Next year I am going so Galt the NSA will think I must have died.
Americans sure have gone far to the side of government-induced behavior modification and away from personal freedom. I truly do not recognize this country anymore.
There are states where the sales tax rate changes town to town, county to county and borough to borough. How the heck are online retailers supposed to keep up with THAT?
Or the gazillion exceptions and exemptions in the PA sales tax code?
If it has enough support to pass, let it stand on its own merit and don't piggyback it off a defense bill.
Our inillustrious Congress....
Notice that Mike Enzi is all for it. Go figure. He has no clue as to what this would do to small businesses. I’ve spent my business career since 1996 helping large corporations navigate multi-state sales and use tax issues (and other excise taxes). Asking a small seller to keep up with the tax laws of thousands of jurisdictions is ridiculous. All it will do is kill small business and create a new bureaucracy.
Right?
It’s just another Golden egg laying Goose the Government wants to kill in their never-ending effort to tax every stinking dime out of Americans .
Shop from NH
Taxes, taxes, taxes. :)
You voted for them America - now fork it over.
Pay your fair share. The liberals running the government won’t, so you’ll have to pick up the slack. LOL!
And exactly what freaking poll would that be!
WTF?
Sounds like a Scott Brown clone.
Will any states the package moves through also want part of the action? A shipping / transit tax?
What if I buy from England? Tariffs?
Could they just say a online purchase tax is collect by the vendor using the vendor's local rate where the vendor's HQ is located? Of course, this would cause vendors to move to states with no sales tax.
The GOP should vote it down
Hey Stupid Libs! The honeymoon is over, Sugar Daddy has gone to play golf and left you behind to wash dishes. Enjoy!
I work for an online retailer. In our state, sales tax differs from county to county. That’s a matter of programming in the zip and collecting the right amount of tax...but in the end, it’s all sent to the state we’re in.
Once this sales tax is collected from every different state and each state has their own tax rate or if they’re like our state, several different sales tax rates (which is a programming nightmare)...where is the money going to be sent, who is going to distribute it back to the states, who keeps track of what money was collected for what state. Are they expecting the small online business person to do this?
There is no such thing. This may be the last Christmas where it is easy to cheat on your sales taxes by purchasing things online, but every state with a sales tax already requires people to pay sales tax on items purchased on the internet.
But without a national law allowing collection of sales data or the tax, it is easier than normal for people to cheat on the tax.
Imagine if you didn't have withholding of your income tax, and your employer was not required to tell the government that you were employed. In other words, imagine that the only way the government knew how much you made was if you TOLD them.
In that environment, a lot of people would cheat on their income taxes, even more than apparently a lot of people cheat now.
It's like rioters and looters. We think crime is something done by an uncivil minority. Then as soon as a circumstance exists where people think they can get away with it, we see rich people in fancy cars driving up and looting stores. We see masses of people vandalizing things. We see that our nature is NOT one of civility and lawfulness anymore.
It amazes me how many people who call themselves conservatives are proud of cheating on their taxes, when it comes to the sales tax.
I always tell them, if they are that proud, they should go all the way. Most every state allows exemptions to the sales tax. For example, all you need to do is forge a religious exemption letter, and present it when you purchase things, and the store will subtract the sales tax.
So, why doesn't everybody do this? I used to think because people aren't cheaters. Now I think it's just because they didn't know they could get away with it.
BTW, I pay my sales tax every year on my Amazon purchases. I think taxes are too high, but I don't think that gives me the right to pay less of them than the guy living next door who buys his stuff at the local shop, or the guy across the street who buys his stuff online from Barnes and Noble and Target instead of Amazon.
In other words, it just isn't in my nature to make my purchasing decisions based on how easy it will be to break the law. I sign my tax form, and on that form it says that my signature indicates that I have reported all the information I understand to be applicable, and that includes a line on the form for my "use tax".
I can't imagine signing a fraudulent return. But too many people can.