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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.
Less gas wasted on shipping? Considering that the vast majority of consumer goods are not produced locally, how do they get to the local stores?
I think the commerce clause is pretty clear that the constitution authorizes the federal government to regulate interstate commerce. Considering that this bill is specifically targeted towards goods ordered and shipped from out of state, it clearly falls under the purview of the commerce clause. It's not even a taxing bill, since it merely specifies that retailers such as amazon must conform to state and local laws in regards to sale. What is exactly "unconstitutional" about this idea?
> 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.
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".
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.
Wrong on every count.
While people do buy things online out of convenience, that is only one small part of the story. While I would really like to support local business, I can't because of one simple fact -- local stores rarely have what I want. And so I buy a lot of stuff online. If I need something like computer components, the only "local stores" are a Best Buy which only carries an extremely limited range of products at inflated prices and a MicroCenter 50 miles away. Where's the efficiency in that?
If "local stores" had everything that people wanted, then online business couldn't exist. But they don't. And it's not even possible. You can't have gigantic stores that stock millions of items in every city and every small town. That would be ridiculous, horrendously inefficient and unworkable, not to mention unprofitable. But large online businesses, like Amazon, etc. can have a few big warehouses around the country that stock millions of items. This gives consumers greater choices and the ability to buy what they want rather than be limited to whatever is sitting on a shelf in a "local store".
Buying from large centrally located business, like Amazon, Ebay, Newegg, etc is in fact more efficient than 200 million people driving all over the place, going from store to store trying to find what they want.
Also, how do the consumers get to the store?
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.
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.
I'm not a lawyer, but the idea of forcing people to obey laws in jurisdictions other than where they're located seems wrong to me. How on earth is anyone supposed to figure out what the law is in tens of thousands of different jurisdictions across the country? It's impossible.
If they want to fix the sales tax "loophole", at the federal level, it's easy: pass a law requiring e-merchants to collect sales tax based on the merchant's physical location. That's already the way it is if you buy stuff in person: you dont pay sales tax based on your home address, you pay based on where the store is. Why should e-commerce be any different? Moreover, if you have some dispute with the tax authorities, it'd only be the authorities in your own state and locality, not some authorities 2500 miles away in some state and small town you've never heard of or visited before, and you'd go to your local courthouse to resolve the dispute, instead of being required to fly across the country to do so.
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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