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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.
OH wait amazon already charges me taxes.. So who cares?
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'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).
Umm, wasn't it techncially a "representation" revolt? Taxes are needed to pay for the services that are provided. Taxation without political power in return is what was the cause of the revolt.
Well, first you'd need a budget.
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.
Umm, wasn't it techncially a "representation" revolt? Taxes are needed to pay for the services that are provided. Taxation without political power in return is what was the cause of the revolt.
Yep, exactly. Which makes it even more relevant to the present case, not less.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
This is a State decision, not a Federal one.
If you'll check a history book, you'll find the rallying cry was not "No Taxation" but rather "No Taxation Without Representation". Huge difference.
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.
If you'll check a history book, you'll find the rallying cry was not "No Taxation" but rather "No Taxation Without Representation". Huge difference.
"Taxation without Representation is Tyranny" was the cry. Freedom, not freeloading.
They haven't done the obvious. Cancel federal income tax and replace it with a sales tax. It'd be a whole lot easier to handle businesses than it would be individuals.
In 2009, there were just under 6,000,000 active businesses.
In 2009, there were 140,494,127 individual tax returns filed.
The IRS employs about 93,000 employees and is expected to hire 16,500 more.
By eliminating the individual filing requirement, you'd eliminate almost 96% of the returns.
IRS agents have an average salary near $75,000.
Let's say you applied 4 times the labor to each business return.
Then only about 18,000 staff are required to handle the load.
91,500 jobs would be cut for an annual savings of $6.8 billion.
"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.
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.
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.
Besides the fact that international shipping (even from Canada) is quite expensive, you may have to pay import duty on certain items and/or items over a certain value.
You need more money Federal Gov? Stop wasting it.
This isn't to allow the feds to collect taxes, it's to allow states to collect states sales tax on purchases made over the internet, regardless of the state where the vendor has a physical presence.
If that were true, then the problem solved by this bill would be too trivial to make it worth the bother.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Folks are just going to drop-ship to sales-tax free states by having a friend or relative there order for them.
Wait.. you want to put almost 100,000 people out of work that used to WORK FOR THE IRS!?
Yeah, that's excatly what we need. 50,000 people on the street with cardboard signs saying "Please give what you can, its tax deductible under city ordinance 41.4b, clause 2, section 4, paragraph 2.C"
Um no. freeloaders have not come anywhere near 50% of the voters. The so called 47% contains large blocks of people who are not freeloaders.
1. About 60% of those not paying federal income taxes pay other federal taxes such as SS and Medicare. Not to mention local taxes such as property taxes and sales taxes.
2. Wealthy people whose income comes from tax free bonds pay no federal income taxes. However they pay other local taxes on property etc.
3. About 20% of the 47% are retired elderly people who have paid a lifetime of SS and Medicare taxes.
Finally a significant proportion of these people vote for Republicans. Various polls show that above 50% of the elderly vote Republican, and about 1/3 of the people who are exempt from federal income tax due to earning less than $24000 vote Republican.
So basically the idea that a majority of 'freeloading' Americans are going to perpetuate their situation by en-masse voting for progressive candidates is ridiculous bullshit. There isn't any such majority of freeloaders in the first place, and secondly the voting pattern of low income people is not as monolithic as you propose.
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
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.
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
Once the freeloaders exceed 50% of the vote ... they will simply use the power of the government ... to steal from the rest of the productive population.
We're in no danger of that, because there's nothing true about that sentence:
1. Only 17% of households pay no income and no payroll tax. As soon as you factor in Social Security and Medicare, there are very few freeloaders.
2. Of those 17%, nearly all pay sales taxes and/or property taxes to state and local governments, and many pay federal gasoline taxes, cigarette taxes, and other federal sales taxes. In other words, they aren't freeloaders.
3. Your population of "freeloaders" basically consists of: Retirees, students, and seriously disabled people. Almost all of them either paid taxes before they became "freeloaders", or will pay taxes in the future.
I am officially gone from
Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.
-Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations", Book V, Chapter II, Part II, pg.927
Not a sentence!
The library called, you really need to return that copy of Atlas Shrugged.
WTF is an objectivist doing borrowing books from a library? Don't they realize that public libraries are SOCIALISM????
what do we do with all the nearly retired who were expecting to live off the proceeds from they sale of there inflated home and often far to little savings to make up any short fall there.
- let the interest rates go up where the market takes them right now and the retired will have an income from their savings. Worst case for those who don't have savings except for a house is to sell the house in the falling market and use the money from the sale to get income due to actual interest rate that the market would pay for their savings if the government stops destroying the money.
Do you not see that the people who are hurt the most by inflation are those very people on fixed incomes and the retired, whose checks will buy less every month.
Who knows, the Cyprus like situation is not actually impossible. Cyprus bought bad Greek debt and now has no money to return to the depositors, who are just creditors to the bank. So it's not the bond holders that are going to take a haircut, but the depositors. Of-course the bond holders should now run forward and offer to take a haircut and spare the creditors (depositors), otherwise the bondholders will lose 100% (those who didn't liquidate yet, many did probably), because without depositors there is no bank.
My point is that the situation that the Fed is creating with inflation is almost unpredictable in terms of how exactly it will play out, but it IS predictable that there will be an implosion due to this, and so why would you want to risk an implosion (imminent implosion) instead of allowing the economy to restructure right now? Yes, restructuring means a recession. You know what, USA is in a depression right now, never mind the government numbers, the reality is that there is no recovery. The jobs are fewer every month (they can manipulate the numbers because there are people who stop looking and so it may seem that unemployment numbers go down, in reality what is going down is the desire and ability to work in that system).
new group of dependants who will likely be on the dole for 20-30 years until they expire,
- you are assuming that this is possible for the government to take care of the people who will suffer due to the economic collapse for 20-30 years, I beg to differ. I don't believe that there is any way at all to take care of them. That's what I think the situation is, there is no way to take care of them by using government if the system blows. Government gets its money from working people and that's how the dependent get their checks. If the system blows the way I think it will, then the government will not be able to take care of ANY dependent people, it's a physical impossibility.
Even with interest rates being over 3% the system collapses AFAIC, but if the interest rates are, say, 15%? 35?
At 7% the entire revenue of USA goes towards interest payments, nothing else, and actually it's worse, because at those interest rates USA revenues will be disappearing for a while at least, there will be many failures, so much fewer income revenue will be coming in.
Do you see what I am saying? You believe that it is physically possible to take care of people for 20-30 years, I think what will happen will make it a physical impossibility to do it. It would be better right now to stop pumping money into the system and allow interest rates to rise now and take a hit and let the prices fall and let people to start making income from interest payments (this would deflate the bond market bubble, the equity bubble, this would return some stability to the dollar).
I think the pain that will come because of that will be much less prolonged. 1921, 1947, 1981 show that the difficulties that are met with real cuts and higher interest rates are solved by the market in just a couple of years.
I think what will happen if this is not allowed will last for decades, and then yes, your scenario: wait until people die off (but you won't have to wait
You can't handle the truth.