Slashdot Mirror
eBay Urges Customers To Oppose Washington Internet Tax (knkx.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KNKX: If you live in Washington state, you might have gotten the email from eBay. It begins: "The Washington State Legislature is threatening to impose new Internet sales tax burdens on you." It goes on to urge the recipient to send a form letter to Washington lawmakers opposing "harmful tax laws." So what's this about? EBay's Brian Bieron said the company is alerting its customers to a proposal to require out-of-state retailers to collect sales tax from Washington residents. "It's the right of all of our users to know when new tax policies would impact their ability to sell online or shop online, we think that they want to know and they want to get involved," Bieron said. The fact eBay is emailing its customer base now indicates the company is concerned the internet tax bill will be part of a final budget deal in Olympia. Washington House Democrats and Senate Republicans are currently trying to hash out a compromise budget that fully fund schools. That agreement will likely include some additional sources of tax revenue. Of all the choices on the table, capturing sales tax from more online sales might prove the most palatable to tax-averse Republicans. House Democrats estimate the proposal could bring in an estimated $341 million over the next two years.
Then why the special tax?
Washington state (of which I am a resident) already requires purchasers to pay - after the fact - a tax on out-of-state purchases which is equivalent to the in-state sales tax. The problem is, the state has no way of knowing what you've bought from, say, an online retailer in New York. So, being based on the "honor system", almost no one actually pays this tax.
This new solution is basically trying to get out-of-state businesses to collect that already-owed tax at the time of purchase.
#DeleteChrome
Here is more information on the so-called "Use Tax".
#DeleteChrome
Attempt to prevent you from selling/shipping items to people in the state... as they long have with Alibaba.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Finally! Both sides agree on something. The dollar amount.
But this is Slashdot. And we obsess over things like units. Could we have that in Bitcoin?
Have gnu, will travel.
Sales tax is a regressive tax that disproportionately hurts working families. Raise capital gains and top margin rates instead. Folks who spend their entire earnings getting by shouldn't be looked at as walking dollar signs.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
States do not have the right to tax interstate commerce. That is right out of the constitution just like the feds can't tax intrastate commerce. The exception is as others have stated is the Nexus rule. I should not have to collect/pay taxes for a jurisdiction that is thousands of miles away from my only location. As for Ebay. technically they don't sell anything, they provide a platform for others to sell. Their interest is in having to create code that would collect tax for the 1151 different tax jurisdictions that make up this nation. If the Washington law passes and holds up in court (which it won't) it would be a nightmare for Ebay to set this up for their sellers. They already allow their sellers to collect sales tax for where they are located.
It creates a ridiculous amount of paperwork for a business.
I am located in NYS I collect sales tax based on the tax jurisdiction where I am located. It takes me about 10 min a quarter to do the paperwork. There are about 50 different sales tax rated in NY. Imagine if I had to collect different rates based on where the buyer resides, fill out 50 collection forms a quarter and write 50 checks to them. While there is software to collect tax so you just have to punch in the numbers on the form it still takes about 10 min. Now multiply that by 1151 tax jurisdictions nationwide. It would take a business 11510 min/ 192 hours / 8 days / 24 8 hour shifts just to fill out all the paperwork for collection of sales tax. That's 5 weeks of work for 1 person and would go beyond the last day to submit the forms in most places (they give you about 1 month).
No business will stand for this, there will be massive lawsuits which will waste millions of taxpayer funds to shoot down a law that is known to be unconstitutional. If it was legal it would have been done years ago. Ebay's interest again is in not having to spend the money for a lawsuit for this.
The Lunatick, Carpe Corpus!