Internet Sales Tax Gets a New Champion 276
Archness1 writes with an excerpt from Declan McCullagh's piece at CNET about the recently renewed push for a sales tax on Internet purchases, led by Massachusetts Representative Bill Delahunt. "At the moment, Americans who shop over the Internet from out-of-state vendors usually aren't required to pay sales taxes. Californians buying books from Amazon.com or cameras from Manhattan's B&H Photo, for example, won't be required to cough up the sales taxes that they would if shopping at a local mall." That could all change, though.
I have never understood this. (Score:5, Interesting)
What is the difference between mail/fax/phone order and purchases made through "teh intertubes"?
Mail order has never had to collect sales tax except for in-state customers. Why are web based businesses any different? Why were states not clamoring for sales tax collection in the heyday of mail order? Politicians act as if web based businesses are getting special treatment.
They aren't. They never did get special treatment.
So what's going to happen now? Internet sales are going to be taxed but mail order won't be? Because I certainly don't hear about mail order sales being slapped with a tax in any of these discussions. It's all about skimming off of internet sales.
Fine.
I'll just slap a stamp on it or fire up the fax machine and send orders that way, like I did 15 years ago.
It was nice knowin' ya, Internet commerce.
--
BMO
Tax religion... (Score:4, Interesting)
Taxation is the power to bankrupt (Score:5, Interesting)
This doesn't mean that the tax doesn't burden the business; eventually, the total spent for the product begins to edge into the "unreasonable" zone for the consumer, and they stop buying. You can't pass along a cost or a tax if the consumer won't pay it. And lets face it -- for most people, "must have" means food, medical needs, utilities, fuel/transport, basic clothing, and (for this group) Internet.
Amazon and other Internet retailers have an edge (the tax and storefront things) but they also have a serious downside - your local folks can hand you the item. Amazon and crew have to ship it to you, generally speaking, and that's a counter-force working against pervasive "I want it now" mentality and the in-your-face shipping costs.
Take away the tax benefits, and you'll see some Internet businesses fold, as their gains from advantages drop beneath their losses from disadvantages on the overall ledger. The smaller, niche businesses will go first, as they aren't doing enough volume to obtain deep discounts. I can think of quite a few I patronize that I would *really* hate to see go.
The real problem here is the political concept of "we can always spend more for a 'good' idea." No. They can't. There is a limit, and when you're doing spending into the future based on credit, along with very high tax rates, as most states and the federal government are, you're well past that limit.
Get people on board with a "spend LESS" platform, and elect them. Throw out the incumbents, they think *wrong*.
Reduce federal spending, increase state spending. (Score:3, Interesting)
Because a state knows whats best for it's citizens better than the feds. Tax sales and use it to pay for healthcare rather than having the feds tax people in Mass to pay for people in Ariz. Let each state spend as much or as little as they want on social programs. Let the feds focus on national security. If you don't like high taxes then move to Texas.
Re:Everyone (Score:3, Interesting)
NASA historically has produced much technological goodness for us; Not to mention hope and wonder. And there are all those resources out there waiting to be tapped. I'd just as soon keep NASA while the private sector gets wound up.
Alaska... that's foolish. The state is really, really loaded with natural resources. Metals; petroleum; timber; etc. You're literally giving away a gold mine. Not good.
The rest, yeah, not bad. I like the budget thing. Add to it, if the fed doesn't balance, then all the elected officials automatically lose their jobs. :)
Re:How about letting the feds be the war machine? (Score:2, Interesting)
How about instead of the feds funding the states, we do the reverse? No more federal taxes of any kind, the states collect all the needed taxes, in whatever forms and ways they each see fit, to meet their share of keeping federal operations afloat.
Re:Everyone (Score:3, Interesting)
ok, why? Wouldn't that money be better spent invested in improving our infrastructure, investing in technology, education, and healthcare?
What threats do we actually face that require the military we're maintaining at the moment? Why do we need to be pursuing the military actions we presently are, and why do we need to be the world's police presence?
I'm intrigued by your idea that we should *increase* the military. Seems completely counter-intuitive to me. Please explain yourself.
1. War is the one thing the feds are good at. As a result we as American citizens specialize in war. It's our niche. It's the only reason the UN and the rest of the world needs our labor at all. It's the only service left that we still offer. It's the only thing we are #1 at.
2. War is the only way we will ever get out of debt. Of course we have to win these wars but the only reason we are being paid by all these different countries is to fight their wars for them. They know we are the toughest society in the world, a nation of warriors, and they pay us as mercenaries to protect them. We've agreed to protect Isreal for example and a number of other countries.
3. We do have competitors. Russia, China, and we have enemies like North Korea and Iran. We are at war with our enemies. We compete with Russia and China and if we do not win the resource war we as a country could find ourselves in a submission position in relation to them in the future. To put it simple they could very well enslave our offspring.
I used to think we do not need to be the global policeman. I intuitively thought it was a bad idea. This was until I learned how the world actually works. The world is run by nation states that operate like mafias/gangsters. They only respect might. It's only our might that keeps us from being enslaved. The real world is very much like prison.
If you walk into a prison you'll notice that there are different factions of gangsters. These gangsters run the prison and act as the "government" as the prison. When you enter you are expected to either join one of these factions, or stay out of their business. If you opt to stay out of their business then you don't have any control over what happens in your own environment. On the other hand the neo nazi's might gain control of the prison and if you are a jew that would be unacceptable right? What if you are a homosexual? What if you use drugs?
The point is rather simple, these factions exist regardless of the nation states. These factions/gangs are international and they'll hijack a nation and make it a satellite nation. We could call this a colony. War happens between these factions, gangs, or tribes, who control colonies and nation states. Nation states are used to defend the faction, gang or tribe.
So to put it simple, we have to spend a lot of money on the military to protect the American tribe from being enslaved, exterminated, dominated, by other hostile tribes. Some of these tribes hate America and American on a bloodline level, it's a blood feud and it's a situation where the American tribe must always maintain the ability to kill, dominate or exterminate their tribe. The nations don't really matter but it just so happens that American citizens are the best at fighting wars so the majority of the Western faction gives it's money to Americans to fight to protect the western way of life from invaders.
No the invaders aren't going to listen to reason. No it's not all the invaders fault either because Americans don't like to integrate anymore than the invaders. America has to open it's culture up and in some ways make compromises. And so do the other cultures, and the problem is this takes hundreds or maybe thousands of years so until that happens we have to keep building weapons.
Ummm not really (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know where you live, but here there are still plenty of local stores. Nearly everything other than groceries I can easily buy online and not pay tax, yet there are local stores selling the same things. This includes big ticket items like TVs, where the tax is a lot. Best Buy has a whole fucking wall of HDTVs for sale, and they've got multiple locations in town. People are free to order them from Amazon or Crutchfield and pay no tax, yet Best Buy not only makes sales, they apparently make enough to warrant a massive amount of their space being taken up with them.
What it really comes down to is if states find that they are not getting enough revenue because sales tax is dropping, they should simply tax different areas. Property tax is a good choice, you can't move property, payroll tax also works, so does income tax. All depends on how you want to distribute it and what you need the money for (it generally makes sense to collect taxes for what they are used on, like taxing vehicles for money for roads).
Please remember that sales tax isn't mandatory. There are states that don't have it. Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon all have no state sales tax. You will notice none of them have crumbled and went away. They simply derive their tax revenue from other sources.
Taxing inter-state purchases is just a nightmare. Especially if you really wish it to be "fair" as in "everyone gets the same cut if it was local". Ok, well you then need to have tables with state, county, and city taxes. It can be levied at all those levels. A state can have a 5% tax, the county 1.5% more and the city 1% on that giving a 7.5% effective tax. Talk about a nightmare to maintain data on all that. Also, how do you make sure it goes to the right place then? Does the company have to cut a check to each city, county, and state in the whole US each month?
If you say "Just do the state tax," well what makes states special? Your argument is local businesses, so why shouldn't the city also be getting its cut?
What it comes down to is we shouldn't tax interstate purchases. States just need to adjust their tax structure accordingly. Nobody says they have to get their money from sales tax. Here I pay sales tax to the state, county, and city (it is collected all as one, but there are three separate ones). I pay property tax mostly to the city but the state as well, I pay income tax to the state, I pay a vehicle tax to the state, and so on. It isn't as though sales tax is the be-all, end-all. They get funds from me in numerous ways. If they are losing out on sales tax, then adjust the others accordingly.
Or perhaps more generally (Score:3, Interesting)
Tax in a way such that the taxes are related to the use. A good example are vehicle and gas taxes. You use those to pay for the infrastructure to support vehicles, like roads, traffic lights, the MVD, etc. In that way, if you have more vehicles, or more usage of vehicles, you get more money.
Likewise federal income tax to pay for federal programs. They are things done by the federal government, so tax needs to be collected for them no matter where you live. Thus it makes sense to simply collect the money from all US workers.
I'm not saying you can have perfect 1:1 mapping of tax to use, but you can be smart about it. Also if things change, so that one source of taxes isn't so useful anymore, then change where you collect the taxes. Nobody says you have to get taxes from a particular source. Sales tax not working out so well? Change to another kind. However, that isn't so necessary if taxes collected are related to the things they are for. They will tend to naturally increase and decrease as the need for their services does.
Re:Reduce federal spending, increase state spendin (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you mean, "Hmm live with high taxes or live where people push their bias, instead of mine, into the school books..."
Power to Tax is Power to Destroy (Score:2, Interesting)
Only problem with this is that the power to tax is the power to destroy.
That wall of separation? It needs to go both ways.