To give you an idea of where we are, politically — and linguistically — the measure was supported by the American Conservative Union.
I guess they figure John Boehner and the boys, solid conservatives with an iron-fisted control over any taxation schemes, will save them in the House (from Enzi, a Republican in the Senate), where staunch, eye-on-the-ball fiscal growth hawks like Paul Ryan are open to the idea of taxing the internet in a coordinated back scratching effort between government and big business to accrue additional revenues and crush small competition while making already cash-strapped Americans foot the bill for such rank corporatism.
Though they wouldn’t phrase it that way, of course.
Instead, they’ll borrow from Obama, whose tactics and class warfare rhetoric they constantly assure us they absolutely abhor, and suggest that they’re promoting this latest tax increase out of a sense of “fairness,” poor brick and mortar stores being forced to compete with online retailers for consumer dollars, even though these brick and mortar stores don’t have to factor in shipping costs and the lack of immediacy between purchase and taking delivery (which, no fair!) — with any considerations about taxation without representation or federalism cast to the side as so many buzzwords from a really old set of documents that the kinds of teabaggers who failed to back this paean to fairness disturbingly fetishize.
Staunch!
Besides. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, amiright?
How about “joint them”?
walmart says jump meghan’s coward daddy says how high
walmart says not you, codger, you can sit down just looking at you makes us feel sad
If it were the case that I had to pay WI taxes when purchasing from an online store whose legal address were in WI, that would be one thing.
But making that poor little Etsy store calculate and collect taxes for 600+ jurisdictions?
They’ve gotta be kidding.
Except they’re not. Damned cronies anyway.
Seriously, how does it make sense that I should pay taxes according to the state I’m sitting in, rather than the state the store is sitting in?
If I drove to WI and walked in the store, I’d pay WI sales taxes. How is it different if I phone it in or log in?
And don’t gimme any guff about Teh Cloud. All businesses have legal addresses. Use those.
And may the most tax-friendly state win.
However, both my senators (Hatch [!!!] and Lee) voted against the rotten thing, so there’s that.
I’m waiting for the double taxation. For the very reason you pointed out.
I wonder what this does for the Fair Tax’s prospects.
no i don’t
You’re being all logical again, dicentra. You know that doesn’t work when the government is involved.
All businesses have legal addresses. Use those.
Delaware bonanza!
I noticed that the two Idaho R senators voted yes. Idaho has no state income tax and counts on sales tax (they tax all food there).
As I have said before I am against this burden on the out of state seller and it should be the states who have to pressure their own residents if they want the cash.
I was wondering if anyone was thinking of a flat sales tax for out of state purchases (say 6% ). It would a least take some of the burden away for the seller of having to keep track of so many different rates.
If I had an online retail site and this thing became law as passed in the Senate, I’d enact a policy that only people living in non-sales-tax localities could shop there.
The revenue I lost would almost certainly be less than the costs of compliance — one of which would be hiding the bodies of the tax collectors.
I only have <10 acres to work with here…
Then my online empire will crush yours, McG. I’ve got 10,000 lakes…
Delaware bonanza!
Beat me to it, sdferr
Maybe there should be a UPS/FedEx/USPS delivery tax. All out of state packages over one ounce are taxed for each additional ounce.
That gun safe you ordered is really going to cost you bwahaha!
McGehee, there’s always the “soylent green” route.
a flat sales tax for out of state purchases (say 6% )
that makes entirely too much fucking sense
All businesses have legal addresses. Use those.
Costa Rica. Bahamas. Belize. Funny how all those companies suddenly moved their “legal address” to an off-shore site.
And don’t gimme any guff about Teh Cloud.
I know you don’t want to hear it, but if you bought something over the internet, very, very little of the transaction actually occurred in the state you were in, or the state the seller was in.
Unfortunately, ironpacker, I’d have to charge sales tax on it too.
“We need more sales tax revenues! We only had $5 billion to waste on useless and counterproductive programs last year, and we need to throw away at least $6 billion next year!”
Cough it up, chumps.
It would a least take some of the burden away for the seller of having to keep track of so many different rates.
Which means that you, the seller, have just been taxed without representation: you have no say in the matter of tax rates, because the decision was made by people whom you did not elect.
No, if you want to take the burden away from the seller (and you don’t, if you’re Amazon or Walmart), you either not have the tax at all or you charge tax according to the legal address of the company from which you bought the stuff.
Oh, what a shame we can’t mandate that Canadians and Costa Ricans collect sales taxes for us!
if you bought something over the internet, very, very little of the transaction actually occurred in the state you were in, or the state the seller was in.
Teh Cloud makes physical location irrelevant (as if it weren’t already). And if you really want to tax the butt in front of the screen, say hello to my little anonymizer!
dicentra, I don’t get what you are saying. The flat tax would be collected from the buyer at time of purchase (as required by his representatives), not the seller. The amount collected would go to the buyer’s state by some system. My suggestion only reduces burden. If you mean the seller is “taxed” in that it makes his goods less competitive or higher overhead, then I agree.
I repeat, I don’t want to see any burden on the out 0f state seller at all, I am just wondering why a flat rate has not been suggested.
In my county, the sales tax rate is 7%, regardless of how much you spend.
That is a flat tax rate. I suspect you’re trying to get at something different.
True, I mean that no matter what sales tax rate another state has or whatever one of its counties/cities tack on, the rate an out of state seller would have to collect could not go above a set rate (I think 4% is lowest in the country, I am being generous with 6% as an example).
The tax collected would go to the individual states and the cities and counties would have to fight for their “fair” share in their respective capitals.
Minnesota already has a Use Tax that it charges on out-of-state purchases. I’m certain that other states have similar laws on their books. Why do we need the Feds involved at all? I’m sure that every state’s taxpayers will cheerfully pay any Use Tax that’s required. Hell, I think we should let retailers get out of the tax collection business entirely, and let everybody pay on the honor system whether their purchases come from in-state or out.
This so reminds me of how Warren Buffett misleadingly lamented how his secretary paid a lower marginal tax rate than he did. Well duh, investment income has always been taxed at a lower marginal rate than wage earnings income, because if the Commiecrats and RINOs ever *tried* to tax investment income at the marginal wage income tax rate, investment would flee our shores quite rapidly, especially in this electronic age.
And Warren knew that.
Note how the solution is *never* to lower the tax burden on wage earners. Nope, can’t have that.
The Brick-and-Mortars lament that the footloose and fancy free internet stores can avoid the burdens the Brick-and-Mortars face. And they are correct. But once again, the solution is never to reduce the burdens on the Brick-and-Mortars, is it?
cheerfully that’s funny squid.
Actually, I do think a number of people would pay. Problem is laziness/carelessness as much as lawlessness.
If only people had to personally cut a check for every tax out there. The beast would certainly be starved.
I didn’t know we have a use tax here in MN. Good to know, I guess.
In CA we are suppose to pay. I have no real idea of how to go about it. I assume I can tag all my E-mail receipts and total them up. Did I mention lazy above?
Someone should make a tracking software for personal use. Every time you use a credit card or go to PayPal a dialog box would pop up and ask you if you wanted to add this to a running total/spread sheet.
Whatever, as someone said above, they don’t really need any more revenue.
I’m sure there’s all kinds of laws we don’t know about, cranky. Let’s pray they never come to our homes to start enforcing all of ’em.
“If I drove to WI and walked in the store, I’d pay WI sales taxes. ”
In some states you can get an exemption card that you can show for purchases that you’re taking out of state.
Despite what they’re claiming, this is far from a novel situation. These issues were thoroughly litigated back in the salad days of Sears, Roebuck and Monkey Ward, all the way to the Supreme Court.
With the Court we have now, though…
In CA we are suppose to pay. I have no real idea of how to go about it.
There is a “Use Tax” line (#95) on your Form 540, with helpful directions (and tax rates) in the 540 instructions.
Doesn’t matter. Always enter 0. The professional leeches at the Franchise Tax Board already get enough filthy lucre from me & mine to pay for such worthy items as the Browndoggle low-speed rail, overly generous state union employee pay, medical & retirement benefits, and the $10 billion or so a year spent on illegal residents and their offspring . Nope. Not one centavo more.
“These issues were thoroughly litigated back in the salad days”
how were they it resolved?
Used to be, when you bought by mail order, you didn’t have to pay sales tax.
I fail to see why online retail needs to be treated differently from mail order.
was “it” one of those words that are eternal?
Mail order and when things were sold COD. There was a line on the order form that said if you lived in these states (list of states here), add x percent sales tax.
internet tax is no good
that calls for a “chop chop”
Just as a data point, here in PA they had a “Use Tax Amnesty” drive about 3 years ago, wherein they claimed that “use tax” had been on the books forever, but no one (except perhaps businesses) ever paid it. Anyway, they mailed out forms demanding 6% of the purchase price of everything you bought out of state in the past 3 years, or… well, or something unpleasant would happen, and no one wants that.
These days, they’ve added a line to the State Income Tax forms where you write in either the exact number, or ‘estimate it’ using some formula they’ve concocted based on your gross income or some-such. No idea what the actual formula is, TurboTax just computes it for me, and it’s an irrelevant amount. (I think it was $20 for me this year, noise compared to the $1200 tax bill.)
Needless to say, I’m sure they’ll get right on with removing that from the forms once this crap law gets passed.
I’m still waiting for the local township Democrats I voted for (!) to get around to rescinding the 1% local income tax that the Republicans (!) put in place. I mean, that’s the issue they ran on, and they won overwhelmingly, so I sure they’ll make good on the promise any day now…
Didn’t they try talking up a Use Tax about 12 or 15 years ago? I remember a lot of blabbing about it when I lived in Pittsburgh. If you bought big ticket items, cars or jewelry were the ones they mentioned a lot, in a different state, you were supposed to pay a Use Tax. No one ever did that I know of.
“how were they it resolved?”
It’s always been found that if a company has no physical presence in a state, it is not obligated to collect taxes for that state. That’s the basis for the “if you live in State X,Y, or Z, add sales tax” thing that leigh was mentioning; those would be the states where the company has some type of brick and mortar operation. Even a branch office or a warehouse is enough, as I recall – it doesn’t have to be a retail storefront. This is called a “nexus” (and I’m sure there are nuances there. I’m nt a lawyer).
The general principle is that if you’re not physically present in a state, you’re not obligated to obey that state’s laws. If Congress manages to ram this through and override that principle, and the weak-sauce Court upholds it, I predict interesting times ahead.
Used to be, when you bought by mail order, you didn’t have to pay sales tax.
I fail to see why online retail needs to be treated differently from mail order.
You did have to pay sales tax if the mail order company was located in the same state you were. I would see “XX State residents add x.x% sales tax” on mail in order forms.