Slashdot Mirror
Internet Sales Tax Bill Dead In Congress
jfruh writes: Last year, a bipartisan coalition helped get the Main Street Fairness Act approved by the U.S. Senate. The bill would have allowed state and local governments to collect sales taxes on Internet sales by companies in different jurisdictions. But House Speaker John Boehner, a longtime opponent of Internet taxes, won't bring the matter to a vote in the House before the end of the year, which should kill it for the immediate future.
I already have to pay in-state sales taxes on purchased from Newegg & Amazon, so the big ones are covered. Oh, and if you are just purchasing from the online arm of a brick & mortar store, they've been taking sales tax for a long long time anyway.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
...dunno how long the streak will last, but at least they got this one concept correct.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Who says you can't get blood out of a rock?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
1. It helps small/startup internet merchants. (big ones like Amazon got dragged into paying money to individual states)
2. It helps poor(er) people. Rich obviously do not benefit much from the few meager dollars saved buying stuff on ebay, and the very poor don't do online shopping. So the main beneficiary are lower middle-class people.
Real federalism never enjoyed a consensus among the Founding Fathers, and it was pretty much dead before the War of 1812 anyway. A lot of states receive more funds from the federal government than they contribute to it. So, why should there be state taxes any more? Lots of developed countries have centralized tax collection where it all goes to the central government and then is redistributed to the regions. It's obvious that more and more sales will happen online and cross state borders, so why maintain the facade of empowered states collecting revenue?
I am tired of the revenue grab from those greedy bastards in government.
What should be done is something like...
For businesses which have no presence in a state, allow them to collect a special rate.
Each state's Dept. of Revenue would figure out the average sales tax rate based on the weight and rates in each tax district.
The summation of gross receipts times rate for each district, divided by overall gross receipts for the whole state.
Then there's one special rate that has been determined (based on the previous year's figures) which can be used for out-of-state businesses to collect on. At that point, a special code would be used. They then remit it to that state. So, it simplifies things.
However, I'd probably be fine with large businesses being subject to all state's differing tax codes with small businesses exempted.
GOOD.
Sites that already charge sales tax are an abomination.
I think the only site left that doesn't do it is Tigerdirect. And that was when I lived in Ohio. I live in Texas now and I GUARANTEE they will because Texas doesn't do State Income so they have to nickel and dime you wherever possible.
I love how government goes about naming bills to make them sound a certain way so that voting against them appears evil. I suppose the makers of the bill would argue that they are coming up with a short name that defines the "essence" of the bill. But when you get into the details, it just makes them seem like they are trying to hide something from you ... aka: being politicians.
"Main Street Fairness Act" - It's simply a bill to apply fairness. You don't like fairness?
"Affordable Care Act" - It's just making care affordable. You don't want care to be affordable?
You could have a lot of fun with this actually. Increased NSA surveillance? "Terrorist Identification Act". Or even better "Protecting our Children from Terror Act". Free cars for all politicians? "Political Accessibility Act".
...between online and brick & mortar stores, all a state has to do is abolish its own sales tax. Regressive taxes ought to be illegal, anyway.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I love the amount of absurd people on the internet that are totally on board, unquestoningly, with every thing the government wants to do.
Leave our country, you don't belong here. You may think you do because the nanny state has become normal, but you don't.
"You exploit the fact that states cant force internet retailers".
Skip out on paying your taxes? Oh? What exactly mandates that I should have to pay "sales" taxes to a state government that literally, at every level, had nothing whatsoever to do with me being able to make the transaction?
The only conceivable involvement they ever could have had was in assuming someone in the government signed a paper allowing a telecom to bury fiber or cable lines in my town and that I happen to actually use them. These are forced taxes that no one ever consented to. The American people did not vote on sales taxes in their local areas. The only time I've EVER heard of a situation to the contrary is when I lived in Cincinnati and we wanted to build a new Reds stadium. We did, and we had to raise our taxes to 6.5 percent to allegedly help. I wasn't old enough to vote and don't even know if there was a vote.
States have no right to regulate interstate commerce, period. It is prohibited by the Constitution. No Law can allow them to do it, because such a law would be a flagrant violation of the Constitution.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
thanks to sales tax I can get the same thing (most of the time) cheaper from elsewhere (like NY) (although I've also had serious issues with both Amazon and Newegg's business practices/customer service - personally).
So, a completely unelected position has total control over which bills get put up for a vote??
Corrupt states and cities already do this. I wonder if we can fire them...
Wow, now there will be one heck of a load of butts in chairs and on the phone at Walmart. Amazon will have real competition. With automated stock picking and cheap labor doing packing, inspection and shipping by the bucket load.
Only time will tell whether or not another consumption spending increase along with lowering of wages is the right choice for any economy.
We have gone through "wage controls" without price controls in the past and in result suffered the consequences now it looks like the economists are started to mix some Keynesian economics with a big dose of Charles Darwin and call it monetary policies. I guess it is better than having Uncle Joe ( Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin ) sailing the ship. ;-) cross our fingers.
The states should get together and pay a company to manage a tax collection software that would be freely available to out of state businesses.Tax data accuracy would be the responsibility of the state. The business can collect the tax and keeps a fee like the CC do.
Long time democrat, first time republican voter.
I will say that I glad to see that the democrats are about to learn a very important lesson.
Between this, immigration policies and all the other bad governance policies, I was just fed up with being screwed over by "my" party.
I am so happy that I voted for the right party this time.
This bill was a typical Congressional mistake. Instead of Congress making things fair by taxing internet sales, the states should make things fair by eliminating their sales taxes.
overturn a veto. It would obviously take a few Democrats who have come to come to believe they fucked up when they first voted for it. Republicans will not hold enough seats to overturn a veto by themselves, that's true enough. Depending on how the La. runoff (and Ak...did they declare a winner yet?), GOP could have 54 seats. There are 2 "independents" who are Democrats in all but name. It is very unlikely but not totally unthinkable that 6 Dems or independents could support overturning a veto on at least some parts of Obamacare.
Chances are if your state has a sales tax, it has an equivalent use tax. You are supposed to pay the use tax on goods purchased from out-of-state and imported into your state. So if you didn't cheat on your taxes, the local stores would not be at a disadvantage.
Imagine a store in a state with 0% sales-tax, say, Delaware. Further assume it is close to the border with a state that has a high sales tax, like, hmm, Maryland which is considering a 7% rate. By reputation and the lure of 0% sales tax (by virtue of evading their own local use tax), people from the neighboring state make the short trip to buy their wares. Being a brick-and-mortar store, they charge all their customers the local sales tax rate (0%). They do not care nor ask where their customers are from, there is no question *at all* where the transaction takes place.
The store decides to create a website to allow their loyal customers (and hopefully new customers) to buy things online and have them mailed to them. Under this proposed rule, the store not only have to treat their online customers differently from their in-store customers, but have to comply with 10,000 different tax regimes?
The issue here is that Maryland would and should have zero chance of enforcing its will on Delaware business to force them to act as proxy tax collectors for Maryland's use taxes--the taxes being evaded by Marylanders--even if hoards of Marylanders rolled into Delaware every day to stock up. It is the Marylanders who are violating Maryland's use tax laws. Why is it the responsibility of a store in Delaware to enforce Maryland's use tax laws?
There's no practical difference between Marylanders driving to Delaware to shop compared to Marylanders ordering from a store in Delaware and having the loot delivered.
How is it fair to force a store in Delaware to be a tax collector for a California municipality? And without *any* compensation for the favor, not to mention the overhead of tallying and remitting taxes to all those difference jurisdictions, *plus* the inherent liability should they god forbid make a mistake in their forced servitude as proxy tax collector. I'm sure California would have no problem shutting down a Delaware store for failure to comply with California's tax code.
There is *nothing* unconstitutional about a use tax.
The use tax is imposed on all businesses within the state, and as such can also be imposed on imports.
The constitution prohibits imposing an extra tax on stuff just because it was imported from another state. The use tax is not an extra out-of-state-only tax, so it is perfectly constitutional.
If a state wants to actually help their local retail businesses, then they should eliminate sales tax.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
The interstate commerce clause specifically forbids a state from charging sales tax on interstate commerce. States that want to tax interstate commerce charge a "use tax". Whether such a tax is legal, I don't know.
The commerce clause (Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution) restricts interstate tariffs to those that do not create an "undue burden." Court decisions (e.g., Quill v. North Dakota) have established that placing a collection burden on an out-of-state business that has no physical in-state presence creates such an undue burden; hence the arguments around whether or not Amazon (and others) can be compelled to collect and remit tax for states in which it claims to have no nexus. Requiring customers to remit their own use tax for interstate purchases has not been found to create such an undue burden, and has been in practice since long before the interweb was invented.
i was already taxed on my income so now I can't even spend "my" money without having another cut stolen? everyone buy as little as possible please. fuck the system.
To overturn a veto, a two-thirds majority of both houses must override it. That means 67 votes in the Senate and 290 in the House. So you'd need 13 Democratic votes in the Senate and about 45 in the House (Republicans are estimated to get about 244 seats), which is fairly unlikely to happen at this point.
This is good news for that bill that probably won't pass. But Olama is going after the Internet with the FCC as well now! I hope he doesn't get his way on this part as well!
I'll be happy to pay internet sales tax if they get rid of the unconstitutional income taxes we all are forced to pay.
I live in Florida where there is no state taxes at all. I know we are talking about sales tax but in this particular case (bill) i am not sure if that is intertwined or related at all..???