Posted on 08/11/2014 2:22:00 PM PDT by ThethoughtsofGreg
Chances are, you’ve never thought of having to pay a tax to check your Email or your Facebook account. That’s because the Internet Tax Freedom Act has prevented local, state, and federal governments from taxing Internet access. Widespread adoption of the Internet has been due, in no small part, to the absence of tax barriers to access. But now, taxes loom on the Internet’s horizon as Congress nears the sunset of the law. The affordability and accessibility of the Web will be in jeopardy if Congress fails to do something before the moratorium expires on November 1.
There are a number of reasons for Congress to make the moratorium permanent. Online retailers can conduct business without fear of spiking overhead costs. The public can continue to access the Internet without being saddled with new tax bills. By incentivizing private providers to continue to invest in high-cost and low-income areas, innovation can continue unabated. And the FCC can achieve its goals of connecting every American household to the Internet.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanlegislator.org ...
Why has the Internet been such a raging success contributing billions (trillions?) of dollars to the US economy?
Easy: because, by and large, governments (local/state/federal) have kept their greedy hands off it.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Of course taxes in general are too high and should be lowered across the board.
However, taxing one service and not another competing service results in market inefficiencies.
Amazon has become so big partly because Amazon was not required to collect sales tax as all brick-and-mortar retailers are. The people who purchased items on Amazon were supposed to pay the sales tax but seldom did. For some people this resulted in a 10% savings over buying the same item at the same price in a local store.
So Amazon thrived because of government induced market inefficiencies, not because they were doing anything better than anyone else.
Sears has been selling stuff through catalogs for decades. What did Amazon do that was so overwhelmingly better except able to offer lower prices because of the tax discount?
There are a lot of internet-based businesses that compete head-to-head with brick-and-mortar establishments that are currently getting a pass with regards to collecting taxes. They have their supporters who claim that through the magical-mystery powers of the internet those companies are outcompeting their brick-and-mortar counterparts when in fact all they are doing is not collecting taxes that the brick-and-mortar companies are now forced to collect from their customers.
Taxing the internet is the best way to kill it for most folks. It is a way that a lot of us keep in touch with others & the modern world,& has a lot of educational value. Not if it’s taxed. If they only tax sales,that is one thing,but to tax use of the internet is crazy & certainly counterproductive. Taxing internet sales also raises a lot of issues & problems because of all the different taxing schemes nationwide. As far as giving internet sales a break compared to regular stores,let’s do things different & give the regular stores a break on taxes. This would then help ALL business. Some folks need to get this idiotic idea out of their head that everything must be taxed.
You pay taxes on your phone to call people. You pay for stamps to send snail mail. You should pay similar taxes to contact people through your ISP and email.
It's easy to figure out taxes. You don't charge people the tax of where the company is, but where the people are. You know where the people are by their shipping address. A few people might try to get stuff mailed to a neighboring lower tax area, but so what.
And oh my golly, there are so many different states and localities with so many different tax rates. Of course, all of those various states and localities with all of their varying tax rates can fit on one page in a simple Excel spreadsheet. So any business that complains that keeping track of the taxes is too complicated is basically lying or lazy.
Mail order sales (catalog or otherwise) are only taxable if the business has a presence in your state.
And that "tax to call people" is Al Gore's bullsh!t tax to give low income homes internet. It only applies to landlines. It now accounts for $30 of my $60 monthly phone bill.
F the taxes, man.
“Sears has been selling stuff through catalogs for decades. What did Amazon do that was so overwhelmingly better except able to offer lower prices because of the tax discount?”
Service. Have you never used Amazon before? I can’t tell you how many times people I know have been through hell trying to get anything out of Sears.
Besides, an organization without retail stores is inevitably going to have an edge over an organization that has warehouses -and- a large network of retail stores.
And I’m saying all of this as an avowed opponent of Amazon (for technological reasons). I just can’t stand it when people - especially people who claim to be conservative - start trying to make the case for raising taxes in the interest of “fairness,” which is the gist of what you’re saying.
It’s a good thing we have cryptocurrency as a hedge against government intrusion into the Internet. No, Bitcoin isn’t completely anonymous, but there are up-and-coming developments which promise to be closer to it.
Once upon a time (the mid 60s to the late 70s) I used to buy all my tools and shop equipment from Sears. I still have hydraulic jacks, a big air compressor, and a lot of hand tools with the Craftsman name on them from that era. Sears was an honorable company with great warranties and customer service.
Somewhere in the 80s they got rid of all their professional salespeople, downgraded their merchandise, and started treating the customer like a nuisance. I'm sure a lot of this was because of the ascendance of "consultants" and MBAs to upper management roles.
It's about trying to eliminate market inefficiencies.
Amazon getting away with not having to collect sales tax while their brick-and-mortar competitors couldn't is a market inefficiency.
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