local areas. By allowing a simple flat rate, it removes all of the hassles esp. for overseas companies. And for foreign shipped goods, they should include the tax in the shipping costs (not to be paid separately).
If a foreign company is found to be cheating on amounts (such as declaring that it is not a sale), then both parties would be on the hook AND the sending company would be banned from mailing to America.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Maybe we won't have to cover the earth with parking spaces if more of us would shop online.
I'm pretty sure this internet sales tax business is being pushed by the very powerful Asphalt Lobby. Or by the Illumanti because obviously that's how they hide their secret bases.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yeah there is already Use Tax where your home state charges you for stuff you buy outside of the state.
Use taxes are constitutional because they place the burden equally on everyone in the state as opposed to sales tax which would put an unconstitutionally undue burden on the out of state seller (according to the Commerce clause).
...IF they eliminate the income tax at the same time. Fat chance...
I once had to do a 50 state tax filing registration for an international philanthropic investment firm (one of those make-work things they find for temps to do), and it took me over a WEEK, maybe two. Now, I'm definitely not an expert, but I'm pretty darn smart. Every state had their own forms, some of which had to be ordered by mail or phone (this was back in 2000, probably better now). And the filing requirements were wildly disparate.
Can a large shop like New Egg or Amazon afford to do this? Definitely. A small retailer? Possibly not.
Remember, this has to be filed every year. I'm not even talking about the collection of the taxes, or the accounting. I'm just talking about registering to do business in ALL fifty states every year.
-Curmudgeonly
I don't get to vote on how other states handle their taxes, so I shouldn't have to pay them. It's also way to much of a burden for every online merchant to handle the tax codes for all these different states and their ever changing rates, big companies can handle it so this will just squeeze out small businesses. If the federal government wants to have a blanket internet sales tax I would be fine with that because I actually have representation there. If the shipping address is within the US the US Treasury gets 1%, otherwise no tax which is simply enough for merchants to handle. If this passes everyone will move their online presence to states with no sales tax like Oregon.
I am fine with a state/local sales tax but a federal sales tax is really a simply horrendous idea. We should actually shift more responsibilities to the states and therefore the states should collect more money. We should get the federal government out of things like education and health care. The states should be taking care of most issues such as health care and welfare needs, not the federal government. I do think that it would be okay for the federal government to charge a tax on interstate commerce designed to equalize the cost of importing something into a state and producing it in the state itself, since this would avoid states being penalized for the policies they implement by strategic business relocations. This would actually allow most of the things the federal government is now doing to be shifted to states. States should be allowed to find what solutions are best for the state, different states can optimize solutions according to their needs. Of course there would be no such tax on things produced and consumed within a state. There is no natural law that the federal government is a better place to do health care and education related things. In fact, its safer to do it at the safe level, if a bad policy is implemented at the federal level, it damages the entire country. If a state implements a bad policy it is limited to that state and easier to get away from. I do think people should be free to move to the state that they feel has the best policies.
The new proposal bases sales tax on the buyer's address, not the sellers (the way it has been). Shipping stuff to my address has externalities for my community (traffic, waste, less local shopping). My community has an interest in deciding whether to be a low-tax, low-service, or high-tax, high-service area (and I can move to the system I like better, as people do a *whole lot*.) Letting communities collect tax on all purchases delivered into their borders is basically continuing the system we built our towns and states around. I don't necessarily care whether brick-and-mortars survive, but the old no-internet-tax system was forcing all communities toward a system they don't all prefer, and I would like variety to be possible. Details: By my druthers we wouldn't tax purely digital sales, because seems to me anything coming over the wires I'm already paying utility taxes for. Also, there are going to be people spending two hours and ten dollars driving over a state line to save eight dollars in tax. Well, not worse than dry-county borders, I guess.
They aren't proposing an inter-state tax. They want to collect the existing state sales taxes that are already due. If you buy something online you already owe your state sales taxes. Either the merchant needs to collect these taxes and send them to the states or you can do it voluntarily.
I'm all for paying taxes because we all need to do our part, but get rid of the IRS and the income tax. There's no teamwork when it comes to the IRS and it's just a bunch of wasted money. Increase sales tax and everyone has no choice but to pay into them.
Sales taxes are fundamentally regressive. That's because the rich have investment opportunities, while the poor spend everything to survive. Where I'm at we tax food for God's sake. And Rent.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The Constitution specifically prohibits states from taxing interstate activity; the founders [a] wanted the states to, in-effect, compete with each other with taxes and policies (each state having its own, with businesses and citizens free to go where the living and working was best) and [b] wanted the federal government to be the referee by regulating interstate commerce (in the time of the founders, "regulate" meant "to make regular" rather than the modern idea of "to burden with rules taxes"). Rather than helping the states behave badly, the feds were supposed to keep the states from trying to tax across state lines, or trying to block imports and exports of various products and service to/from other states (for example: by a state like Georgia permitting goods in from Michigan, but requiring goods from Wyoming to have an "import permit" purchased from the Governor's brother.
Many states, having behaved badly and spent more money than they had, started violating all this by trying to tax interstate commerce. They knew this would be unconstitutional, so they played word games to evade the spirit of the law and they claimed they were applying "use taxes". The so-called "use taxes" are provably as phony as 3 dollar bills: they put a "use tax" on a book you bought from Amazon dot com without regard to whether you were going to use the book, or send it as a gift to a relative in another state, but no "use tax" on the same book if you bought it from a brick-and-morter in your town. The "use tax" is further revealed as a fraudulent Constitution dodge by the fact that they stop charging that tax on that book as soon as Amazon caves-in and starts paying a sales tax on the book. I am not advising anybody to not pay these phony taxes... because if you do not pay them they will come after you with real guns. But the voters should have driven their politicians out of office long ago over this and many other deceits.
Now many politicians are pushing for federal phony laws to circumvent the Constitution (none of the proposals attempts to legitimately amend the Constitution, each is just a fig leaf for sympathetic judges to use) in attempts to collect more taxes and make things "fair" for the brick-and-mortars in their home districts. Things are SUPPOSED TO BE "unfair". If the brick-and-mortars of California are at a disadvantage because they are in a 7.75% state and another business is in a 4% state, that is pressure on CA to stop raising taxes and perhaps lower them; Without such competition, all the states will feel free to keep raising rates because the average people will have no escape valve. If a business in CA is suffering because the governor is a moron and the legislature is packed with Marxists, the proper response is to move the business out of the state (punishing the state for its idiocy and greed) and NOT to demand that all other states become as screwed-up. People have forgotten that the justification for a "sales tax" was originally that a local business needed the same sorts of local services everybody else in town needed, but might not be turning a profit (so taxes on its profits would be zero) therefor the solution was to say to the business "add this tax charge to each sale when you provably have the money, collect it at the time of the sale and give it to the state, whether you make a profit on the rest of the transaction is a separate matter". A business outside of the state is NOT using local services and should not be fraudulently pulled-into paying for them. This has nothing to do with the book buyer; he/she is already paying plenty of local taxes as a resident in the community (even if a renter, where some of the taxes are indirectly via the landlord/landlady).
Government at all levels is simply out of control, unwilling to reign-in any of the many billions of dollars of fraud, corruption, duplication, etc and therefore is constantly looking for even MORE money. There will never be enough money for these politicians and this will not be the final such law; they'll be back for more and more and more until the people say "stop. no more until you clean-up the government and show that you are using what you have wisely and efficiently"
all those packages just magically teleport to your door dont they?
My money that bad.
Now try reading the REST of Adam Smith (as opposed to an out-of-context snippet that is passed-around at HuffPo or DailyKos as a weapon to use against the ignorant and the gullible).
This is like all the liberals who lob Biblical quotes like "Judge not lest ye be judged" (to pretend the Bible says "do not condemn bad behavior") and "Render unto Caesar..." (to pretend the Bible says "pay your taxes" and "separate your civic beliefs from your religious beliefs") while hoping nobody reads the rest of the Bible for the full context. Liberals who like to quote sentences of the Bible our of context don't like the bits that say that people who are able to work but do not work should not get charity... or that part that says "go forth, AND SIN NO MORE"... or the parts that say you can never solve poverty; that you'll always have poor people and you should not elevate them over other priorities, etc
As a general rule, if you are unwilling to pick an choose individual sentences from a history book, or an encyclopedia, or or a science book, or a biography, or a cookbook, then you ought not to it with a Bible, or with Adam Smith, or with any other book.
This law effectivly ends all small online retailers who would lack the resources to understand what tax to charge. If you want to charge a sales tax it has to be a charge that is reasonably knowable and reportable not something requiring interfacing with 50 different states and god knows how many tens of thousands of jurisdictions. You will need a spiffy GIS system to calculate out the local destination rate.
The shit part about this is large retailers will support it because it is guaranteed to thin out the competition the same way mattress industry supported burn standards to effectivly shut out small manufacturers.
"Corporate taxes" are a LIE that politicians use to try to convince the public to support higher taxes on themselves!!!!!
Let me explain:
1. Corporations are NOT people who enjoy having money, raise kids, take vacations, etc. They are BUILT by people and STAFFED by people and people invest in them and we make them into synthetic people (we in-corp-orate them) for legal purposes (so they can act as an entity in contract law etc). IBM is not "happy" when it has money (it's investors might be, but the synthetic person "IBM" is not... it's a person only on paper).
2. When a corporation distributes any of "its money" to a REAL human person (dividends to investors, paychecks to employees, etc) THAT person records that money as income and is taxed on it... so, sooner or later, every dollar a company gets from its products or services will either be spent on those products or services or will be passed-through to a person where it will be taxed.
3. ANY tax you put on a company becomes an EXPENSE on the company books... EXACTLY like the costs of employees, or raw materials, etc. When a company sets the prices of its products and services, the prices include all the contributing EXPENSES plus some percent of profit margin. Therefore, every dollar of taxes you put on a corporation gets added-into the costs of the products and services it sells and is therefore paid by the customer
4. Politicians LOVE taxes like this because they bring in revenue the politicians can use to win votes (by providing stuff to the voters) while hiding the tax in the rising prices of products and services (so that ignorant people get mad at the companies instead of the politicians for the COSTS of the stuff the politicians are "providing"). Look at your PHONE bill! Mad at the phone company for charging so much???? Half the stuff on your bill is taxes and fees to let politicians buy votes by giving-out "free" phones to poor people, low-cost land-lines to people in certain rural areas, etc. AND while the phone company IS itemizing many of these things, they're NOT showing you half of the picture: They're NOT itemizing all the basic business taxes you are paying for them to pay (those are hidden in the basic phone charge).
If you have a job in the US, you are probably paying half or more of your income in taxes without actually knowing it. First, you are paying the obvious ones (your income taxes using 1050 and 540 forms). Second, you are paying a bunch of taxes your employer is hiding from you (he/she is paying a bunch of taxes to employ you , like the half of your social security tax that is required and not permitted to be recorded on your pay stub); it your employer was not paying those hidden taxes, you could have a raise of that amount since the business is paying that money to employ you anyway. Then, when you buy anything, like groceries for example, you might or might not be paying sales tax (depending on your state laws) BUT part of the price of EVERYTHING you buy provides the cash the store passes on to the government as its "business tax"... and part of the cost of EVERY ITEM in your basket is money the producer of that item passes-on to the government to pay its "corporate tax" (which is actually a tax on YOU that was hidden from you).
This will go on as long as dumb and gullible people like you can be tricked into thinking that things will be solved by "tax the rich" or "tax the corporations" lies. The rich and corporations will ALWAYS have lawyers and accountants. The corporations will ALWAYS pass all their taxes (which are EXPENSES to them... take an accounting class and maybe you will learn something) on to their customers. The "rich" will always be smarter and have smarter lawyers than the government bureaucrats and they will always find every loophole to keep as much as they can. Politicians, no matter HOW "progressive" or "Liberal" will ALWAYS build loopholes into the laws (so they and their rich friends can slip through). There's a REASON why all the "progressives" in congress are so filthy RICH... just look at how insanely RICH the loony liberal lady senators of California have become while being in office!!!!! If you think they care about you or will ever truly go after the money of their rich friends like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and the Hollywood stars etc then you are a fool who has absorbed all the propaganda. You have been cynically manipulated into being a TOOL. You have made yourself into a "useful idiot" and you have only yourself to blame. Barack Obama did not improve the lot of lower-income people while finally punishing "the rich" and he never will... he wants donors to build him a Presidential library and he plans to live for decades after leaving office as a rich guy with honorary board positions at corporations and rich friends letting him in on IPOs for promising start-up companies... Black Americans, in particular, are actually WORSE OFF under Obama than under Bush. Young voters who helped elect and re-elect him are similarly worse-off than under Bush.
Even if you really DID "tax the rich" at rates high enough to help, it would not help; You could TAKE all the money "the rich" have (something so extreme that no sane person no matter how "progressive" is proposing) and it would fund Obama's MASSIVE spending (which has benefitted all his "green energy" friends FAR more than YOU) for less than a year, and then you'd have no rich people left to tax AND still have massive public debt. This is true because while there are indeed some fabulously rich people, there are very FEW of them relative to the rest of the population. There are a lot more "somewhat rich" but still very few relative to the overall population. This all about basic math and basic accounting... the bulk of the money which the government can get year-after-year (rather than as a one-time "tax the rich" stunt that could not be repeated and will never happen) is in the hands of the middle class.
If you are middle class, or below middle class, you need to stop spending any time watching TV and being envious of a few airheaded rich celebrities and fantasizing that Obama will steal their stuff and give it to you; You need to realize that you are already paying more in taxes than your ancestors did and you are living in many ways less well off. For every dollar the government sucks out of the economy to give you something, YOU ultimately pay BUT the government sucks-off a bit as "overhead" AND the government attaches strings... it selects WHAT you get, or IF you get it, WHEN, HOW , and WHERE you may use it etc. You think you will get "free healthcare" but they will tell you what doctor to see, what treatment you may have, and when they will no longer provide (and therefore when your duty is to die) and because they are getting you to pay them to give you "free" healthcare, they will feel free to tell you if you may ingest salt, or sugar, what to eat, what to drink, how much you may have, and (eventually) how often and how much and what type exercise you must get, etc.
Wonder why the SAME politicians who are telling you what to eat and drink and smoke (salt bans, big-gulp bans, cigarette bans, etc) are then going all-libertarian on POT??? Bread-and-circuses... They KNOW this is all becoming un-tenable; Obama has finally admitted he has no pl
Progressivism is a political disease this county experienced in the early 20th century and the nation was so burned by it that it collectively turned-away from it and the progressives even changed what they called themselves to "liberal" to get away from the stink. Over the last several decades, they stunk-up the formerly honorable word "liberal" and calculated that the public had forgotten the early "progressive" experiences (and would be fooled into thinking "progressivism" had something to do with "progress" ... not much of a stretch given that so many uneducated people confuse "humanism" with "humanitarianism")
Bush and Obama are both "progressives" in the traditional sense (though one is a social conservative and the other a social liberal). If you think you are a "progressive" because you are a "good person" and you therefore find yourself blindly supporting "progressive" politicians and causes then you need to do some VERY SERIOUS history reading... you may come away shocked and repelled. It's NOT purely a right/left thing, though at this moment in history there are some big overlaps between left-and-progressive and right-and-anti-progressive. Early 20th century progressives started-out promising progress toward a shiny future classless utopia... and ended-up supporting euthenasia, eugenics, etc (and a certain former artist and WWI corporal in Germany with a bad comb-over adopted some of that nifty progressivism....) If you cannot be bothered to do a serious study of progressivism and are convinced it's all about "good people", then at least look at some very famous film of a famous left-wing progressive of that era (a few minutes of YouTube will let you see a snippet of it grabbed from some documentary, a trip to the national archives might be better) and WAKE THE HELL UP! George Bernard Shaw is STILL loved by left-leaning progressives event though they know this stuff! These people are a NIGHTMARE
The simple fact is this: If you grow the government so it can serve you, it will get powerful enough to serve you... and then look for more ways to use that power. When you invite the government in to keep your neighbor from doing things you do not like, it will be there to stop YOU from doing anything any of YOUR neighbors do not like. Progressives in BOTH parties grew the government to do things it was never supposed to do... and now all that excess government is doing (no surprise here, unless you are Gomer Pyle) .... lots of stuff it was never supposed to do.... and NO amount of money or surveillance will be enough.... and it will continue to NOT solve the problems it was asked to solve because then it would lose the justification to ask you for MORE money and power...
They ARE playing by the same rules... the brick-and-mortar is paying sales tax because it is using state and local resources. The sales tax is just the mechanism to get taxes even from unprofitable businesses. Your local brick-and-mortar is perfectly free to start selling via mail order to people in other states (without the tax) to compete against THOSE brick-and-mortars
Oh, and why do you not pay both a sales tax AND the "use tax" on stuff you buy from the local brick-and-mortar???? Because it's not really a "use tax"; it is an unconstitutional interstate sales tax that your state's government hopes is never properly challenged through the courts by a competent law firm. The local courts will probably support it because that's where their paychecks come from and they want the state to have the money... but the US Supreme Court would probably stomp on this garbage if a good case made it to their level... this is a case that goes directly to the plain-text of the Constitution and the basic application of simple logic.
Since the internet was an outgrowth of US-government-supported research, how about a flat sales tax (say 5%) on internet sales, not otherwise subject to state sales tax, that would go to fund scientific research of all sorts, including both basic and applied research. The government can take the difference from what it now spends on research, and give it to the states to compensate for lost revenue.
This way, scientists can be assured of a consistent source of funding. This will make America smarter, and more competitive.
Geez, people!
Let's just increase taxes every month by 5% What
is your tipping point? When 95% of what you make
goes to government?
If you were to receive a pay increase that doubles
what you are making, who would you want to decide
how to spend or invest the extra money, you or
someone else? You are the best person to decide
how to make yourself happy.
The average person pays over half of their
productive efforts to the government. Also, the
externalities of higher taxes creates more entropy
rather than synergy.
Instead of arguing about this particular tax, we
should be fighting for cutting taxes by 90%.
Or, we can just keep going in this same direction
towards Idiocracy:
(http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/idiocracy/).
It's amazing how all governments constantly look for thriving free systems from which they can find a way to extract value and wealth for their own selfish desires. If they could control the planet's breathable air, they would -- and then tax it.
Unfortunately, government at many levels in the US is willing to pass laws that violate the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights.
Creating contradictions in the legal system increases the long term demand for the services of legal professionals. Hence, it should be no surprise that our legislators (most of whom are legal professionals), continue to create laws that do exactly this, and our judges (most of whom are also legal professionals) choose to uphold laws that contradict the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Both parties in acting in violation of their oaths of office, of course, when they do this, but there doesn't seem to be enough people in with system with integrity for this to matter, and so long as "we the people" don't pay attention to this issue, this problem will continue.
The big problem with the sales tax issue is not specifically a Constitutional one, but a fundamental issue of freedom. Consider the following thought experiment. Suppose, in the pre-internet days, a person was to live near the border of a state. Across the border, in a state with no sales tax, are stores providing the necessities of life, within a five minute drive of this person's home. Within his or her state, the nearest store is a 1 hour drive in each direction. Under these circumstances, any rational individual would clearly choose to make their purchases at the nearby stores (not only would this save substantial amounts of time from their life, but it would be environmentally the right thing to do).
Further, it would clearly not be a legitimate act of government to force the individual to make a lengthy drive simply to shop: a right to not have one's time wasted must necessarily be a fundamental freedom.
Similarly, it would clearly not be a legitimate act of government to force the individual to keep track of every purchase made, and whether or not it was made locally, in order to then force that person to pay taxes: a right to not be subject to excessive bureaucracy is certainly a fundamental freedom.
Now take this thought experiment to the present day. The Internet is simply a form of technology that has effectively moved this border closer to every person: if it was not legitimate to tax out of state purchases before, then it can not be so now.
There are two ethically sound options here: 1) Have a national sales tax, and bar state sales tax entirely, and 2) have no sales taxes at all, making up the lost revenue in income taxes.
Eliminating sales tax entirely is the more intelligent policy, as sales taxes represent both a) double taxation on earned income, always a legally and ethically suspect policy, and b) sales taxes are biased against those who least afford to pay them: it is not possible to ethically justify the extra complexity this creates in the legal system when we are also having progressive income taxation.
We assume that the UPS trucks don't need to be parked at the local mall. So significantly less asphalt required.
The only freeloaders here are in Congress and the State Legislatures.
Time to put a stop to this bullshit.
I read that to cover imports/exports, not sales. Like when I mailed a friend in another country a sweater, she had to pay a import fee in order to get the sweater.
"No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State." - Article 1, US Constitution, I think was designed so that just shipping your goods from state X, through states A,B,C, and arriving in state E, would disallow states A,B and C from imposing import fees on the shipment.
Dropping some of your goods off in A,B, and C along the way, and then selling them in those states, would still be subject to a state sales tax though.