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Senate To Vote On Internet Sales Tax (For Real This Time)
New submitter JoeyRox writes "On 3/22 the Senate approved a non-binding proposal to allow states to tax online sales to residents outside their state. That vote was a trial balloon to gauge the support for the Marketplace Fairness Act. This week Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed a cloture to allow the law to be voted on for real this time. The vote may occur as soon as tomorrow. eBay is attempting to rally Americans against the bill via a massive email campaign."
The retailers are not using any state subsidized utilities except for postal service. Instead of doing this, they should just run postal service at cost and finish off the issue
But very practical, and should have happened sooner. The overall efficiency of our society will increase if people buy more things at local stores. Less gas wasted on shipping, more money staying in its own communities.
this is what Harry Reid decides to push through the senate for a vote? There are dozens of other issues that should be addressed before the senate even considers something like this.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The power to tax is the power to destroy. Thank you, US Congress, for rescuing me from the evils of convenient online ordering. Because we all know that the government will spend this new revenue wisely, and not at all immediately squander it buying votes and then borrow against 10 years of future revenue and squander that too. Eh, as long as the correct party keeps getting elected.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The government spends whatever amount it wants to anyways. If the spending is greater than the amount of taxes, the rest just goes to a magical fairy land called "National Debt" which the government says it's concerned about but has no intention to ever pay.
Exactly. Sales tax varies not only state to state, but state, to county to city as well.
whose sales tax do you charge in the following scenario?
I in Mass, order something from a company in SC to be shipped to random upstate town, NY.
Which sales tax is to be collected and paid? there are at least 4 and possible 7 different sales taxes that need to be applied to that order.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
All taxes are THEFT and are UNCONSTITUTIONAL, as are the parts of the constitution that authorize UNCONSTITUTIONAL taxes.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
It must be true, because I saw it bolded on the Internet.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
How in the hell is income tax unconstitutional when Amendment XVI of the constitution specifically authorizes Congress to levy it?
The Federal tax must be uniform, the USA Constitution does not give authority to the Congress to prevent individual States, counties, municipalities from collecting their own taxes.
The question is whether this law going to force Amazon (and the rest) to collect taxes for localities where Amazon has no physical presence? That would be unconstitutional, federal government cannot force a retailer to collect local taxes.
Federally Constitutional excise tax is not a local sales tax. Also there is an interesting question about legality of forcing the seller to collect the tax, even if it is Constitutional. Of-course the government has no problem turning bankers and financial types into unpaid FBI and IRS agents, so forcing an online store to be one is not out of their character, they don't have a problem with it.
You can't handle the truth.
What's Delaware doing these days?
I already "donate" enough of my paycheck to you fucking people in one way or another.
That's not what Constitution does, you should read the link that I provided, though it's not a short comment, if you can read you'll find your answer.
You can't handle the truth.
> How in the hell is income tax unconstitutional when Amendment XVI of the constitution specifically authorizes Congress to levy it?
Good heavens, don't feed the trolls. You'll get a dozen answers and the net result is that you'll be late for dinner. :)
I strongly recommend Dan Evans Tax Protester FAQ. He covers all of the arguments (and why they've failed in court) in more detail than you probably want.
http://evans-legal.com/dan/tpfaq.html
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
The sixteenth amendment to the US Constitution:
Congress can directly tax income without regard to any census, nor do income taxes need to be apportioned among the States. The language of 16A is really incredibly clear. Your rant is misinformed wishful thinking garbage.
Clearly you didn't read his LINK or else you would have been convinced by the crushing legal CONSTITUTIONAL scholarship of BOLD and italic text.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
Heck, then there's that whole internet thing. Practically everything businesses use is heavily subsidized by the gov't, especially big guys like Amazon & Ebay. It's just done in an indirect manner. Amazon pays their warehouse workers poorly and lets the gov't pick up the slack in the form of Earned Income Credit, childcare services, etc (same as Walmart actually).
Capitalism is for the poor my friend.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Does the Internet sales tax only apply to those who use USD?
did you know that most states let businesses keep the money you withhold for state taxes? Why do you think all the states started doing mandatory withholding all a sudden?
You're a victim of trickle down economics, not taxation. Your "Job Creators" done got you good.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This is a way to boost revenue without the tea baggers going ape shit. Most of those old people won't even notice it because they still shop at Sears and JC Penny.
Gotta pay for Medicare and the other wealth transfer to the old people.
Don't. Every state already has the power to equalize internet and local sales taxes, by abolishing its local sales tax.
The sales tax is regressive and discourages commerce. Because this goes contrary to the welfare and commerce clauses of the U.S. Constitution, the federal government should be actively discouraging the use of a sales tax, not encouraging it.
Further, the sales tax encourages cities to offer incentives to big-box stores and give them a competitive advantage over small businesses. On the other hand, a property tax encourages cities to make land-use decisions that increase property values. I would rather have higher property values in my city than more Wal-Marts, wouldn't you?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
If it's in The Constitution, it's constitutional. The Amendment XVI was ratified allowing the government to collect taxes.
End of.
All taxes are THEFT and are UNCONSTITUTIONAL, as are the parts of the constitution that authorize UNCONSTITUTIONAL taxes.
(emphasis changed)
I'm having a hard time figuring out how a part of the constitution can be unconstitutional. (Not being from the USA I can't tell you every line of your constitution, but that sentence simply doesn't parse)
Which sales tax is to be collected and paid? there are at least 4 and possible 7 different sales taxes that need to be applied to that order.
That's easy. The tax is paid for the locale that the order is being shipped to. It is to be treated as though it was purchased in person in that municipality.
In the EU the problem has been solved by the following:
You pay the VAT (aka.. sales tax) where the person receiving the item resides in. I don't think companies are required to levy the target country tax in some cases, like with low volume, but not sure.
Quite frankly this makes sense, since it means local companies can compete with the internet shops operating from low tax areas. It doesn't really work for local economy (which you are a part of), if all product services go to low tax areas and are remote only.
The title of the summary is STUPID and most of the commenters have absolutely no clue whatsoever what this is. It's not an "internet sales tax", guys. It is simply legilation which would ALLOW the states to collect state sales tax on purchases made via the web, just as they do on other purchases. It doesn't mandate that any state has to do it. It just removes a barrier that currently exists, whereby no state may enlist and compel the services of internet sellers to collect that state's sales tax for them. It doesn't give the FEDS any additional power to collect any new federal tax whatsoever.
Most or all states already require their own taxpayers to volunteer purchases they made out of state, by WHATEVER means, and cough up the sales tax for same on their tax return. Of course only about one millionth of taxpayers are sucker enough to so volunteer. All this does is make payment unavoidable by burdening the red tape and collection on the sellers.
I am entirely against the measure, on various grounds, but come on, let's at least realize what this is.
Yes states can collect excise taxes, and yes this bill is constitutional. "On a computer" or "over the internet" do not make fundamental law vanish. Whether state sales taxes are a good idea, is a different question, one of policy, not law.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
The gov itself can't charge sales tax. That would be illegal. However they aren't getting any tax from this. The states would.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
There are a number of fringe arguments that the sixteenth amendment, allowing an income tax, wasn't properly ratified.
You should read the link provided by roman_mir, one of the great constitutional scholars of our time.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
The government does a lot of crap that I disagree with. And, in fact, I see a lot of their crap as unconstitutional. But - the concept that all taxes are unconstitutional is pretty insane.
The federal income tax clearly has a lot of constitutionality issues surrounding it. Social security has some. Sales taxes? No way. Local governments are largely funded by sales taxes. They have to be funded from SOMEWHERE, so they are funded by local sales. When the internet was new, internet sales were exempted from local sales tax. Now, congress is going to change that. How is it unconstitutional? If anything, the exemption was unconstitutional, because it interfered with local government's ability to generate legitimate revenues.
Lighten up dude - not all taxes are unconstitutional. Taxes suck, but they are a necessary evil. Concentrate on those taxes that are actually unconstitutional, or at least very controversial.
As for which jurisdiction collects taxes on internet sales - the purchaser's home address serves as a point of contact, for billing purposes, mailing purposes, and for tax purposes.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
UNLEASH THE HOUNDS!
(filter was telling me I was yelling, well fuck it, I was yelling)
AND SEND THE TROLLS TOO!
(I know, that is a bit redundant, but funny shit none the less)
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Amazon supports this bill. They understand that closing off the opportunity for a company to grow on avoiding stat sales taxes is in their best interest because they know better than anyone how successful that model is.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
I in Mass, order something from a company in SC to be shipped to random upstate town, NY.
I suggest putting MA, SC and NY into a cage match to fight to the death to determine who gets that tax.
Also include Montana (where the SC company's distribution warehouse is!) and all the stats between Montana and New York. I mean, the usual money grab justification is, "use tax", yeah? Why should states stuck in the middle of a transaction be denied revenue for their roads/infrastructure being used?
So about the bill, if I'm in state A and I'm buying from state B, do I have to pay the tax in A or B? Will there be double dipping? Also if there is no tax in state A but there is in B and vice versa, would I have to pay it?
There's lots of free pussy at the animal shelter.
The Constitution does not grant Congress the power to regulate state level taxation, to force one to pay taxes in another state, or to collect the taxes on behalf of another state..
The issues that most complain about regarding income taxes are the methods of collection and enforcement. For example, the 5th amendment is supposed to protect us from self-incrimination, but a tax filing is self-incrimination. The IRS has its own tax courts, which do not follow due process. The right to assistance of counsel in defense has been turned into a joke because they seize the means to provide that counsel, then give a public defender who knows next to nothing.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Indiana already charges its residents tax (state, county, and local) via their income tax forms, for all on-line and distance sales on which Indiana Sales Tax was not paid. Virtually EVERY state (as far as I know) collects the equivalent of its sales tax on purchases of things like automobiles made out of state and not taxed a point of sale.
Is it just me or should anyone making more than a million a year from online sales not be exempt from taxation? Do CEOs like John Donahoe believe that people who make more than a mil/year are somehow poor or middle class? That guy's an asshole.
I agree that they are supposed to charge the tax rate in effect at the address of the purchaser (although in practice they may instead charge the tax rate at the shipping address, for example when you buy a gift and ship direct). However, today, they can't even get it right in cases where they are required to charge tax. For example just this morning I ordered some stuff from Monoprice. They have a presence in California and I am in California too - so they have to charge tax. They did, but at the wrong rate. I am in a 8.25% district and they charged just the state value of 7.50%. They are supposed to charge the state, county, city, water district, etc. taxes. Another strange one in the retail space - we bought a new car yesterday. We were in the 9% district just next to ours. They charged us the 8.5% rate because of our address. However none of the stores in the adjacent mall do this. They charge the 9% rate - the rate where they are at, not the rate where I live. Where do I apply for my refund if what the car dealer did was correct? Since we can't even correctly apply the sales / use taxes we have now, how the hell are we going to have everyone get it even close when it goes across state lines? And, does this become a boom for "locker box" services at the state line of states with no sales tax?
Clearly you didn't read his LINK or else you would have been convinced by the crushing legal CONSTITUTIONAL scholarship of BOLD and italic text.
Ahhh ... so you're one of those people. The ones that think "If you knew what I knew then you'd interpret it the same way I do and you'd see what I see and you'd obviously agree with me . Good luck with that. Maybe you need to use more caps & style tags to get your point across.
"to allow states to tax online sales to residents outside their state" is exactly backwards! The taxing would, if directed by the state, apply to sales to residents _in_ that state. The writer probably confused "sales by vendors outside the state" with "sales to residents outside the state" for some bizarre reason.
Yeah, I meant to say sales by companies outside the state, but what I was thinking when I wrote it was "applying the tax laws of one state to citizens (ie, companies) of another", thus my conflated/backwards summary.
The feds should impose an interstate commerce tax, say 9% and give 3% to the ship-from state and 3% to the ship-to state and the feds grab 3%.
States with no sales taxes, their 3% is omitted.
This will give states a bite of in and out traffic, that they get little of now. Not as much as the states full taxes, but they lose most of that now. 3% of both ways is a lot btter than what they have now. It will give the feds something to erase debt, it waill act as a leveller of the playing field.
States will have to waive their state use taxes on good shipped to to conform with this law.
Every year average Americans pay dozens of different types of taxes, and yet many of our politicians are very open about the fact that they want to raise rates even higher and invent even more ways to bleed us all dry. Someday historians will look back and be absolutely amazed at how stupid we were. We have the most complicated tax code in all of human history and at this point the federal tax code is more than four times as long as the entire collected works of William Shakespeare (close to four million words long). But that is just for federal income taxes. We have a number of other taxes taken out of our paychecks such as state income taxes, Social Security taxes and Medicare taxes.
Just counting federal, state and local income taxes, some Americans will be paying marginal tax rates of over 50 percent in 2013. But like I said, there are a lot of other taxes we pay than just those. The following are 44 more taxes that at least some average Americans are paying now or will be paying soon other than federal, state and local income taxes...
#1 Building Permit Taxes
#2 Capital Gains Taxes
#3 Cigarette Taxes
#4 Court Fines (indirect taxes)
#5 Dog License Taxes
#6 Drivers License Fees (another form of taxation)
#7 Federal Unemployment Taxes
#8 Fishing License Taxes
#9 Food License Taxes
#10 Gasoline Taxes
#11 Gift Taxes
#12 Hunting License Taxes
#13 Inheritance Taxes
#14 Inventory Taxes
#15 IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
#16 IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
#17 Liquor Taxes
#18 Luxury Taxes
#19 Marriage License Taxes
#20 Medicare Taxes
#21 Medicare Tax Surcharge On High Earning Americans Under Obamacare
#22 Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax (if you don't buy "qualifying" health insurance under Obamacare you will have to pay an additional tax)
#23 Obamacare Surtax On Investment Income (a new 3.8% surtax on investment income that goes into effect next year)
#24 Property Taxes
#25 Recreational Vehicle Taxes
#26 Toll Booth Taxes
#27 Sales Taxes
#28 Self-Employment Taxes
#29 School Taxes
#30 Septic Permit Taxes
#31 Service Charge Taxes
#32 Social Security Taxes
#33 State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA)
#34 Tanning Tax (a new Obamacare tax on tanning services)
#35 Telephone Federal Excise Taxes
#36 Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Taxes
#37 Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Taxes
#38 Telephone State And Local Taxes
#39 Tire Taxes
#40 Tolls (another form of taxation)
#41 Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)
#42 Utility Taxes
#43 Vehicle Registration Taxes
#44 Workers Compensation Taxes
Sadly, this list is far from complete!
Dick Durbin, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, actually said that levying Internet sales taxes on American shoppers is "one that is long overdue!" Ya know, because they need more money and everything. Half of all the money made in America isn't enough, right? Oh, and also all those "corporate sponsers" than give them money to put in new "laws" so they can make more profits.
All the software and systems for this are already in place for 24 states. There are services which will do a sales tax calculation for you, or you can download all the data files The required inputs are ZIP code (9 digit ZIP code in a few cases where a ZIP code crosses a tax boundary), product class, and date (for "sales tax holidays"). It's complex because the interstate consortium that does this has to accommodate all the vagaries of state sales tax law in each state.
The idea is that small businesses sign up with a service provider, and send them one check for all state taxes plus an XML file of the transactions. Big businesses will probably run their own software. Expect to see this as a standard component of most shopping cart programs.
What the Federal law is about is getting all the states on board for this, and applying it nationally. There's even a huge loophole - "Online sellers with less than $1,000,000 in remote sales annually will be exempt from collection requirements. Remote sales are sales to customers in states where the seller does not already have a physical presence." eBay lobbied for that, yet they're still whining about the law.
The tax is paid by whatever address the item is billed to, not shipped to. I work for a major retailer and we have a program that does this in our point of sale. It conforms with local and state tax laws.
Roman, at least your old UID indicated you are an established nutcase. We're much more tolerant of established nutcases than new ones.
You've lost the war on taxes, old son. If you want a tax free haven, make one yourself. And good luck with that.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
but it doesn't conform with ALL state and local tax laws. some are shipped to some are shipped from.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
WTF? Income tax is not unconstitutional, it's by definition part of the constitution. Go read the 16th Amendment; they passed that just so they could have an income tax. And no, it's not "voluntary"; the amendment is extremely concise and says nothing about such tax being "voluntary". There's a reason this is called an "amendment": it overrules anything older in the Constitution that might be construed as forbidding it. Just because you don't like a particular amendment (I don't care for the 17th myself) doesn't mean that what's in that amendment is "unconstitutional". The amendments ARE the Constitution.
EVERYTHING is already taxed as it goes down it gets more and more taxes put on top of it. For a used or new item, ALL of the materials were taxed NUMEROUS times (dont be a smart ass we already know what items don't count), and finally taxed again when sold to the end user, and if its a used item on ebay they want to tax you again for something somebody else already payed tax on, and when you decide to sell it, taxed again. HOW ARE PEOPLE SO IGNORANT TO SEE THE GOVERNMENT HAS TAXED THE FUCK OUT OF THAT SINGLE ITEM ABOUT 10 TIMES. If we were to do this to our government we would go to prison, so why is it ok for them to do it to its people?
Not being from the USA, you obviously cannot comprehend just how insane many of our citizens are, and what kind of wacky convoluted arguments they'll come up with which defy all logic and reason.
Yes, you're right, as this is quite simple: if it's part of the Constitution (and that includes the Amendments), then by definition, it's "constitutional". Furthermore, newer Amendments overrule old ones, so it doesn't matter if the original Constitutional text, or some of Amendments 1-10 could be construed as forbidding income tax, because Amendment 16 explicitly allows it, so that's the final word on the matter. In fact, free speech, freedom of religion, etc. could be repealed, and we could be forced to quarter soldiers in our homes: all the government has to do is pass a new Constitutional Amendment overturning Amendments 1 and 4. Of course, it's very very hard to pass new Amendments (by design), so such a thing is unlikely, but it's possible.
Irony doesn't suit you much, Roman.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
That is specifically what the Interstate Commerce clause was intended for (not the war on drugs, or any of the innumerable other things it is used for these days, though).
Well, it's called "sales" tax not "buying" tax. Makes sense to collected it at point of sale :-/
So if amazon movies to a state with no sales tax, it makes sense to collect their *local* tax for all customers (even those outside of that state). Perhaps what they're really interested in is interstate commerce tax, since that's what this is in disguise---except that would be unconstitutional. ...Why are they spending their efforts in creating a regressive tax instead of just getting rid of sales tax everywhere and increasing income tax on everyone?
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
Nothing screams "pay attention to me" like the HTML Blink tag nested inside H1. He should have used that if he's serious about being heard.
http://www.ebaymainstreet.com/campaigns/tell-congress-oppose-internet-sales-tax-legislation
Interstate commerce tax imposed by USA Congress is a constitutional tax, it's an excise, an import even, a duty, basically a federal sales tax is legal if it is uniform.
What is in fact illegal is an income tax, payroll tax, Medicare tax, death tax, those are in fact illegal taxes but the system doesn't care about the legality of it, it just imposes itself.
By the way saying that a tax is 'regressive' means approving discrimination. You want to apply laws differently to different people based on their specific circumstances, that's injustice and discrimination.
You can't handle the truth.
You are talking about things that you didn't in fact think about. You should go read the 16th, then go read the link to my comment where I explain that what is in the amendment is not in fact authorisation to collect an income tax. It is an allowance to tax 'income' (without defining what that is) without apportionment.
It was left up to the courts to define what income was, and I talk about the court cases and SCOTUS decisions in my comment, which show that SCOTUS explained that an unapportioned tax cannot be direct, so it must be an indirect tax. Eventually the court explained that in order to have an 'indirect income' is by dis-associating a person from his income, and that was possible to do through a corporate balance sheet, so the 'income tax' in fact was explained to be a corporate profit tax.
There is no individual profit, individually you have incomes, not profits, otherwise you have to be able to subtract your own costs (depreciation of your body is part of it) from your revenues.
Again, you can read the comment, obviously you commented without doing it, otherwise you would at the minimum come back with something meaningful to say rather than that, whatever that was.
You can't handle the truth.
"nutcase", good to know nothing changes on /., same old, same old.
Though after all the years, you think I do not in fact exercise what I believe in? By the way, you should be happy that people can in fact move their money somewhere you'd call a 'tax shelter', if there was no way for anybody to hide from government taxes, the taxes on everybody would be much higher.
It's very simple, without the competition there is a monopoly. Even within the USA, various States have different tax rates (and some have no State income taxes at all), and so there is competition even inside there, which shows you how it works. Push the people enough and they move their money, they move themselves even. That's what keeps every State from constantly raising the taxes higher and higher, they know people have a choice and can leave.
Same thing exactly applies to 'tax havens', without them there is nothing to prevent governments from raising taxes ever higher.
Kill tax havens and you kill your economy as well though, you'll kill savings and investment (though in case of USA, Japan and Europe they are successful at that just with inflation and existing taxes and regulations).
You can't handle the truth.
That's not my comment, take the blinders off.
You can't handle the truth.
You are talking about things that you didn't in fact think about. You should go read the 16th, then go read the link to my comment where I explain that what is in the amendment is not in fact authorisation to collect an income tax. It is an allowance to tax 'income' (without defining what that is) without apportionment.
I DID read the 16th; it's extremely short and concise and there's really no way to misunderstand it. It lets you tax income. It doesn't have to define it, the definition is fairly obvious, and I'm sure court decisions have defined it more exactingly.
so the 'income tax' in fact was explained to be a corporate profit tax.
No, profit and income are two different things. The Amendment says "income", not "profit". If they had meant corporate profit, they would have said so. It just says that the government can tax income, that's it. There's no way for a rational person to misunderstand that simple language. And anything the SCOTUS says really doesn't matter, only the text of the Amendment. The SCOTUS can only interpret laws (and they don't always do so correctly, which can be changed in subsequent court decisions). They can also declare things "unconstitutional". However, they can't declare part of the Constitution to be unconstitutional, and that makes no sense whatsoever.
I only read part of your comment, but stopped wasting my time when it became clear that it was pure lunacy and that you completely fail to understand the simple truth that when something is part of the Constitution (this includes Amendments), that it's by definition Constitutional. (You also make some wacky arguments that the 16th conflicts with some earlier parts of the Constitution, including the 4th Amendment, which again shows you either don't understand or are willfully ignoring the simple truth that Amendments supersede older parts of the Constitution. It doesn't matter if the 16th violates the 4th as you allege, because the 16th supersedes the 4th. If the States all decided they wanted to ban free speech and private ownership of guns, they could easily pass a new Amendment completely overturning the 1st and 2nd. The only reason this doesn't happen is that it'd be extemely unpopular and because it's really hard to get all the States to agree on Constitutional changes, which of course was the intent of the Founders when they devised the Amendment process.)
Again, you call something 'lunacy' without going through the court cases, that in fact DEFINE what INCOME is.
16th amendment does no such thing.
There are of-course a large number of other problems there that I touch upon, but you are clearly incapable of understanding words in English language.
You can't handle the truth.
Have none of our legistraitors ever read the United States Constitution?
CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
Article. I, Section. 9: "No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State."
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
This bill simply allows the states to collect sales tax according to their local laws on online purchases. This would level the playing field for local retailers of electronics and higher end luxury goods, where people come to the store and browse the merchandise only to buy it online to save in sales tax. Also this bill exempts all firms with less than $1 million in sales from compliance, so that "small businesses are not hurt". Lastly, most online purchases are with paypal or credit card, so it is easy to search for the sales tax in your jurisdiction. I am not in favor of picking winners and loser, but you have to level the playing field to charge online retailers the same sales tax that you charge a local retailer.
Tell that the Wesley Snipes.
That would be unconstitutional, federal government cannot force a retailer to collect local taxes.
Why not, specifically? They're explicitly permitted to regulate interstate commerce, and a vendor in one state selling to a customer in another state most certainly sounds like it to me. Remember they can use it in the negative "No interstate commerce is permitted unless the vendor has collected any applicable sales tax of the destination state" so strictly speaking they're not forcing anyone to do anything, it's a condition for doing interstate business. If you don't like it, don't sell outside your state. I doubt you'll get the Supreme Court with you on this one.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'm surprised they haven't done it already.
This is a case of technology ahead of regulation.
Tax the internet for purchasing and be done with it - time to stop the bleeding of state tax revenue. Just because it's good for consumers doesn't mean it's good for states consumers live in. It's better this than even more regressive state sales taxes to make up for the losses.
The constitution prohibits states from levying taxes and duties on imports and exports. This includes imports from other states. See Article 10.
Local taxes are not within the authority of federal government, federal government cannot force a business to do anything about local taxes. State can force a business to pay taxes to the State.
You can't handle the truth.
Skip the sales tax and simply apply a VAT tax to everything that is sold to a retailer. In addition, if anything is shipped from foreign sources directly to the user (i.e. a retailer), then they pay the VAT as part of the import.
This way NOBODY is happy, but the bill will be paid all the same.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
if you dont agree with the new tax, please fill the petition
http://www.ebayinternetsalestax.com/ist/step1_b.asp
not associated in any way with ebay/paypal, but not a us citizen so posting anonymous
I have a couple of questions
Wouldn't this have to pass in the House as well as the Senate?
Are the Republicans going to filibuster it?
How are they going to force sellers outside of the United States to collect sales tax? Especially on digital sales.
By the way saying that a tax is 'regressive' means approving discrimination. You want to apply laws differently to different people based on their specific circumstances, that's injustice and discrimination.
Be consistent please. Discrimination (excepting in the case of race and perhaps religion) is perfectly constitutional. We're talking about a country that has institutionalized discrimination based on feudal principals. A country that didn't amend its constitution to make women equal to men in law. A country where the constitution was written to discriminate against classes of citizens by denying them the vote. If you want to go on about the constitution you have to accept that it's an 18th century document and was designed to discriminate and tough if it's you that is being discriminated against as that is the American way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Does the tax apply to items that are not shipped - but just downloaded like software packages? If so then a perhaps unintended consequence will be to move that software store offshore. I my software store is located in Albania, but I reside in Arizona and pay Fed / State taxes there - do I have to collect this tax Similarly, if I have a site which sells my photographs, were people use a credit card or pay pal and then download the digital image, can I avoid collecting the tax if I move the hosting of the site outside the USA? I am reminded of the idiocy around encryptation software many years ago were there was legislation forbidding its exportation - so over a short period of time all of the production of encryptation software moved offshore as it was not illegal to import it rick rmcgonegal@gmail.com
You charge the tax based on shipping or billing address, which isn't all that important since most times they will be the same.
You pay the tax to that location.
The end result is that things work like they do now, and Amazon doesn't get to pretend they have lower prices when they actually don't have nearly the gap that is perceived.
Why is this even a little bit complicated. You look at the problem, which is Amazon and Ebay don't want to have to do what every other business in America has to do. So you fix the problem by making them do the same thing every other business does. Pay fucking taxes on the sale at the location of the sale.
My business is required to pay sales tax in any state we sell in because we have 'agents' in all those states. What does Amazon do when say ... North Carolina required them to pay taxes on those agents in North Carolina? They terminated the agents, or 'referral' partners. Is that really the kind of business you want around?
I admin a SaaS service, I have to pay taxes in any state I have an agent in ... in most states that means if I have a sales person in that state at any point in the year, that means I pay them taxes on sales to customers in that state.
I for the life of me can't possibly understand why you would even bother to ask this question, its mind numbing obvious who pays and where the pay goes.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Legality of requiring a seller to collect the tax ... We already have those laws, fairly certain they get enforced ... since ... you know ... everyone bothers to collect sales tax.
The Fed can simply state that businesses in the US doing interstate commerce are bound by the states they are selling their products in. The definition of 'selling their products in' is the physical location of the buyer at the time or purchase.
Problem solved.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The fed doesn't have to make a law regarding tax collection or collection itself, just has to make it a federal crime to violate sales taxes laws in a state if you sell products to people in that state. By that meaning that at the time of sale, the person buying the property, their physical location (or shipping address for internet stuffs) is the place of sale.
Problem solved.
Do you really want to hide behind something like this like you're clever while you're neighborhood crumbles around you cause you thought being clever on the Internet was a better idea than just paying your fair share of upkeep?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Jesus you are fucking stupid. You are so fucking stupid that you should be shot in the fucking head for writing something this stupid. Go read the Wikipedia article on "Substantive Due Process" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantive_due_process The useless racists in the southern states tried this shit back in the 1960s when they said that state laws overrode federal laws in matters relating to desegregation, interracial marriage and the like and the federal government said "Wrong fucking answer and in one case even sent in federal troops (Little Rock, AK, 1957) to get the point across. God you're fucking stupid.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Don't be confused. When you see people talking about the constitution being unconstitutional and you don't understand why ... the reason is because they're trying to manipulate the meaning of one thing, usually it'll be a single line, rarely more than that, into fitting their definition of the argument and ignoring everything else.
You can more or less instantly write of anyone who tells you parts of the constitution are unconstitutional. Its unlikely you will miss anything of value (except perhaps a good laugh) if you do.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Dude, you're a nut case ... I was about 3 lines into your rant before I realized it ... but its clear, you're an idiot living in another world.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
... And so he was right wasn't he ... Perhaps you should go re-read your linked article and actually understand what Substantive due process is before you try to tell someone else. You seem to not have any fucking idea what ratification requires. In short, I'm fairly certain you don't have any clue how the America government actually works.
A state, or even half the states in teh country can't modify the constitution. Just because Old Miss decides to chain up the negras doesn't actually make it part of the constitution ... the rest of the states actually have to agree with it in a majority.
God you're fucking stupid.
If you stop looking in the mirror you won't have to say that so often.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The only argument that the 16th amendment wasn't properly ratified was the Supreme courts ruling on it.
And they say it was.
End of argument.
"Regulate" in the sense of causing it to be regular. All of the writings on that from the time it was written deal with how a state cannot discriminate against the goods from other states nor can they interfere with the movement of goods through them to another state. It did not, when it was written, mean that the Federal Congress got to write billions of rules about every aspect of your life simply because you deal daily with stuff that has moved across state lines.
A "progressive" tax structure is also discriminatory because it treats people differently based on their specific circumstances as well.
When the constitution was written, there were no phones or internet and no way to electronically transfer funds. A sale happened in 1 state or the other ( prepay or cash on delivery ) never in both except maybe a state-line shop. When a product was shipped by ship, riverboat or horse and buggy from a supplier to a merchant, the founders didn't want central states to act as middlemen states by taxing products in transit. This product typically went to a merchant who bought wholesale to sell at retail at which point a sales tax _could_ be levied by the state, or the merchant or a representative would go and pick up the merchandise and may be obligated to pay sales tax at the origination point - though in most states this is only assessed at the point of final sale if it is purchased for resale with a TIN.
Other places use a VAT or value added tax, where basically the tax applied at each point is base on a difference between the purchase and sale cost at each point.... arguably much easier to implement
It could just be a compromise where it is 5% flat and states get 4% (1% federal) whether they have a sales tax or not. This encourages local economy but is too simple and our current legislators don't do "compromise".
A hybrid version could allow someone to set up shop in NH (no sales tax state) buy stuff at wholesale and pay no sales tax, then pay a sales tax only on the difference between their wholesale and the customers cost to the customer's state
Both fed and state _need_ to invest in regulating "customs" on the internet - yesterdays illegal fur import and banned weapons is today's pirated whatever and malware .... but it would probably get misappropriated to some other garbage.
Would a takedown notice then be called an ICE packet?
If an internet retailer knows where to deliver the purchase, or knows the billing address of the payment card, or address registered with the originating bank account, then its not hard to determine what tax is due based on the customer location. If a customer tries to avoid taxes by pretending to be somewhere that they are not, then to deter such behaviour, they can be slapped with an almighty penalty under a general anti-avoidance rule. Tax raising bodies need to stop allowing internet retailers using tax to undermine the bricks and mortar retailers. Not everyone can work delivering parcels, or in a warehouse. People are less mobile than internet businesses and so less likely to flit from state to state as they pursue ever lower taxes because of their registered address. The G20 is moving in favour of something called "country-by-country" reporting for corporate taxes on multinationals, it would be a big mistake if an opportunity to demand "state-by-state" reporting were missed.
As long as members of congress are pushing to ionfringe our constitutional rights, which is an illegal act on their part, then We will not recognize anything they try (or succeed) to pass.
If the courts do not stand behind the law, the courts do not have the weight of law.
Yes, actually it's almost impossibly hard to determine tax in so many other locales because of the extreme complexity. There've been many posts made about this, so I'm not going to repeat them here, but here's a quote from this article:
"Cnet kindly reminds us how convoluted this country’s tax structure can be. You can expect to pay sales tax on bottled soda in New Jersey, but not on bottled water, even cookies. A mink handbag is taxed in Rhode Island, but not a mink fur coat. It’s a big mess, in other words."
In addition, there's places where the location isn't good enough, because certain people get a tax and others don't, regardless of their address; this is the case on many Indian reservations.
The Amendment was never properly ratified by the States.
Everyone seems to be missing a key issue here. Everyone is constantly complaining about the high costs of everything. Gasoline? Too expensive. Food? Too expensive. Healthcare? Too expensive. Satellite TV? Too expensive. And on, and on, and on. Why the hell isn't government too expensive? If I have to make do with less, then so does the government.
Most people have never run a business selling something and therefore have no clue how much time it takes to deal with sales taxes. In most states, even if you have no sales in any given month, you still have to file the paperwork. Proponents of this tax keep saying that it will "level the playing field for brick&mortar stores". Bzzzt. Wrong. A mom & pop brick & mortar store only sells locally therefore they don't have to deal with the out-of-state sales taxes. That effectively gives them an advantage rather than leveling the playing field. Furthermore, big box stores such as Wal-mart don't give a damn because they already have an army of accountants to deal with the paperwork.
And then who in each local state government is going to process the paperwork suddenly coming in from 49 other states? Oh, well, gee whiz, we don't have enough bureaucrats to deal with it so we'll have to hire more...and pay them...and give them benefits...and a pension...all at taxpayer expense. But wait, this tax was supposed to close budget shortfalls. Oops. Now you've compounded them.
And ultimately, this will lead to only one thing: inflation. Because nobody is going to take the extra costs up the a$$. They are going to pass it on to the consumer. A VAT tax won't solve this either. In fact it will make it worse because invariably there are sticky fingers all along the government food chain.
What is their physical location? Head office? Warehouse?
This ultimately ends up with them moving to wherever they're subsidised to near no taxation (which only lasts until the taxes rise, then they move). You end up with some town in b**f**k nowhere that serves as the distribution point because they don't charge any tax, and a head-office in India/China/Kerplekistan/etc.
Another county or another country, it won't matter so long as they can dodge the tax-man.
Having read comments on a lot of websites I noticed many people are unaware that while Amazon has the resources to figure out tax code in 50 states, many of us are selling on Amazon and do NOT share the same benefit. We average about 500 sales per day across various marketplaces and it is going to cost a pretty penny to absorb these new requirements. The $1,000,000 threshold is too low - one million in sales does not leave us one million in profit to pay tax companies to figure all this out. A lot of people are forgetting that when you buy on Amazon.com, there is a huge chance you are buying from a small seller like my company. We are not Amazon; and Amazon just sends us a check each month and lets us deal with having to please 50 states and their different tax requirements.
It must be true, because I saw it bolded on the Internet.
If BOLD is true and ITALICS are titles, then BOLD ITALICS would be TRUE LIES ?
I'll be back for your answer.
If a rational person had a rational argument, it is expected that they would make it, rather than resorting to ad hominem. We can conclude, based on the evidence, then, that you are not a rational person and have no rational response.
No taxation without representation! These people need to repeat civics class.
The SCOTUS said in Bowers v. Kerbaugh-Empire Co (1926)
"Income" has been taken to mean the same thing as used in the Corporation Excise Tax of 1909 (36 Stat. 112), in the Sixteenth Amendment, and in the various revenue acts subsequently passed. [cites omitted] After full consideration, this court declared that income may be defined as gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined, including profit gained through sale or conversion of capital.
However, they FAILED TO DEFINE LABOR. Therefore, we must conclude that the government only has the power to tax non-capital-derived income if it is gained through women giving birth. Taxing the income of anyone other than recently pregnant women or obstetricians is UNCONSTITUTIONAL theft.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
Local governments can, and should, be funded from income taxes, receiving a portion of the taxes collected at the state level according to population or some other criteria. If you think sales and use taxes make sense, you haven't thought through the issues. Go back through this thread and read the posts again.
You get the INTERNET, thru your SERVER, DSL or WIFI provider, in practice the "net" itself is Free. This just goes to show, that Assholes like 'HARRY REID' & others of the same ilk, make laws about things they don't even understand. The reality is that the "Congress/. SENATE should have to pass a University exam on whichever subject they decide to make legislature about. Failures should be thrownout of either Congress or Senate, then maybe we would end up with an INTELIGENT Gov't!!
I once tried to figure out taxes on a few grocery receipts and found it nearly impossible with 3 different tax rates applied singly and in combination depending on the category it fell into. I even asked the grocery store's manager and called up the corporate HQ but nobody could explain it. Obviously they must have a method so someone there at least think they know, but I gave up since it was too difficult to do on a regular basis.
First, how is the federal income tax considered possibly unconstitutional?
And the sales tax...when states go and seek businesses to collect from people that are from another state....can definitely be considered trampling on state's rights.
and that whole "taxation without representation" thing.
But aside from that....this is just an insanely stupid bill