Posted on 09/04/2013 6:24:46 AM PDT by Perdogg
Gov. Bob McDonnell's administration has reached a deal withAmazon.com Inc. for the giant online retailer to start collecting sales taxes in Virginia.
The agreement calls for Amazon to start collecting the taxes of purchases made by Virginians on Sept. 1, 2013.
(Excerpt) Read more at articles.wdbj7.com ...
They don’t have sales tax either. Every state with a sales tax has a use tax.
I seem to remember you having a different attitude toward my Maryland purchases the last time we were both involved in a discussion on this topic.
I was under the impression they are exempt from sales taxes to begin with...........
The law is the law, and I’ve known the law for years, so I don’t know why you would remember me saying anything different. The standard Sales Tax in Maryland is 6%, which is less than Virginia.
There are some food items in Maryland that are not taxed; if you buy those and bring them home, then you would have to file use tax for those items, if they are taxed in Virginia (which taxes food, but at a lower rate than other items).
But this applies to a small set of Maryland food; items sold by a “food seller” that are meant to be consumed off-site, but are not “prepared foods”; the chances of you buying such things in any quantity, and then bringing them home with you before consuming them, are rather low; the chances of the store taxing you properly for them is probably lower. And the amount you’d owe would be so low as to be in the noise.
That paragraph turned out to be a mess. Sorry about that. Rather than try to fix it, here’s info from the FAQ page for Maryland:
“Maryland includes many specific items that are exempt from sales tax — for example, food sold in grocery stores, prescription medicines, and newspapers are generally not taxable. You’ll want to check to see if you or the products you purchase or sell are exempt from the tax.”
IF you are buying these things, and bringing them into Virginia, then you’d have to check if Virginia would tax them, and if so file Use Tax for them.
In the case of Delaware there is what is euphemistically called the "Gross Receipts Tax" which is an insidious tax that raises the price of everything, just not at the cash register, which is why it is called a "hidden" sales tax.
I recently spent a week there and just about everything I purchased there was by far more expensive than back here in Virginia. The only exception to that rule were certain items in places like Dollar General. But same brand/same store purchases are shockingly higher there than here. For example I purchased a pound of store brand butter in Food Lion the day before I headed to DE, it was $2.67 including VA sales tax. While there I needed to purchase butter, same Food Lion brand, same size and in "tax free" Delaware it was $3.20.
You’re changing your tune, once again.
Earlier in this conversation you stated because Maryland’s tax is higher than Virginia’s I do not have to report “any” of those purchases, and now you are back to what you have previously told me about food (grocery store) purchases.
As I have said in the past, I do a certain amount of my grocery shopping in Maryland, just due to the nature of where I live. However, over the course of a year it is going to be a wash when I consider the higher tax I’m paying on all other items in comparison to what tax I would “owe” VA in unpaid food sales tax.
Some states probably, not AZ.
AHHH, the ridiculous non-fitting analogy poster.
If the federal government had no way of finding out what we earn then no-one would pay income taxes, then the IRA would assign us incomes like they do waitress tips. Wait to see how many ignore the Obama-care mandate.
But they do so your sarcastic comment is pointless.
My lib state has no way of knowing what I buy from businesses in other states. Too bad for them.
It was not an analogy. In Virginia, there is a line on the income tax form where they tell you to put the amount of “use tax” you owe. They have a couple of pages that explain the law, and tell you how to calculate what you owe.
You put some number there, either $0 or some other number, and it gets added up to a total.
Then you sign the tax form, where you are told that the signature indicates that you have truthfully filled in the form.
If you sign that form having put a number in that is not the truth, you “lie on your income tax form”.
Your suggestion that nobody would follow a law if they could not be caught is a sad commentary. If people ignore the Obamacare mandate it will be in part because the Supreme Court has told us it is not a “law”, and not a “mandate”, so you can legally decide to pay the tax instead of buying insurance.
BTW, I understand that people break the laws all the time. Even good people break laws all the time these days — but usually when the law seems so outrageous that it deserves to be broken (Obamacare would be an example of such a law, and maybe the law about drinking age, or maybe even marijuana use, depending on who you talk to).
But the argument you are making is not that sales tax is immoral, or absurd. If you were making that argument, you’d be suggesting how we could avoid paying the sales tax on all our purchases. I don’t know if you are arguing that the income tax is inherently unfair when you suggest “no-one” would pay it. Because self-employed people often pay the income tax they owe, even though there is a good chance the feds would never catch them. In fact, there are many ways to cheat on your income taxes that would be hard to catch, like overclaiming deductions, not reporting income that wasn’t reported separately, claiming tax credits you don’t deserve, and even more risky things like making up children and forging documents.
But most people actually do try to pay all the tax they owe, and try to use the political system to change the laws that they don’t like, rather than arguing that everybody has the right to disobey any law they don’t like or costs them money.
Christians are told they should submit to the government authority to the degree it does not compromise their walk with God. Is a sales tax a sin? I might think it is too high, but no, paying it does not make me a sinner (note that Jesus comment “render unto Caesar” does suggest that it is not a sin to pay a required tax to a government which will use the money for evil purposes, but obviously each person needs to come to their own decisions, I’m not going to tell you what your sins are).
Welcome to the planet Earth space traveler.
What are things like on your planet with your species?
We are not the Pilgims just off the Mayflower,
LOL,
The statement about “maryland tax being higher than Virginia” is what we call a “generalization”.
When we are talking about whether one will ignore the law or not, discussing in generalities seems prudent; if we are talking about how much work we are willing to perform to follow a law we have decided to follow, then we have to get into specifics.
To be precise, if you paid sales tax on a purchase in Maryland, you do not have to report “any” of those purchases. Because if you paid sales tax, you paid 6%, which is higher than what you would pay in Virginia.
If you made purchases for which you did NOT pay sales tax, then you have to determine whether the items you purchased would be taxed in Virginia, and pay.
Since the nature of the conversation was “hey, I already paid taxes on the stuff I bought in Maryland, do I have to pay virginia as well”, the general answer “no, you do not”, is an appropriate one. It is only the things you did NOT pay tax on that you have to worry about.
It is worse if you buy from a state with a lower sales tax. Then even though you paid sales tax, you still technically owe more taxes.
Given Virginia’s complete lack of interest in catching people who don’t pay sales tax, and their instead passing a law to punish everybody equally for the crimes of the ones who do not, you won’t see me complaining about people who don’t go through the trouble of determining if they paid ENOUGH sales tax in some other state. Virginia certainly won’t.
The only circumstance where I could imagine Virginia going after a person who bought stuff in Maryland would be if that person publicly bragged about specifically buying all their non-taxed groceries in Maryland just to save the sales tax. But even then I doubt Virginia would bother.
Which makes it a very interesting state, because it seems that not only does that discourage outsiders from coming into the state to spend money, but it also gives incentive for people IN the state to leave the state to buy things (although it could be that the sales tax in neighboring states are high enough that it cancels out the savings from the lower cost of goods).
Wasnt it you a week ago or so lecturing me that the US constitution is not decided by the SCOTUS, but instead your own reading of it?
If so, now you are arguing the opposite, that we sin if we dont do what they say
How about if my sales sales tax in Maryland goes to killing babies? How about to taking away guns? Gosh, I lost those forms again an honest mistake.
My reading in the bible says nothing about filling out forms for sales taxes.
I speed when I think no cops are watching. Are you that ONE car out of 100 causing a traffic jam by driving 55?
You must be unhumanly perfect with all your stone throwing, you always throw the first?
???? You dont really believe most people send in tax forms for internet purchases. Stop making stuff up.
I don’t remember having a discussion with anyone last week about the US constitution and SCOTUS. Practically speaking, the constitution says whatever the SCOTUS claims it says, since between them, the legislature, and the executive, they control both a police force and a military that can impose their will upon us.
I still believe that the constitution is actually what it says, and that the SCOTUS can be WRONG about what they THINK it says, but that belief has no practical value.
You have to decide for yourself what a “sin” is; my reading of scripture is that it is a sin to disobey a law that is does not itself cause you to sin. It is a hard lesson, if it was easy they would not have had to teach it.
My argument about sales tax going to kill babies is that when Jesus was asked if it was wrong to pay tax to Rome, he did NOT teach that it was a sin to do so, even though Rome was clearly using it’s power for evil, including eventually crucifying Jesus. But again, you have to decide if the use of taxes is such that it would be a sin to pay them.
Realize that once you make that decision, every liberal in the country will have an “equal footing” to assert they don’t have to pay taxes to support wars they don’t agree with, or to enforce laws like voter ID and immigration laws if they think they are “immoral”. We use government as a means to determine the morality of the majority, and to allow a limited enforcement of that morality, and pushing anarchy for freedom is a dangerous thing — a little anarchy may work well, but only to a point.
If everybody decided not to pay any of their taxes, government would crumble, and unless you are arguing that anarchy is the preferable outcome, we DO need to collect taxes to pay for the legitimate business of government, something the Founding Fathers agreed upon.
I don’t see taxes as inherently immoral. And as taxes go, I think the sales tax is a very GOOD way to collect the money needed for government, because it applies to money you clearly HAD since you are spending it, and it applies equally to everybody based on their similar actions (buying the same items, you pay the same tax as the liberal down the street, or the rich man in the mansion), and you have control over the tax you pay because you can choose not to spend the money (better in states where they don’t tax food purchases).
I believe taxes are fairer if they are applied at a low amount, across the entire population, in an even manner. That is the sales tax, EXCEPT if people cheat by not paying the tax. Then those who buy locally or who follow the law for internet purchases assume a larger part of the burden of government, while those who buy online and violate the reporting laws get their government services without paying their equal share.
And while I might well agree with you that the sales tax is too high and should be lowered, I cannot agree with you that I should pay more sales tax than you pay, if we buy the same things in the same state and get the same services. If everybody who bought online paid their required sales tax, my tax burden might actually go down — because Virginia just passed a law RAISING the sales tax to cover the shortfall from those who don’t pay the tax.
No, but we were specifically talking at that point about federal income tax. YOu claimed that if the government didn’t know what you made, NO-ONE would pay their federal income tax, and I’m saying that for the most part, maybe because they are scared, most people do try to get their federal tax forms accurate. There is no “use tax” on that form.
But I could be wrong. MAybe everybody is like Tim Geithner, cheating on their taxes. I remember that conservatives were very upset about his being a tax cheat, along with some other liberals who were found to not have reported all their income. I remember conservatives were very critical of Bill Clinton for overclaiming his charitable contributions.
So it would seem odd if conservatives were now arguing that Tim Geithner just did what EVERYBODY, including ever conservative, would do. I don’t think so, but we are becoming a lawless nation.
I have consistently said that nobody pays the “use tax”. Most people have no idea it exists. Even though it is on their income tax form, they don’t know what it means, and just blindly say “0” and move on.
I would like to believe that if every conservative was fully educated about the use tax, that a majority would pay the tax, because conservatives believe in the rule of law, even laws that cost them money.
Moreso, I believe that if conservatives were fully educated, they would join together and change the laws. That’s what I would really like to see.
But most people are ignorant in this area, which is why in every thread about internet sales people argue that there is some “new tax” that was never before imposed, when every sales tax state already imposes the “use tax”, and the “federal internet sales tax” is really a COLLECTION law, not a tax law.
I realize all of that, but as I said, you and I have had this conversation more than once in the past, and you are the one that chimed in here to me. My position is the higher sales tax I pay on non grocery items makes my untaxed grocery purchases a wash when it comes to "using" them in Virginia.
The only circumstance where I could imagine Virginia going after a person who bought stuff in Maryland would be if that person publicly bragged about specifically buying all their non-taxed groceries in Maryland just to save the sales tax.
That rules me out because I neither brag about, nor do I buy, all of my groceries in MD to save the sales tax. I only buy them in MD if I am there for other reasons. Alas, I am there more frequently than I care to be, but it is where our dentists, the eye doctor, and our daughter's dance classes and recitals are held. It is also by far closer for major shopping (unfortunately necessary with a growing teenager) than anywhere in Virginia. And with the current price of gas - I prefer a 30 mile or 100 mile round trip to a 60 or 225 mile round trip (that includes $25+ in tolls.)
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