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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.
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?
> 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.
They have already passed a budget.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324103504578377843045138904.html
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".
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.
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
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.
Considering that taxes officially apply even to barter transactions (not that anyone ever declares them), and especially considering that there was another recent article on here talking about how bitcoin is now subject to many of the same regulations as normal currency (like reporting transactions over a set dollar threshold) then yes. this does.
Of course some currencies and transactions are easier to hide than others, but that doesn't make it legal, only likely.
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
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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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.
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
... 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
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.
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)-