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Senator Proposes 5% Tax on Web Transactions
rhet writes "A South Carolina Senator has proposed a bill that would levy a 5% federal tax on all sales conducted over the web." I guess we kinda know its only a matter
of time, but its still a bitch. But Uncle Sam wants his piece.
No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State.
That's in pretty plain language. They'd have to come up with an amendment to get around that one.
The proposed Internet tax is nothing special. Until telephone orders are taxed why should Internet transactions be taxed?
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Of course, that kind of logic is irrelevant -- the real point is to increase taxes. The more kinds of taxes there are and the more sources and justifications those taxes have, the easier it is for people not to notice just how much they are being taxed. And, the easier it is for them to support taxes that they do not directly pay.
For example, taxing the manufacturing of automobiles only raises the cost of purchasing cars -- on which you will also pay sales tax. The net effect of taxing such production is to unfairly burden domestic goods while giving foreign goods from lands with lower production taxes an advantage.
The whole point of putting half of our social security taxes on the employer's side of the ledger is simply to make the citizens think they are paying less tax. The costs to the employer, however, are the same whether the whole amount is put in your column, the employer's column, or split as they are now. The cost to hire you is the same and the employer knows how much you cost. Just like the self-employed, the employee is paying this tax by his or her labor.
Now, if all taxes were accumulated in one big tax -- without even the fiction of claiming the employer is paying some -- we would finally know how much tax we pay and we might offer more resistance.
Internet-specific taxes are just another source of revenue. The taxing opportunity here is to divide and conquer the tax base by convincing the non-connected that we Internet users are not paying our fair share. Further, we are probably rich as well, considering recent high-profile Internet property acquisitions.
Hide some taxes, make others confusingly indirect, use the popular programs to justify additional program-specific taxes, and even call a few taxes "fees". And, most important of all, make each new tax apply to a minority of taxpayers so the remaining majority will support, even demand, it. That is the plan.
The proposed Internet tax is just a small piece in a much larger and very successful taxing scheme.
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Geeky modern art T-shirts
do you REALLY want to live in a county with no public schools
The public school system does a lousy job, so yes, I'd like to see them privatized. But even if we are going to have government schools, why should they be funded at the federal level? The Feds just take a cut and send it right back where it came from, with some strings attached. I don't see the point.
no law enforcement
Like the NSA's "counter-terrorism" activities? Or the FBI's murder of a peaceful religious cult in Waco, Texas? Or their sniping women, children, and dogs at Ruby Ridge? Or their locking up hundreds of thousands of non-violent pot smokers? Or the FDA's harrassing of alternative medical pracititioners?
The list goes on practically forever. I'll agree that we need some law enforcement services, but the Feds have too much power as it is. I'd be happy to see The ATF, FBI, NSA, and most of the other alphabet soup agencies disbanded.
public healthcare
The government is responsible for the skyrocketing costs and lousy services of our health care system. I don't want them to get more control over it.
social services
Like the pyramid scheme called social security? I'll pass, thanks. I'd rather put my money into a private system that has a shot at giving me something back when I retire.
no military defence.
The US has been attacked once in the last 100 years. I don't think that we need the ridicuously large government to protect us from invasion. What our military has done is not protect us from harm, but gone around the world bombing innocent civilians, propping up petty dictators, subsidizing the militaries of Europe and Japan, and generally wasting our money while simultaneously makeing the entire third world hate our guts. You wanna know why we are always getting attacked by terrorists? because our government has screwed over some ethnic group in almost every country in the world. If we didn't undertake to get involved in every petty conflict, we wouldn't be the target of every single terrorist group.
So no, I don't think I'm getting my money's worth, and I don't think that more taxes are going to do any good.