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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."
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
They have to keep pretending that they have a 'strong dollar policy'.
You can't handle the truth.
don't forget spending it on our chief exports, death and maiming and tools for same.
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.
One day in the next decade or two that policy will start to collapse and drag the rest of the country into a hole.
The USA is already in default. Every time they modify Social Security benefits they are saying they failed to plan properly and are declaring default to address the issue.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The dollar is strong if you measure its value relative to something useless like gold--increasing 30% since 2011. Of course nobody wants to face the facts and compare it to something with INTRINSIC VALUE like rhodium or palladium, but that's just because everyone but me and you are idiots.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
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.
> 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.
No, but the people buying the products are.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
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".
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/
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.
What part of the government picking up the slack is capitalism?
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)
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
What are you talking about? This doesn't change anything. You were supposed to be paying that tax anyways, if you live in a state with sales and use taxes. All this does is make it so that your state and local governments get the taxes they're owed.
If you don't like this, then push your officials to change over to an income tax from a sales tax.
There are a number of fringe arguments that the sixteenth amendment, allowing an income tax, wasn't properly ratified.
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.
"The retailers are not paying the tax. They are only collecting it."
But don't the politicians know that people buy guns on the internet? They'll end up in a register somewhere and we all know that can never be, so this will get shut down.
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.
"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.
You're a retard. If you buy a gun on the internet, it's shipped to a local FFL that performs a background check before it's handed over to you.
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 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
you really think sales tax is just about that? it's a tax on the value the company made to the product by acting as the mover for the product. you might not agree that it's a good taxing system to tax trade, but as long as you do it doesn't make much sense that if you order from the next state, possibly just a stones throw away, you would gain a tax advantage by ordering it via post.
from outside of USA perspective it has taken ridiculous amount of time for the americans to sort out the sales tax issue - so long that it's amazing that _all_ trade in USA hasn't just moved to online sales as a runaround on the tax(and explains a lot of amazon managed to do profits). say, all purchases done in nevada being moved technically to have been done in california and vice versa.
of course, it's fucking ridiculous how the prices in shops don't include the sales tax on shown prices but still ask it at the counter!
at least europe has some sense in this, the price advertised includes the value added tax and if you buy from different country within the eu you pay the vat to the country you ordered from and don't pay taxes on it when receiving it. it's a pretty simple system. and when ordering from outside the eu if it's expensive enough you'll pay the vat(+possible customs fees etc..).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
That's irrelevant. Here's an analogy for you:
John lives in New Jersey, but only a few miles away from the Pennsylvania state line. The nearest town from him is 20 miles away, but just 3 miles away from him is Stroudsburg, PA, a decently-sized town. Because of proximity, naturally John regularly drives over the border to this town to do all his grocery shopping and other shopping. Which state does John pay his sales tax to? Simple: it all goes to Pennsylvania, not New Jersey which he resides in. Sales tax is levied at the merchant's location, not the customer's.
Here's another similar analogy: it's 1975, and the internet doesn't exist. John wants to buy a quadrophonic stereo system, and he wants a particular model. No one in his state has the model he wants, however he calls around a lot (costing him a pretty penny in long-distance charges), and finds one at a specialty retailer in Boston, several states away. He doesn't want to trust any private shippers or the USPS with delivering this expensive piece of delicate equipment, so he drives 5 hours to Boston to pick it up in person. At the shop there, he has to pay sales tax. Does the retailer charge him based on his home address? Of course not; he has to pay the exact same sales tax that any local Bostonite would, and that tax money goes to Massachusetts and Boston (assuming Boston has a separate municipal sales tax as many cities do). John's home state of New Jersey doesn't get a cent.
So will someone please explain why these sales tax initiatives require the retailer to charge tax based on the customer's location, rather than the retailer's location? If I set up a shop in Kansas (with no mail orders or internet orders), all my customers, no matter how far they drive to visit me, will have to pay sales tax to the state of Kansas. It doesn't matter if they have an Oregon driver's license and try to argue they don't owe tax because OR has no sales taxes. If you're in KS and buy something, yo pay KS sales tax. So why should it be an different for internet sales? It'd surely make calculations a lot easier for any merchants, big or small, and be a boon to their localities and states. Of course, one might argue that a bunch of merchants might move their operations to tax-free jurisdictions like OR, but that's just too bad for high-tax states, and besides, many small business people don't have the capital to just pack up and move cross-country based on this one factor, or they might not be willing to leave all their family and friends just because of that. And secondly, for large corporations with operations in many states, this would complicate things and would certainly require special legislation so they can't just stick a small office in a tax-free state to avoid charging sales tax.
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.
That's not alway true. I live in Oregon, and I buy stuff in Washington and fill out a short, simple form with my Oregon ID and pay no sales tax. Washington has what most states have now, a "use based" sales tax which means it depends not upon where the item is sold, but where it's primary use will be, which means the tax actually does depend upon the resident's location. I know this because I've recently had to implement such a system for a Washington and Oregon based business with almost 200 retail location. between the two states.
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!
Government intervention in this case is socialism, not capitalism.
Whether for, or against, is irrelevant, but if we are arguing these things let's make sure we use the correct terms. It could be argued that without the socialist handouts that these people would starve and that should be avoided, (the socialist solution) or it could be argued that without those socialist handouts the people would not accept the lower wages and wages would go up as people refused to work at the lower wages (the capitalist solution)
In this post I will not advocate for one solution over the other, however we do ourselves an extreme disservice if we do not even recognize which is which.
Government regulation and services are by definition the opposite of free market capitalism. That doesn't make them good or bad, it simply is something one should keep in mind when advocating on either side of the issue.
If you think we need more capitalism and less socialism, don't advocate for more government interference.
If you think we need less capitalism and more socialism, don't advocate for less government interference.
And the same is true when you buy a car over state lines, which I've done. You can opt to pay the sales tax in the state you purchased the car or in the state you use the car - either way, at the time of registration you either need to prove you've paid sales tax on the car in any state (receipt) or failing that pay sales tax in the state you want to register the car in.
However, if I buy anything out of state, I am required to report it and pay the tax on it in California by law.
Anything purchased online or physically out of state needs to be reported and taxes paid.
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
Does that also apply when you've already paid taxes in the state where the purchase was made? So if I drive to the next state, and eat a meal there, and pay taxes on that meal (let's say that the taxes are actually higher in the restaurant's state than in my own), then I'm supposed to pay taxes again in my own state? That's double taxation, and doesn't sound quite right.
Ok, so how does some little independently-owned mom-n-pop coffee shop in Washington handle it when someone visits from out-of-state, or from any other taxing jurisdiction for that matter?
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.
So which rate do you pay?
Sales tax can vary but city, county, and state.
If i buy something from out of state, which combination of those possible six should I pay?
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.
I am not sure your argument, but the way you say 'you fucking people' makes me think a few things
1. you pay alot of taxes and you assume it just goes to everyone else
2. you have the ability to leave the country.
So if 'you fucking people' are USA citizens, your answer is to leave the country. Dont worry, nobody is going to cry cause your .0001 cents is missing from what ever those fucking people are using it for.
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.)
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
exactly what state subsidized utilities does a brick/mortar use?
Educated help, but at the same time, the educated help makes more money who then are likely to buy products from all over.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
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
The way most use taxes work for "normal" purchases - say anything that's not licensed and taxed like a car or boat - is that you have to pay the use tax if you purchased your product from a state that does not have a sales tax. If you physically go to a state that DOES have a sales tax, then it gets tricky. You either pay NO use tax for that item, because you were already taxed for it, or you may be asked to pay the difference between their sales tax and your local sales tax, if your tax is lower.
The problem with a use tax is most people, and states for that matter, don't take it seriously. Even if you do, it can quickly add up to a significant records and accounting burden, even for an individual, if you use the internet semi-frequently for purchases. Not just records, but one most somehow put the funds aside - and most banks don't make it easy to have multiple accounts without tacking on additional fines of their own. (A separate account, in my mind, being one of the better methods to make sure you don't spend money that was meant for that once a year tax.) For that matter, the individual may not *know* what's taxable in their area. Some states tax just physical goods, but not software. Some tax professional services, while others don't. Some tax some physical goods, or foods, but not others. A business would need to be aware of all these nuances. Technically, so should individuals in states with a use tax, but most of us don't.
Even more complicated, and currently unconstitutional, is inter-state sales tax. Most states do not require a vendor to pay a sales tax if he is shipping an item out of state so that said vendor can remain competitive with other vendors. (It wouldn't be unconstitutional to require that vendor to collect sales tax for every purchase, shipped out of state or not, but it might make it difficult for the local vendor to compete with somebody from a state with no sales tax.) Further, inter-state taxing, where the vendor in CA basically collects a NY sales tax and sends that tax to NY is, at this moment, unconstitutional. And, as others have pointed out, could be a records keeping nightmare, especially for smaller retailers, as there are separate taxes not just for the 50 states, but also for counties and cities.
The sales / use tax issue is something that has only recently become a "real" issue. There were always purchases from out of state via catalogs, or simply driving over the border to make purchases, and potentially large out of state purchases by companies. (Often, on the individual level, states kinda wink, wink, nudge, nudge encouraged individuals to do this. Sure, live in Vancouver, WA, where we have no property tax, but do all your grocery shopping in Portland, OR, where they have no sales tax. It ends up being a net gain for us, because we get your INCOME tax.) It's the advent of the internet, and big retailers on the internet like Amazon that have really brought the issue to a head.
In my mind, this may end up being one of the issues that *should* be adjusted by an amendment. Done properly, in my mind, the amendment would work something like this:
Each retailer that does X$ or more of out of state commerce, adjustable by congress to accommodate inflation, etc., must collect individual state taxes. They may use our SYSTEM X, developed with tax payer money and available for free, or for a small fee, in both an online and offline system. If they use this system, they may submit their taxes either via direct deposit at time of purchase, direct deposit monthly, or may send a check into this account, which the federal government will be responsible for distributing to the states. On offline mode *WILL* be available so one is not crippled if the internet goes down. If requested, the feds will even ship a physical catalog that one may use, though one will pay the cost of printing and shipping the catalog.
It will *NOT* be required to use the fed system. One may keep track of the taxes themselves, or through a third party like Quic
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.
What this example really shows is that sales tax, for all of the theoretical perfection it has, is probably the tax structure with the highest frictional cost. Between the bureaucracy required to figure out who pays what, to the individuals that need to file the reams of paperwork to document what was paid when, to the time wasted by consumers attempting to estimate tax on a purchase, just pick any other way to raise revenue, it'll be better.
Besides which, despite attempts to exempt categories of goods from sales tax, it also winds up being a pretty regressive structure; rich people may spend a lot of money, but the portion of their annual income spent on taxable goods is small compared to someone in the middle class.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
No, it shows that sales tax, as currently implemented in the Unites States, is a horrible mess and has a high frictional cost. It doesn't mean it has a high frictional cost all the time; if they wiped out all state and local sales taxes, and replaced them with a single federal sales tax, it'd be easy and would have much lower enforcement costs than federal income tax does (since you'd only need to collect from companies in this scenario, not individuals). I believe that's sorta how it's done in the EU with their VAT.
You are right about it being regressive in theory, but I'm not so sure that's true in practice. It's pretty hard to evade sales taxes: retailers won't sell things to you unless you pay it on the spot. But rich people come up with all kinds of crazy ways of avoiding income tax. The main problem with trying to tax rich people on purchases is that they frequently go out of the country to buy things, though I suppose if they go for a shopping trip in Paris they're going to pay a lot more tax there than they would in Manhattan, but I wonder what the tax rates are for megayachts built in the EU. Also, don't forget the costs of enforcement: I've read that the IRS uses 1/3 of the money it collects just to operate its own bureaucracy. So theoretically, if you replaced income taxes with sales taxes, you'd only need about 2/3 as much revenue, as sales taxes surely don't require remotely as much money and resources to enforce.
I wonder if that Cain guy was onto something with his 8-8-8 idea.
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.
If you don't see that as "too much government", then I don't know what the fuck is.
Which is just fine and that's your responsibility; not the retailers. You are the one with ties to the state you live in; not the online retailer.
I mean, unless we just want to ditch the tenth amendment. Let's ONLY have federal laws and let's force them to trump state laws. Then we can tax the ever loving shit out of everyone and we can squash those pesky states that are allowing things like gay marriage and pot smoking, while we're at it.
Or... are we just gonna pick and choose when we give a shit about the tenth amendment and when we don't?
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
Presumably the one that would apply if there were a physical store in your living room that you bought from. But I'm assuming the new law, when passed, will address this question...
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
So then there needs to be a nationwide sales tax.
Also that's kind the issue we have now. Amazon and other places do not have a physical location in most states.
The Walmart near me shares my cities roads, utilities, etc... Amazon does not. Should I pay the city they are using those services in, or my own where they are not?
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
Why?
You seem awfully focused on the idea that sales tax is meant to compensate an area for the resources a business uses, but this generally isn't the case. Applying it at the purchase location spreads the money around more or less evenly, rather than concentrating it in Delaware or wherever Amazon is incorporated.
Also, you claim that Amazon "doesn't share your roads and utilities" like Wal-Mart does... but how do you think Amazon gets a package to your doorstep? They're using your city's roads, and the local last-mile UPS center uses the utilities. If you live in one of the 20-something states where Amazon has a fulfillment center, they or their subsidiary's warehouses are also using the roads and facilities. Why would you want to lock that sales tax to the one state where Amazon is legally headquartered? Frankly, that seems even worse than the current situation (where individuals are SUPPOSED to report sales tax for their online purchases, and most people are just breaking the law).
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
The End.
And hopefully, slapped in the face with a fish. One of the prickly fish, if there is justice in this world.
Quickbooks is already more than capable of dealing WITH EVERY SALES TAKE JURISDICTION IN THE UNITED STATES.
If as a business, you can't use quickbooks or something more capable, you don't deserve to be in business. Surely the TEAM of programmers they have dealing can manage to buy a copy of the tax rates based on locality and then charge it based on the billing address.
This isn't rocket science. Its not even hard. If the data is in a SQL database, its not even a mildly complex.
Next time UPS flies a package to your door, let me know. I'ld love to know how they get those packages to your door without driving down your local roads.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Then why don't you leave America, Libertarian douchetard? Go Galt and head off to magickal libertarian Jesus freemarketopia where there is no evil government to tax and destroy. At the very least you should give up on using the internet, which was developed by the Department of Defense and resolve to never again use GPS or to drive on public roads or highways or to use any other service provided by government since every time you do so you are implicitly giving them consent to pay for these services with taxes.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
All of them?
Are you serious?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
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
Explain ... without being a nut job (too late) how this makes it any more difficult for you to buy something online.
Walmart online collects sales tax. Amazon doesn't. They work THE EXACT SAME. How exactly are you losing anything other than the money you were ALREADY RESPONSIBLE FOR to the IRS?
The only effect this has on you is that it won't allow you to commit fraud when you file your taxes at the end of the year and claim you don't owe additional taxes.
This actually makes it EASIER ON YOU as you ARE NO LONGER RESPONSIBLE FOR MONITORING THE TAX YOURSELF, AS YOU ARE REQUIRED BY LAW CURRENTLY.
Again, how does this make it harder?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
"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.
Just for clarity:
Forget local laws for the moment as I don't know the specifics for California and they don't change because of this so just ignore them for the moment, until the end.
You are in State A, say California
'The Store' is in State B, North Carolina.
'The Store' has no presence in California. (If it did, it would already collect tax on you and this discussion wouldn't apply)
California and North Carolina don't even like each other for sake of argument.
If you are in State A, buying from a store in state B, but with no presense in state A, then state A MAY (at its discretion) require the store in State B to pay taxes back to state A. The taxes payed would be based on the BUYERS location and paid to that municipality (in principal, states may do it differently as its up to the state to even do it if they want to according to the bill). The BUYERS state, State A in this case, is where the taxes are meant to be. The Store just doesn't want to have to do the work or have the price difference.
You are ALREADY responsible for said taxes.
The difference is that currently, a State A can not require company in State B to pay taxes for the sale to you. This bill is an attempt to fix that loophole, so state A can then enforce its sales tax requirements on the seller rather than expecting you to actually report the out of state tax on your forms at the end of the year.
In both cases you already own the tax to your local state, the difference is that the store can be required to collect it rather than expecting you to tell the state about it at the end of the year.
If there is no tax in State A then state A isn't going to tax you. If there is a tax in state B, they might, but that would have no relation to this bill at all. State B could already choose to tax your purchase via the retailer that is In its state already under State B's control.
Basically, the idea is to prevent Amazon from setting up shop in Billings Montana, and selling shit and never collecting any tax across the entire nation ... to the point that states have noticed the drop in income.
All the bill does is change who is responsible for actually writing a check to YOUR (State A) states IRS office.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
When you make ridiculous statements like yours, no one listens. Try to come off as less of a nut job and you'll get more attention. I mean, you're still a nut job so you're going to have to work at it, but if you're less obvious you'll do better with the trolling.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Sales tax is levied at the merchant's location, not the customer's.
Thats all well and good for your examples because in each case, the transaction occurred at the merchant's location. What's the point of sale for amazon.com or a bid on ebay? Is it where you enter your credit card on your PC in your home state? The home of the guy you're buying from? The warehouse where its shipped from? Or the server that handles the transaction? It seems to me your examples break down when you apply them to online sales.
Also, you claim that Amazon "doesn't share your roads and utilities" like Wal-Mart does... but how do you think Amazon gets a package to your doorstep?
Actually it is the delivery company that Amazon.com paid to deliver the package is the entity that uses the local roads that they help pay for. That delivery company (unless it is the USPS and even then I am not sure) pays license fees and fuel taxes which are suppose to be for funding the roads at the state level they also pay property taxes in the city where they have their facility to support their infrastructure. My local property taxes in part go to the local roads (as well as schools, fire protection, police protection, other stuff) so I still don't see why amazon should pay local sales taxes to support local infrastructure that they do not use.
Time to offend someone
No, you didn't. Where'd you get that idea? There's no way that some mom-n-pop mail order company in 1975 had the ability to figure the proper sales tax for 10,000 different tax jurisdictions across the country, just as they don't now. Sears Robuck wasn't the only mail order company back then.
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.
No, it's no different at all: the point of sale is the location of the merchant (for smaller merchants; for really big merchants it's not so simple, but that's not the issue here because it's the small merchants that are crying foul about the burden of dealing with this).
Here's an example: Bob has an old-tyme hardware store in Sometown, MO, population 500. He doesn't have an internet site at all, or any kind of mail-order business. His only concessions to modern times are a telephone, and a credit-card terminal, since so many people even in this small town pay for everything with debit and credit cards. His town is near a state line, so some customers drive over the line to visit his store as there's no closer store on their side. They all pay MO sales tax when they show up in person. However, sometimes one of them doesn't feel like making the drive that day, and just calls him up and asks him to send a part in the mail, which he's happy to do since business is slow and the Post Office is a 1-minute walk away. They pay for it with credit card, read over the phone. What tax do they pay? Bob just charges them the regular sales tax for his state and town. The transaction is no different than if the customer had walked into the store, except that now the customer is having a third party transport the goods for him.
Before you jump on the third-party transport aspect, having a third party transport your goods doesn't change the tax you pay either: you still pay the tax based on the merchant's location. If you drive across a state line (or just to a neighboring town, where there's a different municipal sales tax) to a furniture store and buy a new bed, which of course you have no way of transporting in your Prius, they charge you tax based on their location, even though the bed is going to be transported (for an additional fee) by either their truck or a contracted freight service to your home address. They don't charge you based on your home address.
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.
When filing Vermont State Taxes, you have to either claim all your purchases made out of state, and pay sales tax, or pay an additional percentage in tax on your income. This is due to the fact that a large portion of the population in Vermont shops in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, (a city with many stores and which borders Vermont) where there is no sales tax.
Are you sure you have the right amendment? The 10th states that powers not granted to the federal government, nor prohibited to the states, are reserved to the states or the people. And according to the Commerce Clause, the federal government is the one with the power to regulate commerce among the states. Now granted, the Commerce Clause has been abused to hell and back. But if I, a Marylander, purchase something via the internet or a mail-order catalog from a company in California, how does that not legitimately fall under the Commerce Clause?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Because all levels of govt, especially the Feds, don't give a fuck all about small businesses, even though they have historically been the backbone of employment and business in the US.
More regulations and all, are just another brick in the wall, so to speak, squashing out the small business.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Perhaps, but that still doesn't answer my question. Let's change it a little:
It's not just the small companies that don't bother checking where you're from when you buy something at their local brick&mortar shop.
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 $1,000,000 threshold is too low - one million in sales does not leave us one million in profit to pay tax companies to figure all this out. A lot of people are forgetting that when you buy on Amazon.com, there is a huge chance you are buying from a small seller like my company. We are not Amazon; and Amazon just sends us a check each month and lets us deal with having to please 50 states and their different tax requirements.
Right, just about every state has a "use tax" that people are supposed to file with their state income taxes. Of course, almost no one actually does. Do Vermonters really claim all their NH purchases?
The way it's done in the UK is that the shop (whether it's a small corner shop, or a large chain) charges you the tax anyway and gives you a receipt with a tax breakdown (as they're required to do on request, by the law). Then you take the receipt to a tax reclaiming kiosk with proof that you're not a UK national and are only there for a short time (holiday or the like), and they give you a refund for the tax. (They tend to be at airports, for obvious reasons; they wouldn't really be required anywhere else.) This way, the shops don't have to worry about establishing whether someone's meant to pay tax or not; all that complex handling can be centralized.
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
I don't know about the USA (since I live here, and am not a foreign tourist), but Canada is much the same. Americans visiting Canada can fill out a form and get some of the taxes back which they paid while on vacation in Canada.
If that's good enough for tourists, maybe it should be good enough for everyone else, including internet shoppers. Charge the tax based on the merchant's locale, and if the shopper thinks it's wrong, they can file a form to reclaim it. If that's too much work for the government, maybe they should eliminate these sales taxes and switch to a national sales tax instead.
in short, if this John here lives in belgium and he buys ... let's say a first print version of a zelazny novel from a guy living in say California if this law would apply then the guy selling me the second-hand crisp book to be put in a shrine and worshipped forever would have to add the tax to the price and charge it through to me ?
or does it only get more expensive for u.s.-residents but not the rest of the world ?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
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".
Truer words...
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
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!!
They don't. What's SUPPOSED to happen is the buyer pays use tax in his/her home state. Really.
About 0% of people do so.
Since even the US Gov't realizes it isn't practical to go after the large majority of it's population they're shifting the burdon (or trying to) to those selling instead. Retailers are jumping onboard pointing at amazon and crying "no fair no fair no fair." Of course 'fair' for them is at the expense of...drumroll...the consumer of course. I'd totally continue to shop at a retailer that lobbied to make things from their competitors cost me more. Or not.
It would be better if we had a practical tax system instead of the nickel and dime charge this, deduct that, but charge this and don't deduct that while writing off this other unrelated thing and claiming a tax credit for a goat herding initiative in Somalia.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
You can't just have a federal sales tax. How would you fund state/city/town governments? Since this tax rate would have to be significantly higher people would have a much greater motivation to shop in the lower tax towns/cities ... which further acerbates the problem.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
They don't. What's SUPPOSED to happen is the buyer pays use tax in his/her home state. Really.
No, they aren't, because they already paid sales tax in the foreign state. You're only supposed to pay use tax when you didn't pay any sales tax for an item. I'm pretty sure there's usually some kind of exemption if you paid sales tax at the seller's location, and there might be some clauses dealing with differences between the tax rates.
What'd be better is if we shifted the burden entirely to the seller, and made it so the seller charged the sales tax rate applicable in their own jurisdiction. Then, the seller's states (and cities) would get all the sales tax from sales by that seller, making it very appealing for cities and states to court sellers to live in their states. Having the consumer be responsible for paying sales and use taxes, and trying to figure things out when they buy stuff in other states (whether by internet/mail-order sales or on a road trip) is a ridiculous burden and practically impossible, so it should be banned entirely. I think we need a federal law banning all collection of sales and use taxes by the States from consumers altogether, and the only taxes allowed are those levied on sellers/merchants, by their own states of residence/operation, to be collected by those merchants and remitted only to their own states and cities of residence. This would make everything far, far simpler and avoid all these arguments.
If states need more money from their residents, they can raise property taxes or income taxes, since those are fairly easy to calculate and deal with (well, income tax at the state level is pretty easy at any rate, since it's usually "enter your AGI from form 1040 on this line, and then multiply by X%, and this is your state tax". Federal income tax is another matter entirely.).
You can have a federal sales tax, though you'd need a Constitutional Amendment to do so. Anyway, to fund state/city/town governments, there's many options:
1) get the money from the Federal government, perhaps somehow calculated from the Federal sales tax received and allotted by population, or which states it came from, etc. i.e., if the Federal government gets $100B from Montana businesses in sales tax, it sends it all back to Montana to use. Having it collected at the Federal level just simplifies the collection and remittance, and fixes the whole "internet sales tax" debate, and also eliminates the problem of having differing rates.
2) Town/city governments are already mostly funded by property taxes, not sales taxes. Let them increase those if they need to. Cities that have excessive property taxes will have excessive rents and mortgage payments, and people will move to lower-tax locales. People are already fleeing New Jersey because of this. No one can afford to retire there because the property taxes keep going up, and are already #1 in the nation.
3) State governments already have their own income taxes.
4) There's various other taxes that states and cities levy on all kinds of different things: gasoline, cigarettes, alcohol, permits, etc.
You speak from inexperience. Something about walking a mile in my shoes...
If the data is in a SQL database, its not even a mildly complex.
While I understand this is /. and all ... consider the OTHER people who sell things - online, mail order, ebay, or other - and have no clue what SQL even is. Hell, plenty of people HERE wouldn't know a simple SQL query.
If as a business, you can't use quickbooks or something more capable, you don't deserve to be in business.
Entering every purchase into quickbooks to figure out sales tax and generate an invoice...BEFORE the buyer can complete the purchase? Or having to code a link between your shopping app and quickbooks? Or finding a ecommerce app that already has every tax jurisdiction accurately set up? ... not to mention who is responsible if they get one wrong somehow?
NO ONE is doing this today. No company has a physical presence in every tax jurisdiction and thus the requirement to tax every single order. Is it impossible? No. Is it easy? Nyet. Is it reasonable for small businesses? Can't say it is.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
If you think state tax i as simple as taking x% of a line from your 1040...please stop reading and leave the discussion. You're in so far over your head I can't even...
For the rest...
I'm not an expert, but I believe you're incorrect about how sales tax is supposed to work. Either way, it's obviously horribly complex and we can agree that buyers are basically ignoring/exploiting it. If you remove that, you add a major tax burden back on individuals. Basically raising the cost of goods by several percent in a substantial portion of sales. THAT won't do our economy any favors.
Beyond that, shifting the burden entirely to the seller based on their location? Impractical. I'll simply pick locale with the least (or no) sales tax or the best tax breaks (for larger companies who can negotiate such) and bypass tax once again. Consider how NY forced Amazon to charge sales tax on items sold to NY residents. The tax model is based on the buyer's location currently ... a use tax.
Sellers are taxed - they pay income tax. They *collect* tax on behalf of the state/city/etc.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Yes, that's FAR simpler.
1-Let the US gov't collect tax from every state and then based on some magical "fair" formula re-distribute it. I'm *sure* that won't turn into a lobbying for fairness similar to all the current federal tax breaks/funding/etc. we have now.
2-so your idea is to just give the finger to large cities and crash their economy by forcing people out? Brilliant.
3-yes they do but forcing them to use only that is a huge shift to the tax environment. Better or worse is an argument that's not likely to end
4-once again, it shifts the tax burden to specific areas while other's pay less/nothing. While we're at it, how about anyone who smokes also makes a car payment for their neighbor?
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
If you think state tax i as simple as taking x% of a line from your 1040...please stop reading and leave the discussion. You're in so far over your head I can't even...
State tax IS as simple as that. At least, that's as simple as it is in Arizona; I don't know about your state. If you disagree, then prove it's not that simple, otherwise STFU with your accusations. (Yes, it's slightly more complex than that, with some additional deductions for a tiny minority of residents, but for the vast majority of residents that's as simple as it is; get your AGI, subtract a standard or itemized deduction, subtract your exemptions, calculate your tax, and you're done, and then at the bottom decide if you want to contribute some extra money to one or more special funds, like the wildlife fund, the child abuse prevention fund, the Special Olympics fund, the clean elections fund, and the "I didn't pay enough" fund--yes there's really a fund for that on the tax form.)
If you remove that, you add a major tax burden back on individuals. Basically raising the cost of goods by several percent in a substantial portion of sales. THAT won't do our economy any favors.
First, how does reducing taxes increase the cost of goods? I call BS on that idea.
And second, I never said sales taxes should be eliminated altogether, only that the entire scheme should be reworked so that they're collected only by sellers, for use in the seller's jurisdiction, to keep things simple and avoid all these arguments and complexity over wondering if Joe Schmoe lives on one side of some imaginary line or the other because there's some weird law somewhere that only residents on the north side of the street have to pay some extra sales tax. This wouldn't eliminate taxes at all, only simplify their enforcement, and end the whole internet sales tax debate.
Sellers are taxed - they pay income tax.
No, they don't. Corporations (esp. large ones) don't pay income taxes. Go look at how much tax Amazon paid last year.
Beyond that, shifting the burden entirely to the seller based on their location? Impractical. I'll simply pick locale with the least (or no) sales tax or the best tax breaks (for larger companies who can negotiate such) and bypass tax once again.
So what? States are free to raise or lower their taxes if they wish, to compete. They could even give special tax advantages to warehouse shippers if they want.
The tax model is based on the buyer's location currently ... a use tax.
You talk of use tax and you call my idea "impractical", when NO ONE pays use taxes because there's no way to enforce them? And you actually think it's somehow practical for small internet sellers to figure out how much tax they need to charge everyone nationwide, and somehow send checks to 9600 different tax jurisdictions?
2-so your idea is to just give the finger to large cities and crash their economy by forcing people out? Brilliant.
Are you really that simple-minded? NYC and Silicon Valley have probably the highest costs of living in the country, and most likely very high taxes as well. Do you see people flocking away from those cities and moving to Montana for the low taxes and cost-of-living? No, they keep going to the big cities because that's where all the high-paying jobs are.
And if some cities/states do have a problem with too many people leaving, then maybe they should lower their taxes (or perhaps try to find a way to bring in more good jobs to attract people despite the taxes). I don't see many people complaining about the taxes in Manhattan, and there aren't miles of empty brownstones there either.
3-yes they do but forcing them to use only that is a huge shift to the tax environment. Better or worse is an argument that's not likely to end
I never said there'd be no sales taxes, just that they'd be collected differently, and probably of a different amount.
4-once again, it shifts the tax burden to specific areas while other's pay less/nothing.
How would anyone pay nothing? My simple proposal in this thread (which is a very different from my proposal in the other thread you replied to) was for the Federal government to have a single sales tax (much like the VAT in EU), and dole that out to states. States with no sales tax currently would obviously benefit. States with very high sales taxes would probably get less. What's the problem with that? Taxes change all the time, and even more, revenues change drastically, as they depend on the economy. It's governments' job to keep up with that and keep their spending in line with the tax revenue. If they can't do that, then too bad. There's no way to guarantee a particular tax revenue in any year (since again, this depends on the economy), so I don't see why changing around the tax scheme is a problem. You're never going to have any progress if you don't shake things up once in a while, and rework things.
Let's get one thing clear: Amazon is not paying sales tax. Amazon is (under this hypothetical law) collecting sales tax on behalf of the buyer, who local law says is obligated to pay a tax on any purchases they make to their local government. Same as with in-person purchases.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
State tax IS as simple as that. At least, that's as simple as it is in Arizona; I don't know about.....
You don't know about. For one, federal income tax is, in theory, about that simple too. Reality differs greatly. Check yourself, I'm not getting paid to educate you.
First, how does reducing taxes increase the cost of goods? I call BS on that idea....
Again, you just don't get it. First, define "sellers location" for us. That's the problem vexing tax collection NOW. As for the increase - internet sales that bypass sales tax suddenly get hit with it. In 2011 ecommerce was ~$255 billion. Let's say half of that went untaxed (probably much higher) and now we're taxing at ... 5%? That's $13 billion in additional taxes.
Sellers are taxed - they pay income tax.
No, they don't. Corporations (esp. large ones) don't pay income taxes. Go look at how much tax Amazon paid last year.
Straw man. Corporate tax shelters are an entirely different problem and discussion.
So what? States are free to raise or lower their taxes if they wish, to compete. They could even give special tax advantages to warehouse shippers if they want.
Which tax rate applies? See above.
You talk of use tax and you call my idea "impractical", when NO ONE pays use taxes because there's no way to enforce them? And you actually think it's somehow practical for small internet sellers to figure out how much tax they need to charge everyone nationwide, and somehow send checks to 9600 different tax jurisdictions?
Can purple eat from square rainbow? Sorry, my brain almost exploded because you can't seem to follow the discussion. I'm not suggesting a use tax, I'm explaining that we have (a broken) one now which you don't seem able to grasp. Buyers are supposed to remit the unpaid taxes but they typically don't. The proposed legislation will punish the SELLERS for what they buyers are doing.
Your original analogy/suggestion/proposal entirely ignores the definition of location in the modern world. Even take a simple ebay seller...their storefront exists on ebay servers in some datacenter. Their 'office' exists in their living room. Their warehouse exists in their garage...and in china because they drop-ship...and in another state because they sell for their cousin who's parents died. Do you really think the tax code for this will be SIMPLE and appropriate for small time sellers?
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
I don't have a problem with that but stating that somehow they are are not paying for services that they used is what I was attempting to disprove. Amazon is not using the infrastructure in you city or state unless they have a presence there. Also most (probably all but I don't know for sure) have a use tax that is equal to their sales tax for items you bring into the state that were purchased elsewhere to recoup the loss of sales tax. The problem is that it requires you the individual to self report it and barely anyone does.
Time to offend someone