Posted on 04/18/2009 10:00:00 AM PDT by sheikdetailfeather
Friday, April 17, 2009
Print ShareThisThe free ride may soon be over.
For the past decade and a half, most Internet shoppers haven't been forced to pay sales tax while buying goods online.
But now, according to CNet News, an alliance of "brick-and-mortar" retailers and state governments has teamed up to end that — and they've crafted federal legislation that may be introduced in Congress as early as next week.
Previous attempts in past years to do so have flopped.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Do you report your online purchases to local taxing authorities at the end of the year or on your state income tax forms?
Maybe your crap-hole state requires you to pay sales taxes for every out of state purchase you make. My state doesn't. All I have to do is add about 60 bucks to my income tax return when I file each year. It's a pittance compared to what I save in taxes by shopping online. I pay my state exactly what it demands I pay. I'm not slipping through some imagined loophole.
Absolutely not..., and didn’t have to, since I was in a no-sales-tax state... LOL...
Now, however, I’ll have to be reconsidering that standpoint..., since Oklahoma and Texas has been charging me sales tax on everything that I’ve been buying around here... LOL...
“I don’t think we should think of this in terms of it’s a natural inevitability. We should fight this tooth and nail.
The internet was originally established as a tax free zone. There’s no way in hell we should surrender that distinction. And since taxes have not been collected, it hasn’t really be a taxed zone yet, in practice.
We need to scream bloody murder about this.”
Agreed. I’ll be contacting my RINO congress critter about this on Monday and will encourage others to do the same.
Neither did I..., as Oregon never did charge me sales tax on anything I bought... LOL...
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But, as I said, even when I was *merely* a “visitor” — Texas and Oklahoma *never stopped* charging me sales tax on *everything*... hooo-boy!
You said — Federal law exempts the internet.
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Yes, I’m aware of the tax moratorium that the Feds put on the states collecting their sales taxes, in order to give online businesses time to establish themselves.
But, now they’re ending the moratorium... :-)
It isn’t about an individuals right not to pay sales tax on out of state purchases, it is about a businesses right not to collect taxes on behalf of other states. You just confusing the issue. L^O^L If states want their money, they should pursue the individuals, and face the consequences for doing it. It is bullshit coward politics to hide from the people by quietly making business do the dirty work. LOL.
Neither do I, however if I can purchase a product on the internet from your state and you from my state why should either of us pay sales tax (unless there is a storefront in my state or your state which would mean there is an agreement in place between the business and the state to pay sales taxes).
As far as taking my taxdollars for contractual work outside my state. The state is taking revenue from the people of the state and handing it over to another state (via workers) while at the same time they are complaining they are losing revenue.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree.
Note post #58..., you’ll see that the Internet was originally established as a *business free zone* — and *not* a “tax free zone”.
Originally, if you were ever caught doing “business” on the Internet, you were suspended from the Internet and your account was closed. Good luck in getting another account... LOL.. That’s the way it was and it was *fiercely enforced* by ordinary “netizens” of that day. They *fiercely* kept “business” off the Internet. You better dare not do a single little bit or item of business — or — you were a “dead duck”... LOL..
BUT, then the Internet was turned over to “business” and it could be done, for the first time. States were already and immediately *working* to apply sales taxes in the beginning, and the Federal Government decided to give a moratorium to online businesses in order to allow them time to establish themselves. Well..., they have established themselves and all moratoriums do finally end...
And that’s the way it was...
Leaving the ethics of it aside, the computer age has made that quite possible. It would be extremely easy to build a type of cash register that would immediately determine, assess, and send taxes off to every taxing authority covered by a person's nine-digit zip code. Chances are, it would be imbedded in your next credit and/or debit card, you won't even have to tell them where you live.
Big Brother will indeed be watching everything you and I do commercially, we just needed enough politicians with the will to decree it. Tax money is usually enough of a justification.
Simple. One flat Federal sales tax.
Well, the way it will work is if I buy “online” and ship it to my address in my state, I’ll only pay *my state’s sales tax”.
And then, likewise, if you buy online and buy it from your address in your state, you’ll only pay *your own state’s sale tax” for the residence that you have in that state.
They’ll do it that way, or else, what you’ll see is everyone buying homes, cars, refrigerators and *everything* online and no one paying any sales taxes anywhere. The states see that thing “down the road” and they’re basically not going to have that happen to their “funding stream” from “sales taxes”.
I would think that should be plainly obvious to anyone...
[... in addition to the fact that this “moratorium” on state sales taxes from the Feds has *always* been “billed as a moratorium” and nothing else...]
It won't consist of active protests on street corners with tiny bags of dried beverages. It might consist of more underground means of protest. I can see people using fake IDs (much as illegal aliens do) to establish addresses in states that don't have sales taxes to get out of paying.
You said — It won’t consist of active protests on street corners with tiny bags of dried beverages. It might consist of more underground means of protest. I can see people using fake IDs (much as illegal aliens do) to establish addresses in states that don’t have sales taxes to get out of paying.
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Heck! Can you imagine how upset I was to be buying stuff online and getting charged sales taxes, and yet, I lived in a state that did not have sales tax. There was nothing I could do to convince some of these online retailers to not charge me sales tax (and they did have my home address). They said that if they “shipped it” elsewhere, other than to my home address, they would have to charge sales tax for that state it was shipped to. If they shipped it to my home address, then they wouldn’t have to charge me sales tax.
I couldn’t convince them to do it any differently, even though I wasn’t at “home” at the time... LOL...
So, you see, there are “always problems” no matter what...
You said — It is bullshit coward politics to hide from the people by quietly making business do the dirty work. LOL.
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Ummm... from what I’ve seen in traveling around in Oklahoma and Texas — *that* — is exactly what they do — and they do it at the cash register that I’m at, when I pay for my goods... LOL..
You might have missed that “procedure” in your state.. :-)
I used to live in Vancouver, Washington, and every place I went to shop asked me if I was an Oregon resident. (Of course, I groaned that they would have to go ahead and tax me.) That didn't happen when I went to restaurants, because I was eating the meal in Washington, and that would have been the case for you if you were traveling in WA yourself. The exemption is only for things that it was presumed you'd be taking back to Oregon.
Isn't that the same thing with items you wished shipped to states that online retailers were authorized to collect sales taxes for? The presumption is that you'd be using or consuming those things there, and not in Oregon.
As a side note, if this goes through, expect many fake Washingtonians to "move" to post office boxes in Oregon! If I were still back there, you can bet that I'd be one of them!
Yes, having lived in Portland and being so close to Washington, I know all about sales tax issues... LOL..
A follow-up here...
There was even a time, many years ago, that I got a “Tax-ID-card” (can’t remember what it was called, though) — in order that, being an Oregonian, I would not have to pay sales tax in the state of Washington. It worked and whenver I showed it, I would not have to pay the sales tax.
But, that was a very long time ago, and I gave it up and figured it just wasn’t worth the continual hassle. I paid the sales taxes after that... :-)
Which I constantly bought over in Oregon, by the way!
LOL... yeah, “micro-brew city”....
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