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US Internet Tax Committee Squabbles
There's increasing reports coming about the state of US Government's Internet Tax Committee. The committee, which stopped meeting about six months because of squabbling is back talking again about a way to acheive "tax-neutrality", meaning that all those nice tax free sales may be gone in the next few years.
Sales taxes are, normally speaking, not Federal ones- sales taxes are State/Local affairs.
Besides, all the examples you give are not analogous. The federal government doesn't pay for that traffic. The Companies using the air freight DO pay for the use of the system.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Well - if you REALLY believe all the medias, you are not out of surprises. They especially like those tax subjects since it is so easy to attract some audience. Of course they could make a subject about lesbian orgies but not during prime time ;-)
Show me a big organization (governement, company, non profit organization) that doesn't waste money somewhere...
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
"...you are taking money your state would usually get from sales tax."
Nonsense. The state collects sales tax because they have sales related costs (zoning, road maintenance, etc). The question is: What Internet sales related costs does the state have? Answering "well, we've always gotten this money therefore we are entitled to it" is not an answer.
---
Put Hemos through English 101!
Crypto? And just how is crypto going to hide the shipping records for the books you bought from amazon.com? Clue: If you are moving physical goods, you're not going to be able to hide them with crypto no matter how obscure your key is.
Why does a 19 member committee need $1.9 million to hold 4 meetings? That's just a damn waste and a half if you ask me. And do you really need a damn executive for 4 meetings? I could see hiring someone to take shorthand notes of the meetings, then having a team of people create a report based on the notes afterwards...but this is just damn ridiculous.
They better have the best damn doughnuts in the world for that kind of money.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
i think i've found a new .sig. . .One-Legged Women
With Attention Deficit Disorder Who Fear
Elevators
if both the seller and buyer encrypt, the tranzation, then who would know who they sold to?
( yea, it would be more compicated then this but if taxes make it profitable it will, mostlikely happen )
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
>I mean what sense does it make that the exact same transaction in taxed if you do it
>in person, as opposed to through the mail or over the internet.Suppose I live in CA and buy from NY over the 'net. I have no voice in the NY state gov't affairs. Why should they tax me?Also, how do 'net purchases differ taxwise from phone orders, mail orders? Why should they? Why are new laws needed? As it is, sales tax is collected if the company resides or has operations in my home state. Otherwise, no tax is collected. Of course I'm still supposed to pay sales tax to my local state on out of state purchases, it's just that that some other state has no authority to collect taxes on bahalf of another state in which it has no business. No one pays this tax, hence the urban legend that mail orders (now extended to the net) from out of state are 'tax free'. They never were. It's just that no one can enforce the rules.
Bahama company tells US amazon.com to ship packages X,Y, and Z to your address. No tax and the buyer gets his stuff.
If I read cdnow.com's website correctly, they are located in Pennsylvania. I live in California but have to pay tax because they have a warehouse in California. In fact, most companies will collect tax in a state if they just have an office in that state, even if that office wasn't involved at all in the transaction. Do they have to collect that or are they just keeping the tax???
Tell your hypothetical amazon.com to look in to the purchase of a nice MayTag industrial washer. Laundering all that money is going to take a lot of work!
Also, just a note on tax fraud... it's nice until you get caught. At my last job, the FTB came in and decided to audit all our sales. Some of the sales droids had made the mistake of selling stuff tax free to anyone who claimed to have a reseller certificate or even worse, selling large amounts of hardware to companies with names like "Bob's Popcorn & Candy Distribution, Inc.". Equipment bought for internal use must be taxed so the natural assumption is "Bob" is trying to get stuff for his friends at a cheap price. The total penalties for the entire company were just over $1 mil. Ouch. Not good to happen around Christmas bonus time!
yea, i know i shouldnt (cause in the end what, party or who doesnt matter), but i have to say cheak out the-revolution.org, or just read my sig. cause i what to live in a world that doesnt suck... errr something like that...
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
The trouble is.. the US Constitution does not grant the National government the right to tax interstate commerce... only to regulate it. The whole reason the first US government was scrapped was because the customs tariffs between states were getting unbearable
No taxation without representation.
I'll repeat it because it's one of the reasons Americans fought for independence from the English.
No taxation without representation.
This is a very fundamental and core basis of the US constitution.
If I like in San Francisco, CA and mail order something from Clearwater, Florida. I had better not be charged any sales tax. Why? Because I don't live in Florida. I don't use their state services. I don't drive on their roads. I don't send my kids to their schools. I DON'T VOTE IN THEIR ELECTIONS. In short, I have zero say in Florida's affairs, so there had better be a zero % tax imposed upon me by Florida.
Get it?
Nonsense.
The problem is that there are so many hands in the cookie jar, and all of them have their own vested interest in keeping (and increasing) their share as much as possible. Just how MUCH do we have to spend on education before we finally realize that we can pay incompetent teachers ANY amount and STILL end up with students who are functionally illiterate? Having attended a private religious high school, it always amazed me how they could accomplish so much more with so much less.
While CEOs do work for shareholders, at least THEY are accountable to someone. The government has proven, in many instances, that it is accountable to no one. What happens when a program is deemed unprofitable for a private sector company? They scrap the program. The government, on the other hand, often keeps right on throwing money at it. Since every new program creates a new special interest, it behooves every American citizen to see that these programs are kept to a MINIMUM.
Sales taxes subsidize the maintenance of the State you live in. IE. I don't use CA's bonehead highway system without any exit numbers. I don't study in their education system. I don't take sadistic pleasure out of the fact that sooner or later CA is going the way of ole Atlantis ('cept in the Pacific) Why the fuck should I pay for the shit going on in other states.
/.ers respond to each other.
I thinks it's quite clear that one thing slashdot has done well WITHOUT moderating is DEBUNKING big business plants posting on the site. They still don't get it. Only
Thank god^H^H^HRob this isn't like WalMart's suggestion box or USENET's junkyard.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Now weather or not you agree with the ICANN tax, who is there to ask the US Government where it gets its authority to tax the Internet?
I for one view the Internet as basically a seperate country free of government interfereance AND taxes. It's kind of like a place of refuge from politics in my mind.
Malachi
"Life is all about strategy, mathematics and psychological perceptiveness."
That is a very good point - often it is difficult or impossible to track exactly where your taxes go. I certainly don't think that we should only pay taxes for exactly the roads, colleges, etc. that we use - obviously most people should pay taxes into a common pool at the state and federal levels, and this entire pool of money will be divided between roads, schools, and so on. I have no argument with this.
However, I do have a problem with contributing to a tax pool which is specifically excludes me from benefiting from it - local taxes in another state, in this particular issue. If I buy something online, it will likely be from a store in CA, and I don't live in that state so let's use that as an example. Local sales tax in CA is specifically earmarked for the use of the town and possibly the state government. None of that benefit will return to me back in my state.
So yes, the government sells services as a package, but under our federal system there are several quasi-self-contained service pools. Tax money directed into one of those areas (like the state of CA, for example) won't provide any benefit to those who aren't a part of the CA benefit pool - people and companies who exist or visit CA. I have no problems paying a federal tax and the benefit going to another state, because all states are in the federal benefits pool. But any taxes I pay to CA won't benefit me at all if I never live in that state and never visit it.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
1. They may not be entirely about being fair, but they at least try. If they were just about collecting money, there wouldn't be as many tax credits around.
2. I know. I thought I mentioned earlier (I may not have) that this should be the federal government, not the state. Of course, everyone has their own opinions on whether or not this is justified too.
3. But you can look at it from the other side too. Any moron with a few bucks can open up a store and compete with WalMart (poorly, though). It takes some brains and knowhow(not much, I'll admit!) to compete with Amazon and buy.com. The problem is that not only can the little guy sell directly, but the big corporation can do that too. Bye-bye boutiques. Bye-bye independent bookstores.
And I really think mailorder should be taxed too (subject to previous disclaimer!)
Any moron with a few bucks can open up a store and compete with WalMart (poorly, though). It takes some brains and knowhow(not much, I'll admit!) to compete with Amazon and buy.com.
Actually the reverse is true. You can buy books from wholesalers in quantities of 5 and get the same price that Amazon pays for them. UPS will charge your customers the same amount they charge Amazon's customers. It doesn't take much of an operation to compete with Amazon on price. WalMart gets such huge volume discounts from its suppliers, plus its economies of scale, that no single store is going to be able to break even charging WalMart prices.
Disclaimer: I work for Target. I do not speak for them.
--
E_NOSIG
Can I have my taxes back, please?
I can see why you wouldn't want an Englishman like me voting for your president, or even governor. But it irks me when I can't vote for city council or school board. Why would my vote be different from someone who just moved in from Wisconsin, or who spends 5 months of the year in Florida (and registers their car there).
There was the Boston Tea Party. And not one decent cup of tea has been made in America since.
--
E_NOSIG
US businesses would not chance breaking the laws so blatantly. They would comply.. especially large places like amazon.com.
Here in the states the taxes would go to support some lazy ass mofo who doesn't want to get a job and is on welfare.
Actually, all that would have to happen is for the gubmint to (raise the) tax (on) parcel deliveries. Fed-EX, UPS etc would have to charge more for delivery; that cost would get passed to the vendor, who would of course pass it on to Joe Happy-Customer.
It's unlikely you'd be able to make an order by internet and then drive to potentially another state, or across country, to pick up the goods yourself. Any savings in tax would be more than offset in travel costs.
Hope I haven't given anyone an idea here.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
One thing I never clarified was that I am not arguing this point to prove you wrong or to express utter disagreement. You are presenting very valid points and I mean just to present the other side. I find your Internet example to be very relevant and was something I had not thought of.
Basically the core of our argument is whether online commerce should be taxed. I feel that it shouldn't; as long as the only way people are looking at this issue is the same way they look at Joe going to Mike's store and buying something. I would reconsider if it meant repaying for the Internet I have so been addicted to for years. You see online-purchasing as something that should not be treated differently simply because of how it is done, making it taxable like the rest of purchases.
As to UPS, I couldn't tell you the specifics, but I know they get no preferential treatment (i hope), therefore they pay taxes like the rest of us. Moving a package to them is moving a package. The government sees it the same way.
-Clump
Re: UPS paying transactional taxes...
Soem states have warehousing taxes. Do UPS distribution centers count as warehouses?
Some states have tighter rules on commercial fuel usage than others. While not exactly a transactional tax, it does affect interstate trucking. And each state a truck regularly goes through generally needs a "license" from that state, lots of state-specific paperwork, etc., and they do have to stop at the commercial truck scales and sometimes pay weight taxes there.
Then there are people from states w/o sales taxes, who don't pay sales taxes in neighboring states w/ sales taxes, etc. (used to see this a lot in Washington, Oregon people buying in WA and not paying sales tax. Of course, we saved enough to justify going to Portland for a weekend to not pay sales tax on our toys, also...)
Commercial truck taxes are generally higher because one loaded semi does some insane amount of road wear compared to cars per mile. So there is that sense of a "pay for what you get (or use)" tax for commercial trucks.
No, the companies did this to make it harder for consumers to figure out how much profits the gas cos are making on the gas (if you've followed the "San Diego Gas Price" huff of late).
What consumers tend to not know, consumers tend to not think about...
Uppity consumers are bad for business.
Hmm... does any bitware distributed internationally get held up at customs?
This isn't a big market now, but it could be real soon now. how does one then distinguish between bitware and data (you can't tell by looking at the bits). If the tax was levied by each router, should I have to pay one tax one night because of one route, and a different one the other, because of some other, over which I had no control over?
that's why I think the "micropayment" stuff is bogus. There is nothing to stop a company from routing data in a way that most increases their transaction revenue, and it leaves the users with no way to choose, ultimately.
Would long distance be very useful if instead of end-to-end taxes & fees, it was per-switch/node?
No.
That's exactly my point. UPS can pay its own vehicle and fuel taxes, and I'll be happy to pay for them in my shipping fees. If someone finds a way to deliver goods with less road wear or vehicle costs (such as by bicycle courier) the taxes should be lower, and the shipping charge reduced. Putting a broad tax on internet sales doesn't allow me that economic choice, it's a blank check to politicians to find as many ways as possible to waste the money.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
For most people, HALF of the money they make ALREADY goes to government in the form of taxes. The govt then takes these taxes and (amoungst other things) pays people to find out more ways to get our money (like licensing costs, parking tickets, misc fees, etc) Why in the HELL would you want more taxes?
This is one issue that gets to me. Why do people LIKE to pay taxes to a government that is so OBVIOUSLY corrupt and wasteful?
Wouldn't it make much more sense for us to choose where we use our own money?
Sales taxes are NOT progressive. If you went to the store and the cashier calculated your sales tax based on your current income level, that would have the effect you claim.
Instead, poorer people spend a greater percentage of their income at retail, and end up putting a larger portion of their income into sales taxes.
That's the hazard of having a broad-based, untargeted tax like this panel is contemplating.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Malachi
"Life is all about strategy, mathematics and psychological perceptiveness."
http://www.dailyfeed.com/ramfiles/9906 23.ram
Last time I looked all the UPS trucks had licence plates on them.
i agree 100%
- uncon
I like in San Francisco, CA and mail order something from Clearwater, Florida. I had better not be charged any sales tax
And you live in what parallel-universe San Francisco in which the California state and San Francisco city sales taxes don't apply?
This has nothing to do with living in California and paying a bunch of schmoes in Florida for your purchases -- and everything to do with living in California and paying California regardless of where your purchase is made. This is something you are obligated to do in any case, even on snail-mail or telephone based transactions, even though you don't do it now. Nobody does. It's a law just about everyone breaks because it's utterly unenforcable.
Unfortunately, more legislation doesn't solve the problem. One of the greatest attractions to retail interstate commerce is the unenforcability of that extra 8.75% (or what have you) state sales tax. Take that incentive away and you are simply left paying extra for shipping, in which case you might as well just drive on down to WidgetCo and get your greasy paws on your purchase with instant gratification.
Additional taxation on interstate commerce is not necessary. Existing laws and taxes suffice.
Internet taxes -
Subsidising all of The Malls that no one is going to because they buy stuff online.
Build an online school with the same scheduling and guess what parents are going to be forced to participate or pay up.
Internet tax, Sounds like a poll fucking tax to me.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
What's the evil in sales taxes anyway? Everybody pays taxes, the power of internet sales lies in the broader competition (IMO). If I go to country X, and buy, say, a TV there, I'll get the sales tax back at the customs. Then I pay the local tax at my home country's customs (If I decide to declare it }8-] ). If my 500 Buckazoids(TM) total for the TV will get a kid a free schoolbook and some treatment for a hurt man in a hospital, then why not (it might be you). Taxes have their purpose.
In my (H) opinion, there should be no difference if you by a product from another country by phone, fax, by visiting that country, or by filling a HTML Form. In the US of A, there would (as it appears to me) be use of a national systems, that contols some state-wide systems, which in urn contol the taxation in the individual cities/municipalities.
My 20 mEuro.
No sig. Go away.
Mail Order = Tax Evasion
When you buy something mail order (or via the net)
and do not pay tax on it, you are actually committing "Tax Evasion".
You owe the tax to YOUR state whether or not
you buy you the products you use IN your state or
receive them from OUT OF state. Typically, the
first type of tax is called "sales tax", and
the second type is called "use tax".
(You don't owe any taxes to the other state where
you received your service/product).
The difference (and why you can get away with
not paying your "use tax", and think you can
shop tax-free using mail order); is where the
states put the "burden" of collecting the tax.
When you shop in-state, the SELLER is REQURED to
collect sales tax. (the store, on behalf of the
state colects the tax that you, the consumer
owes the state. )
When you use goods that you bring from out of
state, you are required to pay "use tax". The
CONSUMER is REQURED to send this tax to their
OWN state.
In practice, most stores collect and send
the sales tax to the state. Most consumers,
however, do not report; and hence do not pay
the use tax to their own state. Thus, it seems
that you can shop tax free if you use mail order.
Indiana residents are already required to report sales tax on any out-of-state purchases when filing their state income tax returns. You mean, the rest of you have been getting a free ride?
License plates are state/county. That doesn't pay for the interstate highway system. But nevermind
>(Visa converts currencies at whatever the
>exchange rate is with no surcharge, so no loss
>here)
You might want to check your Visa card agreement. Most credit card companies *do* impose a surcharge over the then-current conversion rate. Generally it's only about 1%, but if you're making a large purchase that can get to be alotta bucks.
In case anyone is still reading this and is about ready to flame me, let me clarify. Taxes are not my friend. I would rather not have a higher tax rate. That's not what I meant. My point was that there needs to be some parity between brick-and-mortar and online retailers with regards to tax. If that can somehow be magically accomplished by eliminating all taxes, that would be better, but that isn't going to happen. Personally, I think we would all be better off if they taxed them all at the same rate. Some people don't agree with that. It seems that should be the point of disagreement, not whether taxes are in and of themselves evil.
Would you be paying sales tax to Florida, or would you be paying sales tax to California?
A workable scheme would be this: each vendor
collects sales tax and keeps a record of what
percentage goes to which state. They pay the
taxes to their local state, and pass along
the information about how its supposed to be
distributed, and then once a year or so
there are massive interstate transfers to make
sure the money ends up in the hands of the
right state government.
[This is essentially what happens now,
as residents of certain states have to
pay sales tax on things purchased from
catalogs, etc, from outside of their states ---
it would just get standardized across the
entire country, which would reduce the
costs to businesses.]
So you're saying the system doesn't work. I would humbly suggest that one symptom of a system that doesn't work is a rapacious appetite for tax money, particularly from people who don't use or underutilize the system.
A symptom of systems which do work is direct payments for services rendered, in which case taxes are unnecessary.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
The difference is with a private company, if their service is lousy I can switch to a different company.
Not always... look Microsoft. You can't push Bill Gates out... but you can change your president every 4 year if you don't like it. You can switch AS LONG AS a governement is there to stop big monopolies.
When you get government involved in things like schools where the budget has tripled in the past 20 years (so it's getting more money, not less) and the service is getting worse, what do you do?
Sounds more like a cultural problem to me... people want their diploma without studying, they want to go to school and HAVE FUN instead of learning something.
The purpose of government is to protect it's people from other governments.
Sounds like a paranoid definition to me... a governement would rather be an organisation whole goal is to manage common properties and services for a whole nation.
If you reduce competition (like government does) you reduce quality (see Microsoft)
The DOJ vs Microsoft trial sounds like a good counter-example. There is no competition between Bill Gates and somebody who grew in LA South Central, because they are born in different famillies. Education and welfare are here to level the competition by giving a chance to the poor to compete with the rich. If you think putting a lion and a deer in a cage is "competition", then yes, governement is against competetion. Justice is about giving everyone a chance, and that mean giving everyone education and healthcare. It is helping REAL competition.
But that's a as healthy a quandary as a quandary can be - the district feels the effect of its decisions, and isn't preventing other districts from their choices.
With Internet and catalog sales untaxed, towns have a different quandary, that they can't afford the infrastructure that makes people happy and safe while people buy from whatever source is cheap this year (greenfield big-box stores, catalogs, the Internet...).
Taxing all *atoms* equally removes a big free-rider problem while leaving decisions about the right rate of taxation local.
Not taxing *bits* rewards people who sensibly desire the only luxury there's always enough of.
"1] 'crap' not including funding for schools, medicare/aid, sceience grants, NASA, etc.,"
Lets see...
1) Federal funding for schools? There's a nice graph showing standardized scores decreasing the moment that federal funding was introduced. The National Education Association has 2 main interests: 1) Being in bed with all the teachers Unions, who obviously have no interest in increasing the quality of education, and 2) advancing Outcome Based Education programs as a natural outgrowth of its liberal and big government ideology.
Hmm..sounds like Federal Funding for schools is Crap.
2) Medicare/aid? The same program that 1) makes it affordable for 14 yr olds to have children that they would have aborted/put up for adoption before? 2) A program that gives MORE benefits then a normal entry level job, giving people no incentive to get off it? 3) A program which has taken over 51% of the healthcare system, increasing health care costs to everyone based on the time that doctors have to fill out federal healthcare forms? 4) A program that totally demoralizes and dehumanizes everybody who is on it, telling them that they can't survive without the government?
Sounds like crap to me as well.
3) Science grants? Run by the government, they tend to be given to the people running the most politically popular experiments, not necessarly the people who are running the most beneficial experiments. Grants are good, run by the government is bad, therefore crap.
4) NASA has been productive because they have worked with many members of the private sector and are much more public minded then other government agencies. Why not spin them off into the private sector, where the gifted people who are responsible for their success can work even more productively and make their own decisions?
and finally,
5) If you want a more reasonable military budget, then we need to change our foreign policy, which currently consists of "Lets stick our nose into every other countries affairs." Of COURSE our military budget is outragious! We're trying to fight wars for 20 different countries! And in the meantime, we're pissing everybody off because we DON'T MIND OUR OWN BUSINESS! All our military needs to do is make sure that WE don't get invaded and that WE can't get nuked. All we need are troops that will fight in case of invasion and a ballistic missile defense so we don't have to worry about every damn dictator that gets a nuclear missile.
MOST of the current budget is crap. All we need is a government that protects our life, liberty, and property. If we want the government to do anything else, it will eventually enslave us.
One word - Crypto.
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
I mean what sense does it make that the exact same transaction in taxed if you do it in person, as opposed to through the mail or over the internet.
Of course, the rational thing to do would be to have flat taxes for everything and abolish all sales taxes. Then its just a matter of some simple payroll deducations. No tax forms, etc...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
The tax issue back then (1994ish) was a big enough issue for me to change my intended purchase. If all future purchases are going to be taxed, will it have any effect on e-commerce? Will e-comm lose its glamour? Can I order from Dell Germany without paying taxes? I suppose not
If I suddenly have to pay sales tax on my purchases from Amazon, the prices are no longer competitve (especially when shipping charges are added in).
There's two things the government hasn't figured out, apparently. Let me summarize for them then:
1. Tracking things on the internet can be a pain in the arse. Just ask the NSA - even echelon can't keep up (and that's only searching for *very* specific things).
2. The US cannot dictate international law. The internet is a *global communications network*. Almost a billion people world-wide have access to it. Unless you can convince every country that uses the internet to follow your law, you're leaving a gaping-huge-i-can-drive-a-mac-truck-through-this hole in any legislation on the subject.
3. Two words: Tax Evasion.
4.
--
I've made more than my fair share of Internet purchases, and I don't live in California, so I don't have to pay sales tax on any of it. Despite this, we really do need to tax Internet transactions.
A lot of people say "But you have to pay shipping! That makes it even!" and they'll probably say it now, so I'll dispell that right now. It's not the same thing. Suppose there were no taxes on anything. In this case, online shopping would not have this advantage. Then say a government comes along and decides they want to tax stuff. A brand new tax. Should they not tax online and mailorder retailers because they have to pay shipping? No, that would be stupid, because you'd essentially be subsidizing retailers who ship out of state and hurting brick-and-mortar stores. Shipping represents a real cost--the amount of effort and resources that go into producing and procuring whatever thingie you bought from buy.com is higher because they have to ship it. That's not true of the sales tax you pay at WalMart. That's an external cost. But I expect we'll see lots of this argument anyway.
That's not to say it's easy to have a tax or that we should have one right now. There is still some truth to the argument that it's a fledgling industry and might need protection till it gets on its feet (though this sort of protection tends to go on way longer than it's usually needed). Also, it would be pretty difficult to implement this kind of tax. It's only interstate commerce that we're concerned with, so Congress could do it, but that's a really big deal. It would take time. What rate do you charge? What counts as a taxable product? (the distinction between product and service is very fuzzy on the Internet).
Ok, just my musings. Feel free to shoot me down.
In the perfect parallel universe, hundreds of billions of light years away from us, a parallel United States Government is being heartily encouraged to institute an Internet Sales Tax on all U.S. to U.S. tcp/ip-based transactions, since they PROMISE to use every last penny collected to build a completely free public network with a direct digital line to every home, garden and rectal cavity across the nation.
But in the version we live in, sadly, this Tax is frowned upon because it would inevitably be used to fund more great things like a War on Everything, programs to support One-Legged Women With Attention-Deficit-Disorder Who Fear Elevators and therefore cannot ever be expected to work, etc etc.
Bottom line: broken, grossly bloated governments will never convince reasonable people to accept a new tax voluntarily regardless of its potential.
So far no one on this panel has given any justification for why these taxes are needed, or what they will be used for.
Here's a breakdown of what taxes are used for currently in the US:
Sales taxes - supplying motorists with roads, parking lots, and ambulance service so they can get to The Mall.
Property taxes - supplying homeowners with police and fire protection, so no one will steal the cars that people need to get to The Mall.
Income taxes - paying for a huge army to keep gas cheap so people can get to The Mall
Internet taxes - ?
As far as I can tell from reading articles on this panel, the main impetus seems to be to raise taxes so that internet shopping will not be cheaper than going to The Mall.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
This all seems very presumptious of the panel to be deciding. "localities say sales taxes are a life and death issue for them, since they rely on the revenues to build schools, repair roads, and provide other essential municipal services."
Fine, but what the government fails to realize is that "in person" transactions are exactly that. You appear in person and pay for the item as well as the tax _in person_. Therefore, you drive on roads, walk through cities, and send your kids to school--All things legitimate for taxes. When you buy online, you are not there. You may be buying from "Littletown" California, but you are not there. You are not using that place's resources, and most of all, not using anything that requires tax dollars.
Keeping this in mind, it is arrogant and greedy for people to feel entitled to tax those transactions. For what reasons? Because localities need the revenue? A fine and legitimate argument formulated during a time when the only way to buy was in person. Therefore, taxing a budding industry with no just cause is outlandish. What is funding this panel? Tax Dollars. Has the panel been able to accomplish anything other than squabbling? No. How about giving the wasted "tax committee" money to some localities that say they are starving for it?
-Clump
Tax debate is always the same : people want everything for free. I got a bad news for you all : there's nothing free. Someone has to pay for education, roads, police, etc... Since most citizen use those services they pay for it, in the form of tax. Asking for no tax is like asking for free stuff in a store : it cost, so someone must pay.
Now the common answer is "but state services are loosy, and cost so much". That's wrong : they are loosy because you don't pay enough tax. You get what you pay for. The loosiest the service is, the more people whine at tax and the lower the tax are, and the loosier the service becomes because of budget shortage, and so on... up to the point where the US are : low tax (yes people : look in Europe before complaining), loosy state service, private company payed by citizen to do the governement job (private school, militia, etc...). Instead of tax, you receive bills - but in the end you end up paying for the sames services again. You still loose something : democracy. CEOs are NOT elected, they don't work for the customers, they work for the shareholders.
Why do people LIKE to pay taxes to a government that is so OBVIOUSLY corrupt and wasteful?
Because they know that the only* alternative to paying taxes to them is to engage them in a violent and bloody revolution and institute a new form of government that won't tax them so much. But that's so much bother... far easier to just pay the bill and grumble about it.
*No, voting won't change a thing; if it did, it already would have.
Luckily, their reach is limited by their political jurisdiction....and internet sites can move in the twinkling of an eye.
Can't you see it ?
"Gee , we have to move to Aruba, they're going to start taxing us here."
I think you are in a small minority in your method of using the internet to purchase things. While many people still don't order things directly through the web, that is changing. And most people who mailorder stuff use a credit card, if only because it's simpler and faster. Many places now are starting to have online ordering be the *only* method of ordering they accept.
.gov will have to tax all or no interstate transactions. And how much do you want to bet that if they tax all interstate transactions, then they have to tax all intrastate transactions too, or go back to none at all?
However, I do agree with your final statement regarding taxing interstate transactions. The states clearly can't tax this type of thing (constitution explicitly prohibits states taxing trade across their borders). As you said,
The very nature of the internet resists regulation, restriction, and censorship. Any attempt at any of these will have to fight a very up hill battle. If a government is going to operate at all, it does have to collect some taxes and tariffs, but taxing everything is not the right thing. Other ahenglanderhem countries have gone down the road of taxing anything and everything to the point of ridiculousness ahemciderahem before, and shit came down. Any person who has some common sense and does not have a vested interest in government getting bigger can tell you that it is better and more reasonable to work on cutting crap out of the current budget[1] than it is to just keep on taxing things more and more. If you think about it a bit, taxes are probably (I am in no way an economist...) a significant cost of inflation. Tax goods, their price goes up, so people need to be paid more so that they can afford things. Tax incomes more, same result. Tax businesses more and they need to raise the price of their goods to maintain their profit margin. Tax property, and people need more income to pay for it. Etc. ad nauseam.
[1] 'crap' not including funding for schools, medicare/aid, sceience grants, NASA, etc., but most definitely including making the military budget more reasonable. While multi-billion dollar NASA projects are a bit excessive, NASA has shown that it can make things more economical wit ha smaller budget. Now give them their money back and watch them flourish! I would wager that the vast majority of technological advancements in the last 30 years or so have been greatly affected (positively) by NASA, if not driven entirely by them.
Wow, that rant diverged from where it started a long ways!
-Cheetah
Using the Internet that was funded by the government is a very valid point.
But it WASN'T funded by the goverment. The government is funded by the taxpayers. All (every damn penny) comes from taxpayers. WE funded the internet. Now we have to pay tax on something WE already paid for? I think not.
I guess it is time to incoporate my company as an off-shore entity on a tax-free island. I will just have distribution in the states ;)
Play Well
Why not merely go the european route and employ a value added tax (VAT) to every step of the product creation process and stop trying to figure the taxation out at the consumer level.
Play Well
So I suppose that I shouldn't complain if my Dodge gets stolen -- after all that guy over there lost a Rolls!
It's been a while since I've taken American History but I believe the British were imposing taxes on goods (and services) that were made (or performed) by American colonists and sold to American colonists. In other words, the UK wasn't involved anywhere in the transaction except to get their cut of the money.
It seems perfectly logical to me that if a company is using the roads, police, fire department, etc... of Clearwater, FL, the residents of Clearwater should be able to impose a tax. The same holds true for a country who wants to collect taxes on goods it exports.
It also seems logical that if residents of Anytown, USA want to impose little or no tax on business in an effort to increase the commercial sector of their city, they should be able to do that too. Personally, I would be in favor of a 2-tier system: one rate for in-state and one for out-of-state.
It is rather strange that you picked Flordia because if memory serves me right, it is a state with absolutly no state income tax. All state revenue is generated through tourist-taxes and sales tax.
Also, I think all inter-state transactions should be treated equally... not just free internet transactions but make mail order pay.
One more thing.. This is directed to the others who say "tax will drive up online prices..." Show me one quarter where Amazon.com, CDnow, etc... have actually been profitable! They are loosing money right and left. Any tax increase would be absorbed in their "profit" margin.
Major support for the Internet Tax Panel is from Mall owners.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Fine. Impose a tax and I'll just start web shopping at sites in Canada or elsewhere. For the size of 'net purchases I usually make, even international shipping will be less than local tax (where it's nearly 10 fucking percent).
Here's a scenario. Amazon.com spins off a totally independent company based in the Bahamas. Buyers place and pay for orders on the Bahama based web site in local currency (Visa converts currencies at whatever the exchange rate is with no surcharge, so no loss here). Bahama company tells US amazon.com to ship packages X,Y, and Z to your address. No tax and the buyer gets his stuff. So a new tax can move business out of the country. Yah. That's good for the economy.
Taxes are just plain bad anyway. Centralized economies have a tendancy not to work very well (see Communist Russia), and all taxation does is put money (the base economic unit) into the hands of a central authority. The reason that capitalism, and the internet itself, both work so well is that they are decentralized. The rules of supply and demand, followed by those motivated by greed, ensure a fair and balanced distribution of resources. The more you tax, the more you muck with the only economic system that has proven to be stable in the long run.
So even if a 1/3 tax is low, it is still *way* too high of a tax. You want money to build roads, charge a toll. Don't go taxing something else for it. You want money to improve the internet, then tax the internet. But if you're not buying routers and pipelines, leave the system alone.
--TANSTAAFL
I personally tend to the libertarian side of things... but here's a reply that's not a flame.
1) taxes aren't supposed to be about equality, nor about fairness per se.. They're supposed to be about funding the government's actions. Now, taxes should be levied fairly, naturally...
2) Current taxes *are* levied fairly... it's just that a state has questionable authority to levy sales tax on a transaction that doesn't clearly occur between two people/bodies within the state. After all.. it's not a business that's being taxed, it's a transaction. The state just collects from the business when the time comes...
3) Consumers are better off, at least for now, with mail/phone/internet orders being free of sales tax. This is because these kinds of transactions give much less of a competitive advantage to large corporations. The little guy can make a buck selling directly... but that might not be the case if additional taxes are levied, making internet orders more expensive than buying from the local mall. This hurts consumers because they lose choice, in two ways:
a) fewer retailers mean less competition (and more government yoke when the hounds of DOJ harass the remaining retailers. see WalMart, Barnes&Noble)
b) fewer small retailers mean less choice of product, because small retailers are more likely to have a diverse selection, especially of specialty items that big stores refuse to touch.
Yeah.. would communities rather collect sales tax on some adult book store.. or would they rather the book store close down, because the business went over to internet porn?
zoning vs budget.. what a quandry for the cities!
On the flipside... when a guy in San Francisco buys from Clearwater... the Clearwater guy has no representation in CA's legislature, so the California sales tax shouldn't apply.
:-) Then maybe California wouldn't have the big lie in sales tax -- a "temporary" 0.5% increase in tax rate due to the San Francisco earthquake... for roughly 10 years now.)
(though I wouldn't mind a few of Jeb Bush's supporters replacing the voters of San Francisco
If I buy a material object and have it delivered to my material person, I'm using local resources - both for the delivery (roads and workers) and to support my person. These deliveries should be taxed, maybe by ZIP code, which is in all delivery records anyway.
Some people will live in wellfurbished communities, buy a lot of stuff, and pay for it. Some will live in poor or privatized communities; their taxes will be low. (Some people will set up delivery sites in low-tax neighborhoods; this happens with bricks-and-mortar stores too, but is usually less important than convenience.)
Some people will live in nice places but have lower loads on services. If I buy an immaterial object and have it sent over the wire, I'm making so much less load on local services that it's fair not to tax me - it would, in general, be good for many places if luxury spending weren't on physical objects. (Besides, these would be incredibly hard to track, so let's not.)
We're taxed to death already, and there's no end in sight. It's no secret that no matter HOW MUCH OF OUR HARD-EARNED MONEY we are forced to give the government, there will be no shortage of ways to waste it. Let's move in the OTHER direction for once. If local merchants are complaining about the local sales tax, how about repealing it, rather than adding a new one?
I'm not going to waste much time on this post but I give you something to think on.. We are taxed too damn much in this country as it is. Gas, Food, Home, Auto, Income, Tariffs, and the list goes on. You think we are going to break a state because we are doing E-commerce? Bah. You need to read up on what Libertarians believe, the governments hosing you every day and you're making up excuses so they can. -Malachi-
"Life is all about strategy, mathematics and psychological perceptiveness."
From the NY Times, 6/13/99:
"The lost revenue is going to be made up by the consumer at some point," said William McCabe Jr., chairman of the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade organization for the shopping center industry.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
I'll agree with you - normally taxes serve a useful purpose by funding services that the community needs. I think what confuses people in the debate over sales tax on Internet purchases is that there isn't a specific service that would be funded by the tax that isn't already funded by another tax. If you look at the components of a purchase over the Internet, amazon.com pays local taxes and UPS pays local taxes as well as transport taxes (gas tax, weight penalties, etc). Your connection to amazon.com is paid for in the Internet connection fees that you and amazon.com pay. These fees are loosely related to the amount of traffic the two of you generate. If any of these components don't generate enough revenue to pay for what they use ('net backbone, local law enforcement, interstate highways) then those taxes should be increased, or the level of service lowered.
If I actually went to the amazon.com warehouse (wherever it is) to get my book I would expect roads, law enforcement, and emergency 911 services over the course of my trip. Theoretically that's what local sales tax pays for, right? So far I haven't read a better explanation. If I'm buying over the Internet, I don't need these services, so charging me a separate local sales tax doesn't make sense. Increasing the taxes on the components of my online purchase (warehousing, shipping, and 'net connection) does make sense, because even an online purchase does use resources and must be paid for. I think more people here would support the idea if it were explained that way. As it is, it seems like states are trying to replace the exact amount of money they are losing in local sales, rather than looking more closely at what happens during an online purchase.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
It's not really the exact same transaction, though, because you didn't actually visit amazon.com (or wherever). If you had been there in person, you would have expected roads, law enforcement, etc. and you would have paid local sales tax for them. But if you aren't there, you don't need those things. So why should you pay for them?
On the other hand, you did use more bandwidth than you would have if you had gone in person. So you can eventually expect to pay more for your 'net connection, as can your online retailer. There's also shipping costs and amazon.com's local costs, which are taxed and may increase the sale price of your book. But if the 'net is the only infrastructure that you personally are using, then that is the only thing you should be taxed for.
There are costs to a transaction either way, but it would be better to slightly increase existing taxes which already pay for services, than create a new tax which isn't directly linked to a service provided to the community.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
The problem is - the governement sell services as a package. There is no tax for a specific service anymore. People would like to know that tax X is for service Y, but it doesn't work that way (whatever some politicians say). You might not go to college or drive but your tax will pay for teachers and roads anyway. In this aspect the governement is managed as a (very big) company. It takes taxes where it cans to fund its activities. I don't see what's wrong with that, it's part of the idea of "public service" : providing a group of services for everybody, no matter rich or poor you are, or if you personnaly need it or not.
Exactly how does one make the distinction? I have made numerous purchases involving the Internet, but in most case, the actual transaction involves the telephone or snail-mail.
Examples:
In each of these cases, the sale certainly involves the Internet, if only to make me aware of the existence of the company I'm doing business with. But in each case, the distinction becomes blurred as to whether it was really an "Internet sale", or merely standard mail order that took advantage of the net as an advertising medium.
Unless .gov is willing to tax all interstate transactions - period - there are simply too many exceptions and borderline cases to make this a sensible law.