Posted on 04/12/2011 12:55:13 PM PDT by GreaterSwiss
Update 10:30 a.m. PT: I've heard back from Sen. Mike Enzi's office. It sent me e-mail this morning saying: "Senator Enzi plans to co-sponsor the Main Street Fairness bill with Senator Durbin. As far as a timeline or drafts, you'll have to check with Senator Durbin's office."
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20052999-281.html#ixzz1JL8wTRdz A Democratic senator is preparing to introduce legislation that aims to end the golden era of tax-free Internet shopping.
The proposal--expected to be made public soon after Tax Day--would rewrite the ground rules for Internet and mail order sales by eliminating the ability of Americans to shop at Web sites like Amazon.com and Overstock.com without paying state sales taxes.
Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second most senior Senate Democrat, will introduce the bill after the Easter recess, a Democratic aide told CNET.
"Why should out-of-state companies that sell their products online have an unfair advantage over Main Street bricks-and-mortar businesses?" Durbin said in a speech in Collinsville, Ill., in February. "Out-of-state companies that aren't paying their fair share of taxes are sticking Illinois residents and businesses with the tab."
At the moment, Americans who shop over the Internet from out-of-state vendors aren't always required to pay sales taxes at the time of purchase. Californians buying books from Amazon.com or cameras from Manhattan's B&H Photo, for example, won't pay the sales taxes at checkout time that they would if shopping at a local mall--which is what Durbin means by giving online retailers an "unfair advantage."
On the other hand, there are some 7,500 different taxing jurisdictions in the United States, each with a set of very precise rules describing what can and can't be taxed and at what rate. That makes it challenging terrain for retailers to navigate.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20052999-281.html#ixzz1JL903e1g
(Excerpt) Read more at news.cnet.com ...
How so?? When someone shops online, they are paying MORE for shipping than they would for sales tax. Stock the items people want to buy and local stores will have no problem.
Politicians finding a way to eat the golden goose. Discouraging internet sales is not the same thing as encouraging brick & mortar sales. What it WILL do is damage internet commerce, further grow the barter system, and slow the recovery because people stop spending.
Just wish these taxing politicians would get out of our life already. Hope it hurts the poor and minorities. They vote for these pigs.
Ditto what you said!
Excellent idea from 5thGenTexan — eliminate income taxes, and implement sales taxes in their place.
Not taxing internet sales hurts local businesses, but there are plenty of people who think that’s a good thing, while at the same time pissing and moaning about “new world order”, “crony capitalism”, the Jews, and other incoherent paranoid crap.
If you order from a company that has brick and morter in every state, such as JCPenney, Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, K-Mart, Sears and others, you pay sales tax to your state AND you PAY SALES TAX ON YOUR SHIPPING & HANDLING in the majority of states. Illinois I know is an exception to that rule as of this time. Illinois’s sales tax for the entire state is 6.25%. Where I am at in Michigan is 6% and I have to pay the sales tax on the shipping.
If there is a sales tax charged on the item, some states do not have sales tax (Oregon, Delaware), then you also pay sales tax on the Shipping & Handling, unless the state law says otherwise. There are very few states in which this is the case.
I sympathize ladyvet, same here.
So?? Why should there be fairness??
By the time this is all over, online shoppers will pay tax in every state between the seller’s and the buyer’s location, plus a federal tax too.
April 18th this year? I believe.
BWAHAHAHA! Never!
And I shop a lot online for the same reason. It is easier to get what I want than hoping a local vendor has it. But in the end, the tax free set up won't last. To much money rolling around.
With physical stores, they have shipping costs x 1. With the internet, they have shipping costs x2 (product shipped to internet merchant, then to customer)
congress needs to mandate that a Breath Meter be worn by every citizen in the USA so that a fair consumption tax can be levied upon the amount of its air that is breathed in
I am not the least bit worried. This is going nowhere. But what we need is to suck Obama into this and use that against him in 2012.
Case in point is the brick and mortar book stores, take Borders and a bunch of the other brick and mortar book store, they stick there own bar code stickers over the bar code because they don't want people with there fancy cell phone taking pictures of the original bar code, using their fancy aps and finding out they can buy the book new through Amazon through a third party cheaper then they can at the store and a lot of times for half the price or more then the book store wants.
My gut feeling is that once people realized the couldn't scan the original bar code they stopped shopping at Borders and started shopping at other book stores that didn't hide the original bar code, my gut feeling is that is a major reason while borders had to file bankruptcy recently, and had to shut down a bunch of their stores. I sell used books on line, and I scout for them with a scanner so I kind of know what is going on. Another little secret is you can peal those Border stickers off pretty easily and put them back in place pretty easily, not that I shop at borders, but I've got to pull them off at garage sales and thrift stores when I scouting for resellable books, I end up doing it alot for their former books, even some thrift stores have gotten into putting their stickers over the bar codes because their prices are too high, irony a thrift store doing that.
The only bitch I've got through buying off the Internet is most of the stuff gets shipped out of the Ware Houses in those commie liberal socialist States like Californian or New Jersey, I do occasional look for stuff on the Internet from the Red States, takes a little bit more time but it is well worth it to me.
Ok I've done my ranting and raveing at least once today on FR, I feel like I can go to bed now, I'm tired also.
I woulda thought that a senator from the least populous state in the country would be all for free internet sales, since Wyoming doesn’t have the population density to support many brick-n-mortar stores.
By all means lets have yet another tax.
Durbin and the other idiots don’t give a rat’s a** about fairness that’s only a sound bite for the masses. A class warfare play adapted to this issue.
This is all about the federal government getting their hands on sales tax money through a central authority.
This is the foot in the door to a national sales tax and a vat tax.
If each state and US territory had a single sales tax rate, then the idea could actually work; but with 40,000-plus different rates, it becomes a logistical nightmare.
To eliminate the "unfair" advantage, Dickiepoo, perhaps the solution would be to eliminate sales taxes on Main Street "bricks-and-mortar" businesses. Two wrongs don't make a right, and adding a tax isn't a solution to unfair taxation.
“Main Street Fairness bill “
Already, it stinks out loud.
Governments simply want to tax EVERYTHING;it is in their nature.Which is why we must return to a limited government .
While I am against the feds pushing such a bill, most states now require this already.
I can’t go to Amazon.com and not pay taxes anymore.
Plenty of products you can only get online, and the convenience factor will outweigh the tax issue.
I still buy plenty despite having to pay tax.
Besides, if you get enough, sites like Amazon.com will even give you free shipping, making you only pay for the tax.
Then they should enforce it.
I and 99 percent of other Americans have not heard of such a tax.
Wait a minute. Let's think about what those local sales taxes are SUPPOSED to do - pay for fire, police, roads and other infrastructure that the brick and mortar store and its customers utilize. The out-of-state internet vendor uses none of those services, and the customers don't use them to make their purchases. So why should taxes be collected on those sales by a state that is providing no services associated with that sale?
Yep. The main reason I buy online is that even with shipping it’s often cheaper then going out and buying local.
When you buy at a brick and mortar store you are paying for the gas and/or transport it took to get you to the store and back home with the item you purchased, in other words, shipping fees.
The Fallacy of this whole bill is that people are purchasing online SOLELY because they don’t have to pay sales tax. That is just blatantly false.
Even if Sales taxes are enforced (and most large retailers charge them online now), the fact is - people buy online because:
1. IT IS CHEAPER
2. THEY CAN GET EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT.
In that regard this bill will do NOTHING, ZIP, NADA, etc etc for ‘MAIN STREET brick and Mortar stores”.
Every "local store" in America sells on the Internet. This "protecting main street" BS is being done to squeeze more dollars out of people and for no other reason.
Why is this creature my senator?
Do we have a legit candidate to face this bastard? The last few times he's been up we have had nobodies face him. That would be due to the F'ing combine.
I know Kirk was not our choice, however, I like DJ's idea about Congressman Peter Roskam. I am sick to death of the same old has beens like Jim Edgar, Jim Ryan, Judy Baar, ect... The combine RINOs have utterly destroyed this state.
I wouldn't mind Bill Brady making a run he should have name recognition by now. We just need to expose how insanely radical Turbin Durbin is and that he has done absolutely NOTHING for Illinois.
You didn't know that your state has a sales tax?
Just a stealth version of a national sales tax
I agree but under a different label so that they can still pursue the NST separately.
It's called the free market idiot!
I think Mr Enzi has to be taken to the woodshed and given a lecture about the facts of life... He is normally a pretty good guy...
Uh, yes. Not a “use” tax on Internet purchases though we are supposed to report to the state.
T. E. A. !!!!!!
So, now you know. Will you start paying the tax now?
“Speaker Boehner better step up ASAP and cut this off at the knees. Nip it in the bud.”
Nah. He’ll just accept a smaller tax than the one No Nickname Needed Durbin wants, and then brag about how he cut taxes.
No, since I already have to pay sales tax on purchases in my state. Otherwise, I probably would since it was the right thing to do.
Not really. What’s to stop ‘local’ businesses from selling on the Internet and taking advantage of this ‘tax break’?
Answer: Nothing.
You forgot one:
3. THEY DON’T HAVE TO WASTE HOURS AND GALLONS OF GAS DRIVING AROUND IN AN ATTEMPT TO FIND THE GOODS THEY WANT, BUT CAN HAVE THEM DELIVERED INSTEAD.
These bas*ards are unreal. Durbin wants to tax garage sales also.
I will tell you this, if I must pay taxes for online purchases, I’ll stop buying online, plain and simple.
What the he*l is with this Enzi?
That's an insult to scum.
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