Slashdot Mirror
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).
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.
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.
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