Posted on 11/11/2014 11:38:14 AM PST by CivilWarBrewing
House Speaker John Boehner has stuck an Internet sales tax proposal in a drawer and he doesn't intend to dust it off before the end of the Christmas shopping season – if he considers it at all.
The Marketplace Fairness Act, passed last year in the Senate, would allow each state to force out-of-state online retailers to collect sales taxes from its residents.
But a Boehner spokesman said late Monday in a statement that the plan isn't going anywhere.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I do not like the idea of an Internet sales tax.
However, if one is going to be rammed down our throats, I would like to see each state required to publish a single internet sales tax rate. This rate would apply equally, sales or purchases.
The the sales tax on the sale would be the average of the sales tax rate of the two states (shipper and receiver). With the revenue being split by the two states.
For example, lets say California has a 10% sales tax rate and Texas has a 4 percent rate. The tax for that sale would be 7 percent (10+4)/2 = 7 The 7 percent would then be applied to the purchase and each state would receive 3.5%
This would put pressure on businesses to locate their shipping centers in no or low tax states.
IN practice, they never collect it because it is costly to figure out who isn’t paying, and people like to cheat on their taxes.
Many states have a line for it on their income tax forms, and signing the form without paying the tax is considered perjury. But again, it’s like shoplifting, if you are good at it, it is nearly impossible for a store to catch you, so they just raise prices for all the people who don’t shoplift.
Likewise, the state just sets their tax rate slightly higher to make up for the taxes that some people cheat on.
Well, one point for Boner, anyway.
This is totally unfair to brick and mortar stores. Internet sales should be taxed!
If internet sales will not be taxed, then neither should brick and mortar store sales be taxed.
That this would not be a level playing field is an outrage!
Those small businesses need to remember the right to do business nationwide is not an entitlement.
Like "We're on the East Coast and can take instantaneous orders from the West Coast, so because that part is easy, everything else should be made easy for us, too."
Which does mean that it will be much easier for you to cheat on your taxes, since it is very hard for your state to figure out that you made a purchase and didn’t pay the sales tax.
So if you are the kind of person who only pays their taxes when they are worried about getting caught, and would otherwise break the law with impunity (like those rioters in Ferguson), then this is clearly a good thing.
Bingo.
Excellent, excellent point!
The solution is quite the other way around - Remove the onus of tax collection from the bricks-and-mortar folks and they will be better equipped to compete.
Same for Minnesota,too.Rats made that happen this year.
That is an excellent idea. How do we collect the taxes for state government under your plan?
We already know that if you don’t have a business collect the tax, the people won’t pay the tax. I presume you don’t mean to shut down state government, as you probably like having a few roads, and some sort of law enforcement, and prisons to put criminals in.
Maybe you would like to replace the sales tax with an income tax. But the income tax burdens the business you work at, by making them send tax money for you to the government.
I applaud those who are philosophically opposed to the sales tax who argue to replace it with another tax.
But if you are not arguing for the elimination of the sales tax, how do you propose collecting it?
If a customer from Texas walks into WalMart in Ohio, they pay WalMart Ohio sales tax; they don’t pay Texas tax.
If internet businesses all decide to locate in the state with the lowest sales tax, then it’s not their fault some other states are charging too much tax.
That's not my problem... And I might add that if the people won't pay the tax, it is a good indication that the tax is confiscatory.
Maybe you would like to replace the sales tax with an income tax.
Places that have sales tax normally already have income tax.
But if you are not arguing for the elimination of the sales tax, how do you propose collecting it?
Again, not my problem. Causing a business owner to become the responsible agent of the government due to the irresponsibility of the citizen sure isn't it - And that goes for taxing employment too.
Let the state hire it's own agent to stand in front of the citizen and take the money directly from the citizen's wallet, and I guarantee that taxation would become much lower very quickly - Similar to county taxation of property. I am made quite aware of what the county costs twice a year.
Nope... the only things I buy are in state and consist of liquor and cigarettes... which are medical expenses as far as I am concerned (I am my own death panel, thankyouverymuch)... and then I am sure to denote all the liquor and tobacco taxes as being paid and deduct that as taxes already paid... BWAHAHAHAHA!
In an era where people will loot stores whenever they can get away with it, I don’t believe you can assert that a tax is confiscatory when people won’t pay it. People would take the toys out of your front yard if they thought you wouldn’t shoot them.
And if your state has tax cheats, it is your problem, because the state is going to get money to pay for services somehow, and if it isn’t coming from the tax cheats, it is going to come from the people who obey the law simply because it is the right thing to do, not because they are afraid of going to jail.
I guess that isn’t your problem if you are in the latter category, but it is if you are in the former category. Unless you like paying taxes for all the tax cheats. I don’t.
Many states have income and sales tax because it is a good mix of taxes that spreads the burden fairly evenly, and provides a reasonable and predictable source of revenue in various economic conditions.
I don’t have the problem you seem to have with businesses that make money from people in a state being tasked with collecting taxes for the state. However, I would be happy to support a law that reimbursed business for that task. Of course, such a reimbursement would be paid for by taxes, including business taxes, so I imagine the businesses probably are just as well off under the current scheme.
It isn’t the cost of collecting sales tax that is the burden in this case though — it is the difficulty competing with businesses that charge 5-8% less for the same items, because they are not collecting the taxes, and people who buy from them are not paying their taxes directly as the law requires.
It's a no-brainer for software, albeit it is an enormous security hazard, with 50 fingers querying every sale. This is why using an intermediary such as I linked above with a limited cash account such that the pathway cannot reach your bank is an absolute necessity.
I get a good chuckle about this problem though every time I see another stupid post touting the FAIR Tax. My point in posting this was not as a point of advocacy as much as it is about accuracy. The problem of dealing with hundreds of counties each expecting a piece of transactions within their jurisdictions is not that difficult for a computerized system. Pull-system kanban-based inventory management for JIT is much more difficult and it's done every day.
Already in place.
There is a little form on your income taxes where you have to note any out of state on line buying that you did and pay your taxes.
What they wanted to do is make me their unpaid tax collector.
Wow!
Boehner wants a clear run to the end zone on amnesty.
The Obamacare shutdown ruined his chance at amnesty. The shutdown pushed amnesty in 2014 and then the cantaloupe Dreamers started flooding across the border 18 months after Obama’s amnesty decree.
Oy, it makes me think there’s a back room deal in the works, and it’ll be worse than we can now imagine!
“Boehner just saved already cash-strapped consumers tons of money! “
Plus the savings each week when we buy gas cheaper than a few months ago.
Californicator Land passed the internet tax, and it does cost us money for each purchase we make on the internet.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.