Sales tax is based on the location of the buyer, if the seller has a physical presence in that location.
Bzzzt! Sales tax is based on taking delivery of a goods in trade within the taxing jurisdiction of a State. When a seller also does business in the State where delivery will take place, that second State can exercise taxing jurisdiction just as if the item had been sold by the seller over the counter in the destination State. You can walk into a store in State A and buy an item for delivery to an address in State B and there is no sales tax unless the seller also does business in State B.
If the seller has no physical presence in that location, there's no sales tax.
No, you've got it turned around backward. It has nothing to do with the buyer's "location" and everything to do with the address to which the goods are delivered. If the delivery address is in a State where the seller does not have a business presence as defined by that State, then the seller has no authority and no obligation to collect a sales tax for that unrelated State. Nor does the seller have authority or obligation to collect sales tax for his own State because there is no taxable delivery of goods in his State.
This is because it's unreasonable to ask a seller to keep track of 2,000 different local tax rates, file 2,000 different tax forms, etc.
Bzzzt! While that's a nice, reasonable, common sense opinion, it's completely incorrect. Sales taxation is governed by well established constitutional and other foundations that have to do with A) the taxing power of the State, B) jurisdiction (a State generally can't tax things that don't take place within its territory), C) limitations on the taxing powers of the States spelled out in the U.S. Constitution, and D) well-established definitions of what constitutes a taxable event in trade (generally the delivery, not the sale)
But it's reasonable to ask a seller to file tax forms for locations where he's got an office.
Bzzzt! "Reasonable" has absolutely nothing to do with it. In fact, your use of having an office in the taxing State isn't even correct, since the taxing State can define what activities constitute having a "business presence," and having an office is only one of those. The power of a State to impose a sales tax is based entirely on well-established principles of the power and reach of State power, not on "reasonableness." If the State where delivery takes place considers the seller to have a business presence there, then that State will require the seller to collect and pay over sales tax on sales made from any of their offices anywhere for delivery to that State.
This new law is simply an attempt to collect sales tax from out of state companies, because the states are desparate for money and see this as an easy target.
That's true, but that statement and your earlier ones hide the fact that there are Constitutional, common law and other legal rules and principles at work here, about all of which you appear to be ignorant. The reason we don't already have a national sales tax, and the reason that all the periodic lip-smacking in Washington over the possibility of a national Value Added Tax (VAT) have gone nowhere is that there is no Constitutional basis for such a tax. I'd suggest that neither is there a basis for the federal government to "authorize" States who are "members" of an extralegal "group" to do what the federal government itself cannot Constitutionally do.
Perhaps what the States should be doing is reexamining how and why they got into the position of having such bloated budgets and programs that they are now feeling the triple pinch of the economic slowdown, the hemorrhage of jobs and business overseas, and, oh yeah, Internet transactions that don't pay sales tax.
-----
Do you feel stupid yet? Look at the bright side: There's always seppuku.
What's fundamental is that when someone sells stuff for delivery out of their taxing jurisdiction (i.e. to another State), they cannot collect Sales Tax unless they also do business in the buyer's State. The recipient of the goods is usually liable, though, for paying Use Tax to his own State, but that's such a tough thing to get a handle on that it's usually only enforced against large organizations with auditable records. Use Tax is the mirror image of Sales Tax, but instead of the responsibility being placed on the seller, it is placed on the buyer. In either case the State imposing the tax has to have jurisdiction over the taxed party. No jurisdiction, no tax.
The cases of websites charging Sales Tax to buyers taking delivery in other States is usually based on the fact that the seller has a "business presence" in the other State and thus is under the taxing jurisdiction of the buyer's State. IBM, for instance, does business in all 50 States and therefore charges sales tax on all its sales to anyone in the U.S. Anyone else who charges Sales Tax on interstate sales is A) committing fraud, B) stupid, or C) loves taxes so much that they voluntarily collect and pay over what they don't have to. Long before the Internet, Daytimer used to do exactly (C), which was why I stopped doing business with them.
There is no power granted in the Constitution to the federal government that allows it to "authorize" one State to collect taxes for another State or for some extralegal "group" of "member" States. If you knew anything about our system of government you would know that the States are so separate that to reach agreements with each other they have to enter into treaties, just like sovereign nations.
Personally, I think there's something wrong with people who tell other people that an abuse or extraction or punishment is inevitable, so just "get used to it."
To the Christians of Roman times:
"Aw, quit yer griping about being sliced to pieces by professional gladiators and being fed to lions... that stuff has been going on longer than anyone can remember and it isn't going to stop. You can't fight Rome! Stop whining and get used to it!"
To the American Colonists:
"Stop yammering about taxation and representation and just get used to it. Whaddyathink yer gonna do,
revolt?Overthrow the King's rule? Are you nuts? Shut up and be a good little subject!"
To the American slaves:
"Don't get any thoughts of freedom. You can't change the plantation system. It has always been like this and always will be like this. Just get used to it."
To Americans during Prohibition:
"Stop whining about the Volstead Act! It's a Constitional Amendment, fer crissakes! It's the federal gummint! You can't change it! Whaddyathink, yer gonna get it
repealed or sumpin?"
To American blacks before the civil rights movement:
"Stop whining about sitting in the back of the bus and using "COLORED" washrooms and not being able to enter whites-only establishments! Be happy you're not a slave! This is the way it is... get used to it!"
To opponents of a new form of taxation across State lines for which the federal government actually has no Constitutional authority:
"Read the posts, dude. Dozens (hundreds? thousands? millions?) of eCommerce sites charge sales tax. It is a fact of life. There is nothing fundamental about the net that precludes the paying of sales tax. If the buyer and the seller are in the same state, sales tax is charged. That's it. No rocket science. No abstract mathematical concepts. No need to invoke spiritual entities or evil demons. This shit has been going on for millenia, nothing new here."
Anyone know what reasoning the 8 dissentors used for voting against this resolution?
Uh, complete and utter lack of any brain matter? Skulls full of garden slugs? Pus for brains, like the telemarketers and spammers? Maybe pockets full of fresh green pieces of paper...
And I registered one phone number that represents an average of 4 or 5 people. Until someone digs up some actual stats, the phones/people thing is entirely guesswork. You think in terms of phone numbers per person because your person and life are festooned with callable gadgets, while I think in terms of persons per phone because I have no need to have / pay for / worry about losing / be annoyed by any of those gadgets.
I'm waiting for direct brain implants and IPv6 DHCP assigning me 65,636 IP addresses every time I stroll into another hotspot. Pretty soon we'll be dealing with things like port forwarding through the firewall in the back of the shirt to support servers in the shirt buttons, shoes, glasses, skull.
It's because while our States are coming up short after getting too used to taxing and spending way too much, while the national debt is climbing in the big-government paradigm given to us by 60 years of Democrat control of Congress, while we are being hated around the world because touchy-feely foreign policies have been interpreted by moronic, medieval, foreign shitbrains as weakness, while we are trading in our rights for security because we're too overloaded with issues to fight for them, while we can't afford to go to a doctor or buy our meds since government's deep pockets launched the eye-popping rise in healthcare costs in the 1970s... while all of that is going on, the last thing we want is some pus-brained, lower alleged life form asshole intruding on the peace and quiet of our homes.
How about this: an "Explode Caller" button on every phone. When pressed during an incoming call it would be tallied against the caller. When the caller's tally reaches a predetermined threshhold, all his phone equipment would vaporize, taking off the heads of the telemarketers.
Maybe then, telemarketing calls would begin like this: "Pleeeeeeeeeze don't press the button! Pleeeeeeeeeze just give me a chance to explain that I have 14 kids and two mortgages, and this is the only work I can find... pleeeeeeeze!" Click! Boom!
Telemarketers and spammers. There, y'see? Mission creep already. That's the problem. Before we know it it might be extended to bill collectors, then to lawyers, and then the country would become an unnaturally pleasant place to live.
In the public interest I'm releasing the following files to aid those who may wish to research the wildcarded TLD problem. The scripts are KornShell 88, developed on AIX 4.3.3.
What Verisign has done is evidence that they are lower than slime mold, but you got what you deserved for A) using RBL blacklists, and B) being incompetent enough to misspell one of your RBLs. What you don't know is that you have been losing genuine email all along.
The petition is broken. After confirming the signature, it directs to a URL that doesn't respond, then on Refresh it informs that an error occurred, claiming erroneously that maybe a required field was left blank.
It's yet another instance of broken stuff on the Internet. It's ironic that what is broken in this case is something that is attempting to enlist support to resolve an Internet problem.
It's all the amazing comments that claim that programmers are some sort of superior beings in a class of their own that are remarkable. The attitude that of course steel workers and textile workers had to retrain but they were lowly little people anyway, not like PROGRAMMERS. Seriously, read some of the comments, you can keep your attitude of liking to get a job but try actually reading what some of these people are writing here. If half of them are serious then it's scary.
No, what's really scary is ignorance like yours. This isn't just IT following steel and textiles. In all earlier instances of segments of the economy leaking overseas, they were segments more or less at the bottom of our economy, segments that the economy as a whole was ready to shed (whether or not the affected workers were ready to be shed). And there was always somewhere higher to go for those willing to learn something new. This time, though, it's not the bottom layers -- it's skilled work all up and down the line, across all industries and professions that deal with intangibles.
Where does a research scientist go to "train for a better job" when his job is sent overseas? How about a top tax accountant? How about a senior software developer? A radiologist? Are we all supposed to become atomic physicists or sucessful TV personalities or best-selling authors with a few weeks of mindless training from fees collected from visa applicants?
For that matter, where will the CIO or PHB go when their jobs are outsourced or offshored?
Don't you think this is already in full swing? Wake up and read the news.
And CIOs must pay the prevailing U.S. hourly rate to offshore employees on temporary visas, so obviously there's no savings during that period of time...
Bzzzzzt! Wishful, naive thinking. They're way ahead of you. The L1 guy (intracompany transfer from the Indian office) keeps getting paid at his Indian rate and paid in India, not here. There isn't even a nominal requirement to pay him prevailing U.S. wage or salary. And because he isn't paid here, he isn't taxed here. He doesn't complain because he's paid well by Indian standards, his expenses here are paid, and he's grateful to have a job instead of having to beg in the streets of Bangalore.
The H1B (guest worker hire) is supposed to be paid prevailing pay, but there's no monitoring and no enforcement. Moreover, employers can rig the game by playing with job titles, phony local interviews, use middlemen, etc. If the H1B rocks the boat he loses his job and has a short time to get legal again, go home, or become an illegal immigrant who overstayed his permitted time and conditions.
Get it yet?
In addition, the in-house employee will be quite pissed for being forced to train his replacement, and will not do so as a result.
Bzzzzt! More wishful thinking. This is happening now, and yes, the outgoing U.S. employee is pissed, but no, he doesn't refuse to do it, because HE NEEDS THE ADDITIONAL PAYCHECKS AND SEVERANCE PAY. If he refuses, he gets laid off immediately, maybe even discharged for cause (no unemployment bennies). Also, the employer usually ties the training of the replacement to a severance package. Very, very few people in this situation can afford to refuse. They are facing long-term unemployment and the difference between a couple-three weeks pay and maybe a few months pay.
The name of the offshore game...
It's called "capitalism".
Get used to it.
Some people believe that burglary is inevitable and do nothing to prevent it. For them it is a self-fulfilling belief.
Hey! Let's say we agree that burglary is inevitable. May we all drop over to your place and help ourselves to your stuff? Will you "get used to it?"
But maybe we should be asking you which offshore provider country you hail from. Or which scum-sucking, pus-squirting offshoring promoter you work for. Hmmm?
Others here have already pointed out the difficulties with taxing information flow in/out of countries.
That's because taxing information flow was the only sorry excuse for a solution that someone was able to come up with, and it's completely boneheaded. For something effective, try this:
Abolish the H1B and L1 and related visa programs immediately.
Cancel all the guest worker visas and send them home immediately.
To companies who complain about the above, the reply is "Importing guest workers is a privilege, not a right. It has been withdrawn. Get used to it."
To companies who threaten to move themselves offshore, the reply is, "Go ahead. Then you will be a third world company in a third world country, and you will not have full and open access to our markets."
Remove tax deductibility immediately for the business expenses of offshoring.
Modify/enhance tax rules on cost- and income-shifting across borders by multinationals and even vaguely related parties, and strictly enforce.
Reintroduce H1B and L1 on a very limited basis such as 5,000 per year, with strict certification requirements for the sponsoring corporate officers, under penalties of perjury, with heavy fines and long prison terms for violators, and strictly monitor and enforce the requirements, standards, pay, prohibitions and ultimate repatriation of the workers.
Absolutely prohibit the farming out or "job shopping" of guest workers, with heavy fines and long prison terms for the employers, middlemen and client companies involved.
Define citizenship more closely so that it stems not from an accident of birth within the borders of the U.S. but, like Swiss citizenship, from the citizenship of the parents.
Empower and mandate the Dept. of Labor, the Dept. of Justice, the new INS and the IRS to work together to rip out the throats and pocketbooks of violator corporations and their executives.
Tell the WTO, "Sorry, our Constitution doesn't allow any power of any of our three branches of government to be delegated to another country or organization."
Understand this well: The essential difference between what is happening today with guest workers, outsourcing and offshoring versus earlier shifts of industries offshore such as textiles, shoe manufacturing, steelmaking, shipbuilding, electronics manufacturing, etc., is profoundly qualitative:
It is probably natural that the lowest levels of industry will over time be peeled horizontally off the bottoms of the industrial economies and transferred to emerging economies. It is the way that the industrial countries move up to higher-level technologies while the former agrarian world becomes industrialized by advancing to the industries in which the advanced countries no longer find it worthwhile to engage.
It is not natural for all levels of professional and scientific jobs to be peeled vertically out of the industrial countries, gutting them to make gifts of that work to emerging countries.
The former is inevitable as the entire planetary population evolves. It is a race to the top and everyone eventually benefits. The latter is not inevitable, and can only happen by the consent of the donor countries, at their grave cost and peril. It is a race to the bottom and everyone eventually suffers.
Don't you think it's about time we outsourced CEOs and CIOs and the other riff raff making millions or billions of dollars? Just imagine replacing them with some Indian labor. Might save a company a lot of money.
That may come, but first the Indians will have to do some genetic engineering and selective breeding to raise a crop of candidates stupid enough to qualify.
What do you call 1,000 CIOs at the bottom of the ocean?...
What's the difference between a CIO and a garden slug? In a pinch, a garden slug can run corporate IT.
What's the difference between a weasel and an Enron executive? One is a slinking, sneaky carnivore that eats rodents for breakfast and the other is a small mammal commonly found in Britain.
>> we can't afford to export our jobs and livelihoods.
> Why? Are we somehow fundametally better than
> other humans?
No, we're fundamentally better off by virtue of a large number of factors, and we don't have to give that away for free.
National economies and the global economies are not zero sum games. Any country can better its situation without getting a transfer of wealth from another country. It's fallacious to think that one can only prosper at the expense of another, but it's certainly possible for one to hemorrhage wealth to another, leaving both impoverished, one ever so slightly less than before and the other very much more than before.
That's bright. How would you like to have 30 North Koreans bunking down in your house NEXT WEEK?
"The borders should be opened." Ha! What, did you just fall off the turnip truck?
If we were truely a country based on freedom we would have no problems taking care of all the people that would want to live here...
You were out sick the year your class took Social Studies, right? Or you're pulling our leg, right? There are about 6 billion people on the planet, right? There are about 285 million in the U.S., right? Are you aware that most of those six billion would like to live in your house or apartment and have your job? That's a little over 21 people for every man, woman and child in the U.S. Let's say there are three people in your nuclear family. Are you ready to share your living space and your job and your pay with 60 other people? If you are, then you can honestly say, "The borders should be open." If not, you're talking through your hat.
I'm browsing TORAW's web site now, and they look like an interesting organization. Not focused just on moving jobs offshore, they're also advocating a hard look at "non-immigrant foreign workers" - specifically, H1-B visa holders.
Duhhh! That's because offshoring is only one part of the problem, and it is inseparable from the guest worker problem. The offshoring becomes a whole lot tougher, more expensive and riskier if the foreign folks can't be brought here for business/technical/cultural acclimatization. Break the cycle of massive influxes of guest workers and we break the process of offshoring.
I like that TORAW explicity states that they're not against "permanent green card status immigrants", or against anyone based on ethnicity or country of origin.
They explain that explicitly because there's so much stupidity and ignorance going around. If the clue level drops any farther they will also have to explicitly point out that they are not in favor of lynching, atomic bombardment of the outsourcing destination countries, child molestation, bestiality, and brushing one's teeth with plutonium toothpaste because morons will presume that those might be issues.
The only people who think that xenophobia is part of this are those who take their pro-H1B propaganda by direct cerebral infusion (boil press release, cool, inject into brain).
...they address my concerns without hitting my Green Party hot buttons.
Yeah, well, you're gonna have a hard time seeing the real issues while you're bent over carrying all that baggage on your back.
The US should be open to those who want to come, stay, and build a new life -- but we can't afford to export our jobs and livelihoods.
Should it? Should we take in a half a billion Indians and a billion Chinese next year?How about bringing the entire population of Somalia over? Wouldn't they like to build new lives?
There are vast disparities in the world. If you really believe that all the poorest and least capable should be able to come here, then please tell us that you throw open the door to your home to all in your area who might like to build new lives in your house.
Unfortunately, I can't tell if TORAW membership is available to all concerned Americans.
Sounds like you need to use MapQuest to find a Clue Store. If you have anything to do with IT you'll figure out soon enough where your interests lie. In fact, if you have any form of skill that isn't inseparable from handling physical goods, you will find yourself on the chopping block. The only question is whether you will wake up before or after.
As we do live in a capitalist society, if the corporations do not view it as profitable, they will not continue the venture.
If that's what you're counting on, don't hold your breath. Why do you think there are no 7-year-olds working in factories and dying in industrial accidents? Because business decided it wasn't profitable? No, grasshopper, child labor stopped when it was outlawed. Destruction of the skilled U.S. workforce will stop when it is outlawed or taxed or otherwise made to be something businesses will not find wise or useful to engage in.
In thinking that unhindered business profitability is the only thing that can legitimately rein in bad practices, you fail to see and acknowledge that this is a sovereign nation and that we make laws at federal and state levels to prohibit and punish many bad and destructive things. Business has to be constrained by laws that try to promote ethical, constructive behavior and punish fraud and other things that ruin business for everyone. U.S. businesses used to use slaves, children, company towns that trapped workers in endless cycles of debt, company police who shot and killed demonstrating workers, and many other things that would today seem distasteful and evil. Unchecked greed is not a good thing. Self-interest, ethically pursued, is good for everyone.
This is our country. We have the power to control who is allowed to enter and the conditions under which they are allowed to enter. That goes equally for individuals and businesses. We have the power to alter the laws governing the importation and use of guest workers. We have the power to alter the economics of offshoring. If we fail to use those and other powers, then U.S. wages and salaries will eventually be determined by the lowest common denominator of what a rural Chinese worker is paid, or a skilled Indian or Russian professional is paid in their own local economies.
Similarly, if we fail to control entry into this country, most of the rest of the world would flock here and you (assuming you are in the U.S.) would find yourself in a tiny minority of pre-existing Americans with the new majority consisting of a billion or three former Indians, Chinese, Russians, Mexicans, etc.
Businesses are sending jobs overseas because they think they can save money by doing it. They don't care whether they destroy the future of this country or even whether their own children and grandchildren may have to labor like Chinese peasants just to have a bare subsistence. Businesses will stop sending jobs overseas when we alter the economics of their doing so. That can easily be done through immigration and tax law with teeth. Big teeth. Big sharp teeth.
If you believed the CIO article, you haven't been paying attention to this issue for very long. The article is an attempt to calm the waters, nothing more, and occupies a place in a complex symphony being orchestrated in preparation for Congress to once again expand the H1B cap, this time from 65,000 per year to 115,000. Sen. Arlen Specter chaired an egregiously stacked hearing a couple of days ago in which the only anti-H1B testimony allowed was from the IEEE, and the IEEE was denied permission to present oral testimony. In the Committee's transcript on the Web the IEEE's written submission is conveniently missing, leaving only the pro-H1B testimony for the public to read. Many if not most of the policitians in favor of H1B and similar programs have been taking large contributions from the industries who want access to cheap, pliable guest workers, giving those businesses better representation in Congress than you or I have.
You're being taken for a ride and you don't have a clue where you're going. This is not about capitalism or any "inevitable" movement of low-level industries to emerging countries. This is an all-out attack on skilled labor throughout our economy and a very clever form of age discrimination. All U.S. res
...maybe the IRS should IMPOSE a tax on these companies equal to the taxes that WOULD have been paid by the US workers whose jobs they outsourced...
Maybe you should go back to school and learn that the IRS has no power to decide to impose a tax. The Congress creates tax law. The IRS merely carries out what the Congress passes and the President signs into law. The IRS has no choice whatsoever of whom or what to tax or how much to tax them.
Now, if you want to talk about what Congress could do, how about this for starters:
Immediately abolish the H1B and L1 visas and cancel those already held, requiring all holders to return to their countries of origin within 30 days.
Make the costs of offshored operations non-deductible.
Make cost-shifting in circumvention of prohibitions against offshoring a serious crime.
Prohibit lobbying by foreign entities or domestic pseudopods of foreign entities. Why should foreigners have better access to our legislators than we have?
Re-introduce H1B and L1 on a severely limited basis, with strict requirements for documentation of non-impact on U.S. jobs, requirements that corporate officers sign visa sponsoring paperwork under penalties of perjury, and with sufficient power and mandate for government agencies to monitor, investigate and prosecute abuses. By "severely limited basis" I mean no more than perhaps 5,000 or 10,000 of each per year, with close monitoring and prompt ejection of guest workers who lose their qualifications.
Prohibit absolutely any "intracompany" transfers resulting in farming out employees to second or third parties. Prison time for violators and stunning, catastrophic fines for all corporate parties involved.
Treat foreign units of U.S. companies as foreign companies.
Eliminate citizenship by accident of birth. There is no reason to believe that the Founders intended that foreigners who happened to be visiting or passing through the United States could give birth to automatic U.S. citizens.
India's IITs have, of course, been the subject of admiration - now bordering on envy - in corporate America for more than five years now.
Oh, jeez, another fashion trend! Remember when American business went all nutty over Japanese management techniques? American business is unaccountably stupid about many things, but becomes downright brain dead when regarding anything exotically foreign.
From Creative Computing, August 1984:
In less than 40 years Japan has risen from the ashes--literally--of defeat to world preeminence in many areas of technology and business. This astonishing success has challenged observers to find an explanation.
One popular explanation gives the credit to the Japanese method of management. Attempts have been made to identify the elements of this method in the hope that American companies could apply the elements and reap similar benefits.
For a while we actually had to endure the spectacle of American plant managers leading morning group exercises and the singing of company songs. It didn't work because we are not Japanese. The period was prototypical of the kind of superficiality that would come to dominate American business management. "Hey! That millionaire is standing on his head! If we stand on our heads we will be millionaires, too!"
The article from which the above is quoted was written in the wake of failures in attempts to copy Japanese management methods in America, and goes on to explain why culture is inseparable from methods, since culture conditions people to be able to work with certain methods.
I think this is typical thinking for the business minds of America to ignore the long term, while focusing only on the bottom line for the current quarter. After all, they'll get a nice big fat bonus and they get nothing for solid long term planning.
Yes. American business seems to be in the grip of an extremely short-sighted style of policymaking and management. One possible explanation for this is the very high compensation packages now common in the executive strata. An executive doesn't have to look at the long haul and eventual retirement. He or she can instead focus on the very short term of six- and seven-figure salary, options, some pump-and-dump, a departure package, and a cushy life without ever having to work again. How did we get here?
We got here by way of interlocking directorates and a club of clueless executives. I'll sit on the board of your company and lobby for hiring you at $3 million plus extras, and you sit on the board of my company and lobby to pay me $3 million. You can't just stroll in and join this club -- you have to be from the right school and have the right "network" of buddies. Then the bunch of you rotate around in a sick game of corporate musical chairs, going for short term results in each case but then moving on to avoid catching the resulting heat. If anyone raises the issue of the mess left by your predecessor, you respond by saying, "That was then, this is now, let's just deal with it." Very neatly, no one is ever responsible. And what fostered the development of this club?
One big factor has probably been the growth and popularization of investment and the resulting focus exclusively on the short term bottom lines of publicly held companies. This is particularly the case when shares are not held directly by the little people, but held and voted for them by huge institutions managing pension and mutual funds. Institutional investment managers live in a peculiarly artificial world in which only money counts and the rest is all window dressing.
Internationalization has probably also been a factor. Corporations that now span nations don't have the same view that Henry Ford had when he introduced a car that his employees would be able to afford and made every effort to help them buy the cars they had manufactured.
The only way they will change is through legislation and the only way legislation is written is to pad the pockets of the your representatives.
I disagree on both points. I can't imagine a legislative solution to the present mindset of corporate America. I can imagine legislation throwing major roadblocks into the path of the destructive outsourcing and offshoring presently destroying American jobs and undermining American technology.
Legislation is not only achieved by lining the pockets of politicians. Small special interests have to resort to expensive lobbying and large political contribusions precisely because they have little or no voting power. Large consituencies of voters have another, more powerful tool at their disposal: their votes.
Job destruction through the use and abuse of guest workers and through offshoring affects everyone, not just IT people. Virtually every skilled form of work that involves intangibles is under assault. It cuts across all lines, and most of the people being affected can vote. Their family members and friends can vote. Anyone concerned that they, too, may have this nightmare in their future can vote. I'm not at all sure that politicians have dealt with anything like this lately. It has the potential to be a very rude awakening for them.
The striking difference between this problem and the losses of manufacturing jobs in the past, from textiles to shoes to steel to cameras to electronics, is that this is not peeling jobs off the bottom to send them to third world countries emerging from agriculture to crude industries. This is attacking skilled jobs all up and down the line. There is nowhere for us to move up to.
Slashdot Mirror
Bzzzt! Sales tax is based on taking delivery of a goods in trade within the taxing jurisdiction of a State. When a seller also does business in the State where delivery will take place, that second State can exercise taxing jurisdiction just as if the item had been sold by the seller over the counter in the destination State. You can walk into a store in State A and buy an item for delivery to an address in State B and there is no sales tax unless the seller also does business in State B.
No, you've got it turned around backward. It has nothing to do with the buyer's "location" and everything to do with the address to which the goods are delivered. If the delivery address is in a State where the seller does not have a business presence as defined by that State, then the seller has no authority and no obligation to collect a sales tax for that unrelated State. Nor does the seller have authority or obligation to collect sales tax for his own State because there is no taxable delivery of goods in his State.
Bzzzt! While that's a nice, reasonable, common sense opinion, it's completely incorrect. Sales taxation is governed by well established constitutional and other foundations that have to do with A) the taxing power of the State, B) jurisdiction (a State generally can't tax things that don't take place within its territory), C) limitations on the taxing powers of the States spelled out in the U.S. Constitution, and D) well-established definitions of what constitutes a taxable event in trade (generally the delivery, not the sale)
Bzzzt! "Reasonable" has absolutely nothing to do with it. In fact, your use of having an office in the taxing State isn't even correct, since the taxing State can define what activities constitute having a "business presence," and having an office is only one of those. The power of a State to impose a sales tax is based entirely on well-established principles of the power and reach of State power, not on "reasonableness." If the State where delivery takes place considers the seller to have a business presence there, then that State will require the seller to collect and pay over sales tax on sales made from any of their offices anywhere for delivery to that State.
That's true, but that statement and your earlier ones hide the fact that there are Constitutional, common law and other legal rules and principles at work here, about all of which you appear to be ignorant. The reason we don't already have a national sales tax, and the reason that all the periodic lip-smacking in Washington over the possibility of a national Value Added Tax (VAT) have gone nowhere is that there is no Constitutional basis for such a tax. I'd suggest that neither is there a basis for the federal government to "authorize" States who are "members" of an extralegal "group" to do what the federal government itself cannot Constitutionally do.
Perhaps what the States should be doing is reexamining how and why they got into the position of having such bloated budgets and programs that they are now feeling the triple pinch of the economic slowdown, the hemorrhage of jobs and business overseas, and, oh yeah, Internet transactions that don't pay sales tax.
-----
Do you feel stupid yet? Look at the bright side: There's always seppuku.
Get a clue.
What's fundamental is that when someone sells stuff for delivery out of their taxing jurisdiction (i.e. to another State), they cannot collect Sales Tax unless they also do business in the buyer's State. The recipient of the goods is usually liable, though, for paying Use Tax to his own State, but that's such a tough thing to get a handle on that it's usually only enforced against large organizations with auditable records. Use Tax is the mirror image of Sales Tax, but instead of the responsibility being placed on the seller, it is placed on the buyer. In either case the State imposing the tax has to have jurisdiction over the taxed party. No jurisdiction, no tax.
The cases of websites charging Sales Tax to buyers taking delivery in other States is usually based on the fact that the seller has a "business presence" in the other State and thus is under the taxing jurisdiction of the buyer's State. IBM, for instance, does business in all 50 States and therefore charges sales tax on all its sales to anyone in the U.S. Anyone else who charges Sales Tax on interstate sales is A) committing fraud, B) stupid, or C) loves taxes so much that they voluntarily collect and pay over what they don't have to. Long before the Internet, Daytimer used to do exactly (C), which was why I stopped doing business with them.
There is no power granted in the Constitution to the federal government that allows it to "authorize" one State to collect taxes for another State or for some extralegal "group" of "member" States. If you knew anything about our system of government you would know that the States are so separate that to reach agreements with each other they have to enter into treaties, just like sovereign nations.
Personally, I think there's something wrong with people who tell other people that an abuse or extraction or punishment is inevitable, so just "get used to it."
Pika wrote:
Uh, complete and utter lack of any brain matter? Skulls full of garden slugs? Pus for brains, like the telemarketers and spammers? Maybe pockets full of fresh green pieces of paper...
There's a lengthy thread on offshoring and related stuff here:
CIO Magazine On Offshore IT
See also:
Why you can't find a job
ZaZona, home of H1B News, the Job Destruction Newsletter
Tom Mabe: Revenge on the Telemarketers
The link above leads to MP3 and RA samples from the album.
One is particularly good:
"...$29.95 special on carpet cleaning..."
"Oh my God! I can't believe- I can't believe you called! Look, can you guys get blood out of the carpet?"
"Uh, well..."
"I got blood all over the place, man. Oh God!"
"Uh, well, ah, ya, sure..."
"I mean I got it on the drapes, I got it, I got it on the couch, I got it all over... Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God..."
Blood on the carpetAnd I registered one phone number that represents an average of 4 or 5 people. Until someone digs up some actual stats, the phones/people thing is entirely guesswork. You think in terms of phone numbers per person because your person and life are festooned with callable gadgets, while I think in terms of persons per phone because I have no need to have / pay for / worry about losing / be annoyed by any of those gadgets.
I'm waiting for direct brain implants and IPv6 DHCP assigning me 65,636 IP addresses every time I stroll into another hotspot. Pretty soon we'll be dealing with things like port forwarding through the firewall in the back of the shirt to support servers in the shirt buttons, shoes, glasses, skull.
It's because while our States are coming up short after getting too used to taxing and spending way too much, while the national debt is climbing in the big-government paradigm given to us by 60 years of Democrat control of Congress, while we are being hated around the world because touchy-feely foreign policies have been interpreted by moronic, medieval, foreign shitbrains as weakness, while we are trading in our rights for security because we're too overloaded with issues to fight for them, while we can't afford to go to a doctor or buy our meds since government's deep pockets launched the eye-popping rise in healthcare costs in the 1970s... while all of that is going on, the last thing we want is some pus-brained, lower alleged life form asshole intruding on the peace and quiet of our homes.
How about this: an "Explode Caller" button on every phone. When pressed during an incoming call it would be tallied against the caller. When the caller's tally reaches a predetermined threshhold, all his phone equipment would vaporize, taking off the heads of the telemarketers.
Maybe then, telemarketing calls would begin like this: "Pleeeeeeeeeze don't press the button! Pleeeeeeeeeze just give me a chance to explain that I have 14 kids and two mortgages, and this is the only work I can find... pleeeeeeeze!" Click! Boom!
Telemarketers and spammers. There, y'see? Mission creep already. That's the problem. Before we know it it might be extended to bill collectors, then to lawyers, and then the country would become an unnaturally pleasant place to live.
Grind up all telemarketers for fish food.
In the public interest I'm releasing the following files to aid those who may wish to research the wildcarded TLD problem. The scripts are KornShell 88, developed on AIX 4.3.3.
While I'm at it, here is something that can be used to generate traffic to spamhost web servers:
No, that one is broken. It doesn't accept new signatures and is stuck at 178.
What Verisign has done is evidence that they are lower than slime mold, but you got what you deserved for A) using RBL blacklists, and B) being incompetent enough to misspell one of your RBLs. What you don't know is that you have been losing genuine email all along.
The petition is broken. After confirming the signature, it directs to a URL that doesn't respond, then on Refresh it informs that an error occurred, claiming erroneously that maybe a required field was left blank.
It's yet another instance of broken stuff on the Internet. It's ironic that what is broken in this case is something that is attempting to enlist support to resolve an Internet problem.
Anonymous Coward wrote:
No, what's really scary is ignorance like yours. This isn't just IT following steel and textiles. In all earlier instances of segments of the economy leaking overseas, they were segments more or less at the bottom of our economy, segments that the economy as a whole was ready to shed (whether or not the affected workers were ready to be shed). And there was always somewhere higher to go for those willing to learn something new. This time, though, it's not the bottom layers -- it's skilled work all up and down the line, across all industries and professions that deal with intangibles.
Where does a research scientist go to "train for a better job" when his job is sent overseas? How about a top tax accountant? How about a senior software developer? A radiologist? Are we all supposed to become atomic physicists or sucessful TV personalities or best-selling authors with a few weeks of mindless training from fees collected from visa applicants?
For that matter, where will the CIO or PHB go when their jobs are outsourced or offshored?
Don't you think this is already in full swing? Wake up and read the news.
Bzzzzzt! Wishful, naive thinking. They're way ahead of you. The L1 guy (intracompany transfer from the Indian office) keeps getting paid at his Indian rate and paid in India, not here. There isn't even a nominal requirement to pay him prevailing U.S. wage or salary. And because he isn't paid here, he isn't taxed here. He doesn't complain because he's paid well by Indian standards, his expenses here are paid, and he's grateful to have a job instead of having to beg in the streets of Bangalore.
The H1B (guest worker hire) is supposed to be paid prevailing pay, but there's no monitoring and no enforcement. Moreover, employers can rig the game by playing with job titles, phony local interviews, use middlemen, etc. If the H1B rocks the boat he loses his job and has a short time to get legal again, go home, or become an illegal immigrant who overstayed his permitted time and conditions.
Get it yet?
Bzzzzt! More wishful thinking. This is happening now, and yes, the outgoing U.S. employee is pissed, but no, he doesn't refuse to do it, because HE NEEDS THE ADDITIONAL PAYCHECKS AND SEVERANCE PAY. If he refuses, he gets laid off immediately, maybe even discharged for cause (no unemployment bennies). Also, the employer usually ties the training of the replacement to a severance package. Very, very few people in this situation can afford to refuse. They are facing long-term unemployment and the difference between a couple-three weeks pay and maybe a few months pay.
Get it yet?
Anonymous Coward wrote:>/P>
Some people believe that burglary is inevitable and do nothing to prevent it. For them it is a self-fulfilling belief.
Hey! Let's say we agree that burglary is inevitable. May we all drop over to your place and help ourselves to your stuff? Will you "get used to it?"
But maybe we should be asking you which offshore provider country you hail from. Or which scum-sucking, pus-squirting offshoring promoter you work for. Hmmm?
shoppa wrote:
That's because taxing information flow was the only sorry excuse for a solution that someone was able to come up with, and it's completely boneheaded. For something effective, try this:
Understand this well: The essential difference between what is happening today with guest workers, outsourcing and offshoring versus earlier shifts of industries offshore such as textiles, shoe manufacturing, steelmaking, shipbuilding, electronics manufacturing, etc., is profoundly qualitative:
Could you please be a bit more transparent?
That may come, but first the Indians will have to do some genetic engineering and selective breeding to raise a crop of candidates stupid enough to qualify.
What do you call 1,000 CIOs at the bottom of the ocean?...
What's the difference between a CIO and a garden slug? In a pinch, a garden slug can run corporate IT.
What's the difference between a weasel and an Enron executive? One is a slinking, sneaky carnivore that eats rodents for breakfast and the other is a small mammal commonly found in Britain.
>> we can't afford to export our jobs and livelihoods.
> Why? Are we somehow fundametally better than > other humans?
No, we're fundamentally better off by virtue of a large number of factors, and we don't have to give that away for free.
National economies and the global economies are not zero sum games. Any country can better its situation without getting a transfer of wealth from another country. It's fallacious to think that one can only prosper at the expense of another, but it's certainly possible for one to hemorrhage wealth to another, leaving both impoverished, one ever so slightly less than before and the other very much more than before.
Cyno wrote:
That's bright. How would you like to have 30 North Koreans bunking down in your house NEXT WEEK?
"The borders should be opened." Ha! What, did you just fall off the turnip truck?
You were out sick the year your class took Social Studies, right? Or you're pulling our leg, right? There are about 6 billion people on the planet, right? There are about 285 million in the U.S., right? Are you aware that most of those six billion would like to live in your house or apartment and have your job? That's a little over 21 people for every man, woman and child in the U.S. Let's say there are three people in your nuclear family. Are you ready to share your living space and your job and your pay with 60 other people? If you are, then you can honestly say, "The borders should be open." If not, you're talking through your hat.
RobertB-DC wrote:
Duhhh! That's because offshoring is only one part of the problem, and it is inseparable from the guest worker problem. The offshoring becomes a whole lot tougher, more expensive and riskier if the foreign folks can't be brought here for business/technical/cultural acclimatization. Break the cycle of massive influxes of guest workers and we break the process of offshoring.
They explain that explicitly because there's so much stupidity and ignorance going around. If the clue level drops any farther they will also have to explicitly point out that they are not in favor of lynching, atomic bombardment of the outsourcing destination countries, child molestation, bestiality, and brushing one's teeth with plutonium toothpaste because morons will presume that those might be issues.
The only people who think that xenophobia is part of this are those who take their pro-H1B propaganda by direct cerebral infusion (boil press release, cool, inject into brain).
Yeah, well, you're gonna have a hard time seeing the real issues while you're bent over carrying all that baggage on your back.
Should it? Should we take in a half a billion Indians and a billion Chinese next year?How about bringing the entire population of Somalia over? Wouldn't they like to build new lives?
There are vast disparities in the world. If you really believe that all the poorest and least capable should be able to come here, then please tell us that you throw open the door to your home to all in your area who might like to build new lives in your house.
Sounds like you need to use MapQuest to find a Clue Store. If you have anything to do with IT you'll figure out soon enough where your interests lie. In fact, if you have any form of skill that isn't inseparable from handling physical goods, you will find yourself on the chopping block. The only question is whether you will wake up before or after.
Anonymous Coward wrote:
If that's what you're counting on, don't hold your breath. Why do you think there are no 7-year-olds working in factories and dying in industrial accidents? Because business decided it wasn't profitable? No, grasshopper, child labor stopped when it was outlawed. Destruction of the skilled U.S. workforce will stop when it is outlawed or taxed or otherwise made to be something businesses will not find wise or useful to engage in.
In thinking that unhindered business profitability is the only thing that can legitimately rein in bad practices, you fail to see and acknowledge that this is a sovereign nation and that we make laws at federal and state levels to prohibit and punish many bad and destructive things. Business has to be constrained by laws that try to promote ethical, constructive behavior and punish fraud and other things that ruin business for everyone. U.S. businesses used to use slaves, children, company towns that trapped workers in endless cycles of debt, company police who shot and killed demonstrating workers, and many other things that would today seem distasteful and evil. Unchecked greed is not a good thing. Self-interest, ethically pursued, is good for everyone.
This is our country. We have the power to control who is allowed to enter and the conditions under which they are allowed to enter. That goes equally for individuals and businesses. We have the power to alter the laws governing the importation and use of guest workers. We have the power to alter the economics of offshoring. If we fail to use those and other powers, then U.S. wages and salaries will eventually be determined by the lowest common denominator of what a rural Chinese worker is paid, or a skilled Indian or Russian professional is paid in their own local economies.
Similarly, if we fail to control entry into this country, most of the rest of the world would flock here and you (assuming you are in the U.S.) would find yourself in a tiny minority of pre-existing Americans with the new majority consisting of a billion or three former Indians, Chinese, Russians, Mexicans, etc.
Businesses are sending jobs overseas because they think they can save money by doing it. They don't care whether they destroy the future of this country or even whether their own children and grandchildren may have to labor like Chinese peasants just to have a bare subsistence. Businesses will stop sending jobs overseas when we alter the economics of their doing so. That can easily be done through immigration and tax law with teeth. Big teeth. Big sharp teeth.
If you believed the CIO article, you haven't been paying attention to this issue for very long. The article is an attempt to calm the waters, nothing more, and occupies a place in a complex symphony being orchestrated in preparation for Congress to once again expand the H1B cap, this time from 65,000 per year to 115,000. Sen. Arlen Specter chaired an egregiously stacked hearing a couple of days ago in which the only anti-H1B testimony allowed was from the IEEE, and the IEEE was denied permission to present oral testimony. In the Committee's transcript on the Web the IEEE's written submission is conveniently missing, leaving only the pro-H1B testimony for the public to read. Many if not most of the policitians in favor of H1B and similar programs have been taking large contributions from the industries who want access to cheap, pliable guest workers, giving those businesses better representation in Congress than you or I have.
You're being taken for a ride and you don't have a clue where you're going. This is not about capitalism or any "inevitable" movement of low-level industries to emerging countries. This is an all-out attack on skilled labor throughout our economy and a very clever form of age discrimination. All U.S. res
scharkalvin wrote:
Maybe you should go back to school and learn that the IRS has no power to decide to impose a tax. The Congress creates tax law. The IRS merely carries out what the Congress passes and the President signs into law. The IRS has no choice whatsoever of whom or what to tax or how much to tax them.
Now, if you want to talk about what Congress could do, how about this for starters:
$exyNerdie quotes an article:
Oh, jeez, another fashion trend! Remember when American business went all nutty over Japanese management techniques? American business is unaccountably stupid about many things, but becomes downright brain dead when regarding anything exotically foreign.
From Creative Computing, August 1984:
For a while we actually had to endure the spectacle of American plant managers leading morning group exercises and the singing of company songs. It didn't work because we are not Japanese. The period was prototypical of the kind of superficiality that would come to dominate American business management. "Hey! That millionaire is standing on his head! If we stand on our heads we will be millionaires, too!"
The article from which the above is quoted was written in the wake of failures in attempts to copy Japanese management methods in America, and goes on to explain why culture is inseparable from methods, since culture conditions people to be able to work with certain methods.
ziaz wrote:
Yes. American business seems to be in the grip of an extremely short-sighted style of policymaking and management. One possible explanation for this is the very high compensation packages now common in the executive strata. An executive doesn't have to look at the long haul and eventual retirement. He or she can instead focus on the very short term of six- and seven-figure salary, options, some pump-and-dump, a departure package, and a cushy life without ever having to work again. How did we get here?
We got here by way of interlocking directorates and a club of clueless executives. I'll sit on the board of your company and lobby for hiring you at $3 million plus extras, and you sit on the board of my company and lobby to pay me $3 million. You can't just stroll in and join this club -- you have to be from the right school and have the right "network" of buddies. Then the bunch of you rotate around in a sick game of corporate musical chairs, going for short term results in each case but then moving on to avoid catching the resulting heat. If anyone raises the issue of the mess left by your predecessor, you respond by saying, "That was then, this is now, let's just deal with it." Very neatly, no one is ever responsible. And what fostered the development of this club?
One big factor has probably been the growth and popularization of investment and the resulting focus exclusively on the short term bottom lines of publicly held companies. This is particularly the case when shares are not held directly by the little people, but held and voted for them by huge institutions managing pension and mutual funds. Institutional investment managers live in a peculiarly artificial world in which only money counts and the rest is all window dressing.
Internationalization has probably also been a factor. Corporations that now span nations don't have the same view that Henry Ford had when he introduced a car that his employees would be able to afford and made every effort to help them buy the cars they had manufactured.
I disagree on both points. I can't imagine a legislative solution to the present mindset of corporate America. I can imagine legislation throwing major roadblocks into the path of the destructive outsourcing and offshoring presently destroying American jobs and undermining American technology.
Legislation is not only achieved by lining the pockets of politicians. Small special interests have to resort to expensive lobbying and large political contribusions precisely because they have little or no voting power. Large consituencies of voters have another, more powerful tool at their disposal: their votes.
Job destruction through the use and abuse of guest workers and through offshoring affects everyone, not just IT people. Virtually every skilled form of work that involves intangibles is under assault. It cuts across all lines, and most of the people being affected can vote. Their family members and friends can vote. Anyone concerned that they, too, may have this nightmare in their future can vote. I'm not at all sure that politicians have dealt with anything like this lately. It has the potential to be a very rude awakening for them.
The striking difference between this problem and the losses of manufacturing jobs in the past, from textiles to shoes to steel to cameras to electronics, is that this is not peeling jobs off the bottom to send them to third world countries emerging from agriculture to crude industries. This is attacking skilled jobs all up and down the line. There is nowhere for us to move up to.