It seems to me that an awful lot of folks in the Middle East just want to keep killing each other and will use any excuse to justify it. Trumps move (which actually is a negative move, in that he simply chose to not renew a waiver to the 1995 law requiring the US embassy to be in Jerusalem, thereby letting the law and its consequences play out) is just today's excuse. ISIS making Genghis Khan seem tame...Sunnis and Shias are trading suicide bombings in mosques...Taliban lashing out all over...
"Militants from the Pakistani Taliban have attacked an army-run school in Peshawar, killing 141 people, 132 of them children, the military say.
"In Kabul, a suicide bomber killed at least 39 people and injured 45 more when he detonated his explosives among some 100 worshippers in a Shia mosque in the western part of the capital, according to the interior ministry. Some of the victims were reportedly shot after the blast on Friday evening.
"In central Ghor province, a suicide bomber killed 33 worshippers in a Sunni mosque, purportedly targeting a local commander from the anti-Taliban Jamiat party, said police spokesman Mohammad Iqbal Nizami.
"The most horrific incident was over the weekend in Baghdad where an ISIS suicide car bomb targeted the Karrada shopping area, killing over 175 people including numerous children. One moment Muslim families were shopping and socializing after breaking the Ramadan fast at sundown. The next, entire families were gone in a blink of an ISIS bomb. The blast targeted a primarily, but not exclusively, Shia neighborhood. But if you think ISIS hesitates at slaughtering Sunni Muslims, you simply don’t know what ISIS has been up to the past few years. The group has brutally murdered countless Sunni Muslims, including three women who reportedly refused to treat ISIS fighters and others who refused to pledge allegiance to ISIS. ISIS even reportedly killed three imams “for failing to praise ISIL in their sermons.”
"Four suicide bombers hit a pair of crowded mosques in Yemen's capital of Sanaa on Friday, killing at least 137 people and injuring more than 300 others, officials told NBC News. The ISIS affiliate in war-torn Yemen claimed responsibility for the attacks, according to Flashpoint Intelligence, a global security firm and NBC News consultant. It was the first large-scale attack claimed by the Sunni militants in Yemen, which has been in a state of chaos since Shiite Houthi rebels launched a violent power grab.
ATF agents playing Keystone Kops and entrapping mentally-disabled people. And arresting people with rock-solid alibis (like being in federal prison at the time of their supposed offense). The IG issued a pretty scathing report: https://oig.justice.gov/report...
The report concluded that all the ATF’s storefront operations were characterized by “poor management, insufficient training and guidance to agents in the field, and a lax organizational culture that failed to place sufficient emphasis on risk management in these inherently sensitive operations.”
Agents lost track of a fully automatic assault rifle and lost $35,000 worth of store “merchandise” in a burglary. The ATF paid such high prices for guns that potential victims of the sting legally bought guns from gun stores and sold them to friendly Fearless Distributing. One entrepreneur stole three ATF guns from the store. The next day he returned and sold one of them back. One of the men agents charged with selling them drugs had an airtight alibi. He was already in prison. ATF agents said Jones sold them six grams of marijuana on March 7. Problem was, Jones reported to a federal prison in Pennsylvania to start a sentence on March 1, according to Chris Burke, spokesman for the federal Bureau of Prisons - on an ATF case. "He was definitely in our custody," Burke said. "He never left."
Note that Sec. Clinton won less than half of the popular vote and that only about half the eligible voters in the country voted so she represents about 25% of the US population. Her "about 25%" is slightly larger than his "about 25%", something like 26% to 24%. Hardly a mandate for her either.
But this completely ignores the fact that people vote or not at least partly according to their perception that their vote will count. How many Republicans who might have voted for Trump in California simply did something else on election day because Clinton's victory in that winner-take-all state was assured? How many Democrats stayed home in Alabama in that winner-take-all state because they figure Trump had the state locked up?
If we had a nationwide popular vote, the candidates' campaign strategies would be different, the response of voters would be different. Hell, states are not even required to have a popular vote for President. They are free to appoint their electors however they chose to do so. It just so happens that right now most states use a winner-take-all vote. Article II, Section 1: "Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct...". If California passed a law that allowed the Governor to simply appoint all of the states 55 electors however he (or she) likes--presumably on party lines--about 10M "popular votes" go poof.
The "popular vote" is meaningless UNLESS that it the metric used for the actual election. Too many factors affect it otherwise. It wasn't.
The system in effect was the Electoral College, with the numbers of votes per state know before hand and the number needed for a win. Clinton and her team knew EXACTLY how the EC system works. She campaigned accordingly, and STILL lost to an odious rookie whom she outspent by about 4:1. She lost 5 states that Obama carried twice.
If this were a football game, an analogous case might be: Clinton had 658 yards of total offense while Trump had 629 yards, but Clinton lost by 4 touchdowns after having 5 turnovers. She simply failed to do the things necessary to score.
Which mass shooter got their weapons this way? Sandy Hook? Nope, he murdered his mother and stole her guns. Florida? Southland? Nope.
The "guns-show loophole" simply doesn't exist in reality as it does in the minds of the gun confiscation crowd. Anyone purchasing a firearm from a dealer, even at a gun show, must go through the same ID, Form 4473, and background check as they would in a store. In truth, at any gun show there may be a few private individuals who might sell one or two firearms, without a check required, but they can do that without being at a gun show. It's simply a private sale. If you only make occasional sales of firearms from your personal collection, you do not need to be licensed.
Also, background checks are required for all sales at gunshows in most blue states already (so if that's where mass shooters get their guns, by your logic, mass shootings in blue states demonstrate the failure of these laws).
Also, it seems to me that gun "hoarders" would actually be a good thing. They own far more firearms than they can use at one time, so they are in fact keeping those weapons of the street.
Since people of color seem to be unable to get valid government-issued ID. That's always what we're told when voter ID legislation is on the line. So this new policy is just going to prevent people of color from making their voices heard on Google. Google is racist and just trying to suppress those voices.
California has more-stringent standards for cars sold in California. Can California say (with force of law) "If you want to sell a car in California, not only must the cars sold in California comply with California laws, but all cars you sell anyway must also comply with California laws."?
Or "All out-of-state vendors selling items in California are required to pay their employees in accordance with California minimum wage laws."?
Or "All out-of-state vendors selling items in Mississippi are prohibited from paying for abortions for their employees."?
If a state can force an out-of-state business to collect sales taxes, can they force out-of-state individuals to pay income taxes? Take a week vacation in California...can you be forced to pay income taxes to California for the wages you earned during your time there (assuming it was paid-time-off)?
Here's an extreme sales-tax issue I outlined elsewhere.
Assume California passed a $10/gallon gas tax. Obviously Californians near a border with another state will quickly start crossing the border to get their gas, thereby avoiding this tax.
California starts gently reminding its residents to report and pay the use tax on the gas that they "imported" in their vehicles and 5-gallon cans. But they just don't.
California could resort to stringent audits with stiff penalties. But that would rile folks up even more and they're already mad about this $10/gallon gas tax.
California could set up border inspections...you must stop and have your gasoline levels checked before you leave the state and stop and pay taxes on any excess you have in your tank upon your return (even California realizes it's futile to try to tax you on gas that you used outside the state). That'll go over well...
Or, California could try to force gas stations over the border to check licenses of their customers so that they can charge Californians the tax and remit it to California.
This is basically the situation today with online/catalog sales. People just don't pay the use taxes they legally owe. States don't want to go down the audit and penalty route, nor do they want to do border controls to inspect for incoming untaxed merchandise. So they want to force out-of-state businesses to do the dirty work for them.
Some years back, the CBO produced a report "THE INCIDENCE OF THE CORPORATE INCOME TAX" in which it states
"A corporation may write its check to the Internal Revenue Service for payment of the corporate income tax, but that money must come from somewhere: from reduced returns to investors in the company, lower wages to its workers, or higher prices that consumers pay for the products the company produces."
And it goes on to say
"Although economists are far from a consensus about exactly who bears how much of the burden of the corporate income tax, the existing studies highlight the significant types of economic mechanisms as well as the empirical estimates necessary for further quantifying the burdens. CBO's review of the studies yields the following conclusions:
o The short-term burden of the corporate tax probably falls on stockholders or investors in general, but may fall on some more than on others, because not all investments are taxed at the same rate.
o In the very long term, the burden is likely to be shifted in part to labor, if the corporate tax dampens capital accumulation.
o Most attempts to distribute the burden of corporate taxation have neglected the possible importance of effects on the relative prices of products.
Not really. Say someone from South Dakota goes to Vegas to get married. SD is expected to honor the NV marriage license (and Obergefell forced that to apply to even gay marriages). What if Goergia were to offer easy-to-get carry permits for out-of-staters? Then people could come to Atlanta for a permit like they go to Vegas to get married.
Or say California passed a $10 per gallon gas tax, which includes gas bought out-of-state but carried into California either in your vehicle or in any container. Once people near the border start getting their gas over the state line and avoiding California gas tax, could California force those states to collect the California gas tax?
SD citizens, like citizens in most states, generally are ignorant or simply ignore the states use tax laws.
SD is unsatisfied with the perfectly justifiable actions of simply attacking its citizens with audits for not not paying their use taxes and just think it would be easier and less likely to make their citizens angry by forcing out-of-state vendors to be SD sales tax collectors like they force SD vendors.
The issue here is, then what else can a state for out-of-state entities to do?
--------------
The South Dakota use tax is a special excise tax assessed on property purchased for use in South Dakota in a jurisdiction where a lower (or no) sales tax was collected on the purchase.
The South Dakota use tax should be paid for items bought tax-free over the internet, bought while traveling, or transported into South Dakota from a state with a lower sales tax rate.
The South Dakota use tax rate is 4%, the same as the regular South Dakota sales tax. Including local taxes, the South Dakota use tax can be as high as 2.000%.
The South Dakota Use Tax is a little-known tax that complements the regular South Dakota sales tax to ensure that purchases made outside of South Dakota are not exempt from the South Dakota sales tax.
Instead of taxing the sale of tangible property which takes place outside of South Dakota's jurisdiction (and thus cannot be taxed), the South Dakota Use Tax taxes the use or consumption of tangible property bought in other jurisdictions with a lower sales tax rate and brought back into South Dakota. State of California Sales Tax How Do I Calculate How Much Use Tax I Owe?
If you made any purchases online or outside of South Dakota for which you paid less then South Dakota's 4% in sales tax, you are responsible for paying South Dakota a use tax on those purchases equal to 4% of the total purchase price less any sales taxes already paid to other jurisductions.
Illinois has a use tax. By order from California, you are obligated by the state use tax law to collect from yourself the corresponding Illinois sales tax and include it in your income tax filing.
Many Illinois taxpayers are unaware that a Use Tax exists in Illinois. Do you know about Use Tax?
In 1955, the General Assembly passed the Use Tax Act. Use Tax is a sales tax that you, as the purchaser, owe on items that you buy for use in Illinois. If the seller does not collect at least 6.25 percent sales tax, you must pay the difference to the Illinois Department of Revenue. The most common purchases on which the seller does not collect Illinois Use Tax are those made via the internet, from a mail order catalog, or made when traveling outside Illinois. You must keep your receipts when you make these types of purchases.
In 2010, the General Assembly passed a law making it easier for individuals to pay their Use Tax by putting a line on Form IL-1040.
In a brick-and-mortar case, we know the location to use for the transaction as the entire transaction occurs between people located within a single state and subject to the laws of they state they are all physically in. So the state can force a store to collect sales tax from its customers who come into the store and make purchases.
For an online purchase, it's not so clear?
Purchaser's location? What if the purchaser is in a hotel room far from home, maybe even out of the country? Or on an airplane?
Shipped-to address for the purchase or Purchaser's mailing address? I foresee a lot of Montana mailing addresses once someone in Montana realizes the business opportunity inherent in sales-tax avoidance arbitrage.
Purchaser's home address? What if the item is shipped elsewhere, e.g. a gift to an aunt in a 3rd state? And why would I tell anyone my home address instead of my mailing address?
Sender's address? Which one, the HQ? The warehouse? The fulfillment center?
Will states be able to force out-of-state brick-and-mortars to quiz customers and collect and remit use taxes on the assumption that their citizens temporarily in another state just bought something that they *should* have bought at home, thus depriving the home state of revenue?
Bear in mind that what are being discussed are sales taxes, which are paid by customers.
Businesses merely collect and remit these taxes. They are forced to act as proxy tax collectors because it is more efficient for states for force a few thousands of businesses to account for their sales than it is to force a few million citizens to do so individually (which is already a proven utter failure as per use taxes).
Please bear that in mind before going of on a "these online corporations are skipping out on taxes they owe! mom&pop brick-and-mortars are carrying their load!" chain of thought.
Imagine a mom&pop 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 has a 7% rate.
By reputation and the lure of 0% sales tax, people from Md make the short trip to mom&pop to buy their wares. Mon&pop do not care nor ask where their customers are from, there is no question *at all* where the transaction takes place. It is subject to Delaware sales tax: 0%. Being a brick-and-mortar store in Delaware, mom&pop charge all their customers no sales tax.
Mom&pop decide to create a website to allow their loyal customers (and hopefully new customers) to buy things online. Under this proposed rule mom&pop not only have to treat their online customers differently from their in-store customers, but have to comply with Md's tax regime (and by implication all the other tax regimes) as an unpaid tax collector? With all the liabilities, audit threats, and possible penalties?
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, even if hoards of Marylanders rolled into Delaware everyday to stock up. It is the Marylanders who are violating (I assume) 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 difference between Marylanders driving to Delaware to shop compared to them ordering from a store in Delaware and having the loot delivered.
How is it fair to force a mom&pop store in Delaware to be a tax collector for Maryland? And without *any* compensation for the favor, not to mention the overhead of tallying and remitting taxes to Maryland, plus the inherent audit and prosecutable liability should they make some mistake in their forced servitude as proxy tax collector for a state in which they have absolutely zero presence.
Brick-and-mortar Main Street vendors in Delaware have no obligation to collect and remit Maryland use taxes for Marylanders frequenting their stores. Even if the Marylanders are jumping across the state line to take advantage of Delaware's 0% sales tax. Even if the Marylanders then fail to report and pay their state's use taxes.
Internet vendors should continue to have the same right to not be forced into acting as a tax collector proxy for some state in which they do not have a physical point-of-presence.
While I suppose tax-and-spend supporters would like it, I think many people and Main Street vendors would be offended at the notion that a state like, let's say New York, could force a brick-and-mortar store in, say, Orlando, FL to quiz customers so as to ferret out the New Yorkers and collect the NY sales tax on any items purchased that might be possibly taken home to New York (and then subject to NY use taxes). But it would put the Orlando brick-and-mortar store selling to a New Yorker in the store in sync with what they want an Orlando online vendor to do for New York customers.
This Streamlined Sales Tax idea is about allowing states to force businesses residing completely in *other states* to become proxy tax collectors, not to mention that those businesses will be forced into audits and liabilities from any state or tribal tax that can be passed completely without representation.
People act as if technology will solve these "problems"...the equanimity of sales taxes are not simply a matter of rates. A software database would be huge to encompass the differences between states. Consider that in NYC as bagel is taxable if sold sliced, but not taxed if not sliced. Or that candy in Illinois with a certain percentage of flour in its composition is food and not taxed, but no-flour candy is taxed.
The states say "hey, turbo tax will manage that for you," What happens when Cali, NY, Mass, and DC all decide to audit you in the same year?
What if you get a tax audit statement from Minnesota? You'll have to prove that you didn't sell anything to anyone in Minnesota...how do you prove that negative?
Most states *already* tax internet and catalog purchases, indeed all purchases made out-of-state for goods brought into the state. They just currently cannot force merchants outside those states to comply and act as proxy tax-collectors for them.
These are called Use Taxes.
The thing is, States are upset that no one pays Use Taxes and now want to force businesses in *other states* into servitude as tax collectors.
What right does one state have to force a brick-and-mortar retailer in another state to collect sales taxes from border-crossing customers? None.
Why then should they be able to force an out-of-state retailer of the virtual sort to collect sales taxes from virtual border-crossing customers?
If I lived in North Dakota and I hopped across the border to Montana and bought a book at a shop there (no sales tax in Montana) then took it back with me to ND, I would be responsible for paying any use tax owed, not the book shopkeeper in Montana. Same rules should apply to the Montana shopkeeper if he mails my books to me at home.
Not to mention that the items taxed are taxed differently in different states. Food may not be taxed at all in one state, but taxed fully in another.
For example, a bagel in NYC is not taxed, but a sliced bagel is taxed as prepared food.
In Washington, a candy bar containing flour (a Milky Way Bar or Kit Kat) is not taxed, while one without flour (a Milky Way Midnight Bar or 3 Musketeers) is. The only way for a consumer to know what's taxed before heading to the checkout counter is to read the ingredient label and the state's definition of "candy or candy-like products."
In Texas and other states, wigs and hairpieces may or may not be taxed, depending on whether the customer has a medical need for the fake hair (e.g. cancer treatments) or just wants a different look.
With 17,500 or so jurisdictions, each with weird exemptions, it would be a compliance nightmare.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that an awful lot of folks in the Middle East just want to keep killing each other and will use any excuse to justify it. Trumps move (which actually is a negative move, in that he simply chose to not renew a waiver to the 1995 law requiring the US embassy to be in Jerusalem, thereby letting the law and its consequences play out) is just today's excuse. ISIS making Genghis Khan seem tame...Sunnis and Shias are trading suicide bombings in mosques...Taliban lashing out all over...
"Militants from the Pakistani Taliban have attacked an army-run school in Peshawar, killing 141 people, 132 of them children, the military say.
"In Kabul, a suicide bomber killed at least 39 people and injured 45 more when he detonated his explosives among some 100 worshippers in a Shia mosque in the western part of the capital, according to the interior ministry. Some of the victims were reportedly shot after the blast on Friday evening.
"In central Ghor province, a suicide bomber killed 33 worshippers in a Sunni mosque, purportedly targeting a local commander from the anti-Taliban Jamiat party, said police spokesman Mohammad Iqbal Nizami.
"The most horrific incident was over the weekend in Baghdad where an ISIS suicide car bomb targeted the Karrada shopping area, killing over 175 people including numerous children. One moment Muslim families were shopping and socializing after breaking the Ramadan fast at sundown. The next, entire families were gone in a blink of an ISIS bomb. The blast targeted a primarily, but not exclusively, Shia neighborhood. But if you think ISIS hesitates at slaughtering Sunni Muslims, you simply don’t know what ISIS has been up to the past few years. The group has brutally murdered countless Sunni Muslims, including three women who reportedly refused to treat ISIS fighters and others who refused to pledge allegiance to ISIS. ISIS even reportedly killed three imams “for failing to praise ISIL in their sermons.”
"Four suicide bombers hit a pair of crowded mosques in Yemen's capital of Sanaa on Friday, killing at least 137 people and injuring more than 300 others, officials told NBC News. The ISIS affiliate in war-torn Yemen claimed responsibility for the attacks, according to Flashpoint Intelligence, a global security firm and NBC News consultant. It was the first large-scale attack claimed by the Sunni militants in Yemen, which has been in a state of chaos since Shiite Houthi rebels launched a violent power grab.
ATF agents playing Keystone Kops and entrapping mentally-disabled people. And arresting people with rock-solid alibis (like being in federal prison at the time of their supposed offense). The IG issued a pretty scathing report: https://oig.justice.gov/report...
The report concluded that all the ATF’s storefront operations were characterized by “poor management, insufficient training and guidance to agents in the field, and a lax organizational culture that failed to place sufficient emphasis on risk management in these inherently sensitive operations.”
Agents lost track of a fully automatic assault rifle and lost $35,000 worth of store “merchandise” in a burglary. The ATF paid such high prices for guns that potential victims of the sting legally bought guns from gun stores and sold them to friendly Fearless Distributing. One entrepreneur stole three ATF guns from the store. The next day he returned and sold one of them back. One of the men agents charged with selling them drugs had an airtight alibi. He was already in prison. ATF agents said Jones sold them six grams of marijuana on March 7. Problem was, Jones reported to a federal prison in Pennsylvania to start a sentence on March 1, according to Chris Burke, spokesman for the federal Bureau of Prisons - on an ATF case. "He was definitely in our custody," Burke said. "He never left."
Kind of a bitch when posting, say python scripts.
Note that Sec. Clinton won less than half of the popular vote and that only about half the eligible voters in the country voted so she represents about 25% of the US population. Her "about 25%" is slightly larger than his "about 25%", something like 26% to 24%. Hardly a mandate for her either.
But this completely ignores the fact that people vote or not at least partly according to their perception that their vote will count. How many Republicans who might have voted for Trump in California simply did something else on election day because Clinton's victory in that winner-take-all state was assured? How many Democrats stayed home in Alabama in that winner-take-all state because they figure Trump had the state locked up?
If we had a nationwide popular vote, the candidates' campaign strategies would be different, the response of voters would be different. Hell, states are not even required to have a popular vote for President. They are free to appoint their electors however they chose to do so. It just so happens that right now most states use a winner-take-all vote. Article II, Section 1: "Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct...". If California passed a law that allowed the Governor to simply appoint all of the states 55 electors however he (or she) likes--presumably on party lines--about 10M "popular votes" go poof.
The "popular vote" is meaningless UNLESS that it the metric used for the actual election. Too many factors affect it otherwise. It wasn't.
The system in effect was the Electoral College, with the numbers of votes per state know before hand and the number needed for a win. Clinton and her team knew EXACTLY how the EC system works. She campaigned accordingly, and STILL lost to an odious rookie whom she outspent by about 4:1. She lost 5 states that Obama carried twice.
If this were a football game, an analogous case might be: Clinton had 658 yards of total offense while Trump had 629 yards, but Clinton lost by 4 touchdowns after having 5 turnovers. She simply failed to do the things necessary to score.
Which mass shooter got their weapons this way? Sandy Hook? Nope, he murdered his mother and stole her guns. Florida? Southland? Nope.
The "guns-show loophole" simply doesn't exist in reality as it does in the minds of the gun confiscation crowd. Anyone purchasing a firearm from a dealer, even at a gun show, must go through the same ID, Form 4473, and background check as they would in a store. In truth, at any gun show there may be a few private individuals who might sell one or two firearms, without a check required, but they can do that without being at a gun show. It's simply a private sale. If you only make occasional sales of firearms from your personal collection, you do not need to be licensed.
Also, background checks are required for all sales at gunshows in most blue states already (so if that's where mass shooters get their guns, by your logic, mass shootings in blue states demonstrate the failure of these laws).
Also, it seems to me that gun "hoarders" would actually be a good thing. They own far more firearms than they can use at one time, so they are in fact keeping those weapons of the street.
Since people of color seem to be unable to get valid government-issued ID. That's always what we're told when voter ID legislation is on the line. So this new policy is just going to prevent people of color from making their voices heard on Google. Google is racist and just trying to suppress those voices.
Because, racist.
Didn't they feed all the lower-class, back of the train folks ground-up bug protein bars?
California has more-stringent standards for cars sold in California. Can California say (with force of law) "If you want to sell a car in California, not only must the cars sold in California comply with California laws, but all cars you sell anyway must also comply with California laws."?
Or "All out-of-state vendors selling items in California are required to pay their employees in accordance with California minimum wage laws."?
Or "All out-of-state vendors selling items in Mississippi are prohibited from paying for abortions for their employees."?
If a state can force an out-of-state business to collect sales taxes, can they force out-of-state individuals to pay income taxes? Take a week vacation in California...can you be forced to pay income taxes to California for the wages you earned during your time there (assuming it was paid-time-off)?
Here's an extreme sales-tax issue I outlined elsewhere.
Assume California passed a $10/gallon gas tax. Obviously Californians near a border with another state will quickly start crossing the border to get their gas, thereby avoiding this tax.
California starts gently reminding its residents to report and pay the use tax on the gas that they "imported" in their vehicles and 5-gallon cans. But they just don't.
California could resort to stringent audits with stiff penalties. But that would rile folks up even more and they're already mad about this $10/gallon gas tax.
California could set up border inspections...you must stop and have your gasoline levels checked before you leave the state and stop and pay taxes on any excess you have in your tank upon your return (even California realizes it's futile to try to tax you on gas that you used outside the state). That'll go over well...
Or, California could try to force gas stations over the border to check licenses of their customers so that they can charge Californians the tax and remit it to California.
This is basically the situation today with online/catalog sales. People just don't pay the use taxes they legally owe. States don't want to go down the audit and penalty route, nor do they want to do border controls to inspect for incoming untaxed merchandise. So they want to force out-of-state businesses to do the dirty work for them.
Many businesses are incorporated in Delaware.
Delaware has no sales tax, and does not allow cities or counties to assess any type of sales tax.
Some years back, the CBO produced a report "THE INCIDENCE OF THE CORPORATE INCOME TAX" in which it states
"A corporation may write its check to the Internal Revenue Service for payment of the corporate income tax, but that money must come from somewhere: from reduced returns to investors in the company, lower wages to its workers, or higher prices that consumers pay for the products the company produces."
And it goes on to say
"Although economists are far from a consensus about exactly who bears how much of the burden of the corporate income tax, the existing studies highlight the significant types of economic mechanisms as well as the empirical estimates necessary for further quantifying the burdens. CBO's review of the studies yields the following conclusions:
o The short-term burden of the corporate tax probably falls on stockholders or investors in general, but may fall on some more than on others, because not all investments are taxed at the same rate.
o In the very long term, the burden is likely to be shifted in part to labor, if the corporate tax dampens capital accumulation.
o Most attempts to distribute the burden of corporate taxation have neglected the possible importance of effects on the relative prices of products.
Not really. Say someone from South Dakota goes to Vegas to get married. SD is expected to honor the NV marriage license (and Obergefell forced that to apply to even gay marriages). What if Goergia were to offer easy-to-get carry permits for out-of-staters? Then people could come to Atlanta for a permit like they go to Vegas to get married.
Or say California passed a $10 per gallon gas tax, which includes gas bought out-of-state but carried into California either in your vehicle or in any container. Once people near the border start getting their gas over the state line and avoiding California gas tax, could California force those states to collect the California gas tax?
And then SD will have to hire 10,000 new auditors to handle the sales tax cases from millions of small e-tailers.
Now we see the true purpose...
SD citizens, like citizens in most states, generally are ignorant or simply ignore the states use tax laws.
SD is unsatisfied with the perfectly justifiable actions of simply attacking its citizens with audits for not not paying their use taxes and just think it would be easier and less likely to make their citizens angry by forcing out-of-state vendors to be SD sales tax collectors like they force SD vendors.
The issue here is, then what else can a state for out-of-state entities to do?
--------------
The South Dakota use tax is a special excise tax assessed on property purchased for use in South Dakota in a jurisdiction where a lower (or no) sales tax was collected on the purchase.
The South Dakota use tax should be paid for items bought tax-free over the internet, bought while traveling, or transported into South Dakota from a state with a lower sales tax rate.
The South Dakota use tax rate is 4%, the same as the regular South Dakota sales tax. Including local taxes, the South Dakota use tax can be as high as 2.000%.
The South Dakota Use Tax is a little-known tax that complements the regular South Dakota sales tax to ensure that purchases made outside of South Dakota are not exempt from the South Dakota sales tax.
Instead of taxing the sale of tangible property which takes place outside of South Dakota's jurisdiction (and thus cannot be taxed), the South Dakota Use Tax taxes the use or consumption of tangible property bought in other jurisdictions with a lower sales tax rate and brought back into South Dakota.
State of California Sales Tax How Do I Calculate How Much Use Tax I Owe?
If you made any purchases online or outside of South Dakota for which you paid less then South Dakota's 4% in sales tax, you are responsible for paying South Dakota a use tax on those purchases equal to 4% of the total purchase price less any sales taxes already paid to other jurisductions.
Illinois has a use tax. By order from California, you are obligated by the state use tax law to collect from yourself the corresponding Illinois sales tax and include it in your income tax filing.
Many Illinois taxpayers are unaware that a Use Tax exists in Illinois. Do you know about Use Tax?
In 1955, the General Assembly passed the Use Tax Act. Use Tax is a sales tax that you, as the purchaser, owe on items that you buy for use in Illinois. If the seller does not collect at least 6.25 percent sales tax, you must pay the difference to the Illinois Department of Revenue. The most common purchases on which the seller does not collect Illinois Use Tax are those made via the internet, from a mail order catalog, or made when traveling outside Illinois. You must keep your receipts when you make these types of purchases.
In 2010, the General Assembly passed a law making it easier for individuals to pay their Use Tax by putting a line on Form IL-1040.
That'll kill the housing market for sure.
In a brick-and-mortar case, we know the location to use for the transaction as the entire transaction occurs between people located within a single state and subject to the laws of they state they are all physically in. So the state can force a store to collect sales tax from its customers who come into the store and make purchases.
For an online purchase, it's not so clear?
Purchaser's location? What if the purchaser is in a hotel room far from home, maybe even out of the country? Or on an airplane?
Shipped-to address for the purchase or Purchaser's mailing address? I foresee a lot of Montana mailing addresses once someone in Montana realizes the business opportunity inherent in sales-tax avoidance arbitrage.
Purchaser's home address? What if the item is shipped elsewhere, e.g. a gift to an aunt in a 3rd state? And why would I tell anyone my home address instead of my mailing address?
Sender's address? Which one, the HQ? The warehouse? The fulfillment center?
Will states be able to force out-of-state brick-and-mortars to quiz customers and collect and remit use taxes on the assumption that their citizens temporarily in another state just bought something that they *should* have bought at home, thus depriving the home state of revenue?
Bear in mind that what are being discussed are sales taxes, which are paid by customers.
Businesses merely collect and remit these taxes. They are forced to act as proxy tax collectors because it is more efficient for states for force a few thousands of businesses to account for their sales than it is to force a few million citizens to do so individually (which is already a proven utter failure as per use taxes).
Please bear that in mind before going of on a "these online corporations are skipping out on taxes they owe! mom&pop brick-and-mortars are carrying their load!" chain of thought.
Imagine a mom&pop 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 has a 7% rate.
By reputation and the lure of 0% sales tax, people from Md make the short trip to mom&pop to buy their wares. Mon&pop do not care nor ask where their customers are from, there is no question *at all* where the transaction takes place. It is subject to Delaware sales tax: 0%. Being a brick-and-mortar store in Delaware, mom&pop charge all their customers no sales tax.
Mom&pop decide to create a website to allow their loyal customers (and hopefully new customers) to buy things online. Under this proposed rule mom&pop not only have to treat their online customers differently from their in-store customers, but have to comply with Md's tax regime (and by implication all the other tax regimes) as an unpaid tax collector? With all the liabilities, audit threats, and possible penalties?
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, even if hoards of Marylanders rolled into Delaware everyday to stock up. It is the Marylanders who are violating (I assume) 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 difference between Marylanders driving to Delaware to shop compared to them ordering from a store in Delaware and having the loot delivered.
How is it fair to force a mom&pop store in Delaware to be a tax collector for Maryland? And without *any* compensation for the favor, not to mention the overhead of tallying and remitting taxes to Maryland, plus the inherent audit and prosecutable liability should they make some mistake in their forced servitude as proxy tax collector for a state in which they have absolutely zero presence.
Now multiply that by how many?
Brick-and-mortar Main Street vendors in Delaware have no obligation to collect and remit Maryland use taxes for Marylanders frequenting their stores. Even if the Marylanders are jumping across the state line to take advantage of Delaware's 0% sales tax. Even if the Marylanders then fail to report and pay their state's use taxes.
Internet vendors should continue to have the same right to not be forced into acting as a tax collector proxy for some state in which they do not have a physical point-of-presence.
While I suppose tax-and-spend supporters would like it, I think many people and Main Street vendors would be offended at the notion that a state like, let's say New York, could force a brick-and-mortar store in, say, Orlando, FL to quiz customers so as to ferret out the New Yorkers and collect the NY sales tax on any items purchased that might be possibly taken home to New York (and then subject to NY use taxes). But it would put the Orlando brick-and-mortar store selling to a New Yorker in the store in sync with what they want an Orlando online vendor to do for New York customers.
This Streamlined Sales Tax idea is about allowing states to force businesses residing completely in *other states* to become proxy tax collectors, not to mention that those businesses will be forced into audits and liabilities from any state or tribal tax that can be passed completely without representation.
People act as if technology will solve these "problems"...the equanimity of sales taxes are not simply a matter of rates. A software database would be huge to encompass the differences between states. Consider that in NYC as bagel is taxable if sold sliced, but not taxed if not sliced. Or that candy in Illinois with a certain percentage of flour in its composition is food and not taxed, but no-flour candy is taxed.
The states say "hey, turbo tax will manage that for you," What happens when Cali, NY, Mass, and DC all decide to audit you in the same year?
What if you get a tax audit statement from Minnesota? You'll have to prove that you didn't sell anything to anyone in Minnesota...how do you prove that negative?
Most states *already* tax internet and catalog purchases, indeed all purchases made out-of-state for goods brought into the state. They just currently cannot force merchants outside those states to comply and act as proxy tax-collectors for them.
These are called Use Taxes.
The thing is, States are upset that no one pays Use Taxes and now want to force businesses in *other states* into servitude as tax collectors.
What right does one state have to force a brick-and-mortar retailer in another state to collect sales taxes from border-crossing customers? None.
Why then should they be able to force an out-of-state retailer of the virtual sort to collect sales taxes from virtual border-crossing customers?
If I lived in North Dakota and I hopped across the border to Montana and bought a book at a shop there (no sales tax in Montana) then took it back with me to ND, I would be responsible for paying any use tax owed, not the book shopkeeper in Montana. Same rules should apply to the Montana shopkeeper if he mails my books to me at home.
Not to mention that the items taxed are taxed differently in different states. Food may not be taxed at all in one state, but taxed fully in another.
For example, a bagel in NYC is not taxed, but a sliced bagel is taxed as prepared food.
In Washington, a candy bar containing flour (a Milky Way Bar or Kit Kat) is not taxed, while one without flour (a Milky Way Midnight Bar or 3 Musketeers) is. The only way for a consumer to know what's taxed before heading to the checkout counter is to read the ingredient label and the state's definition of "candy or candy-like products."
In Texas and other states, wigs and hairpieces may or may not be taxed, depending on whether the customer has a medical need for the fake hair (e.g. cancer treatments) or just wants a different look.
With 17,500 or so jurisdictions, each with weird exemptions, it would be a compliance nightmare.