Posted on 04/21/2009 5:56:33 AM PDT by suspects
Leave it to a Massachusetts politician to get taxes completely wrong.
U.S. Rep. Bill Delahunt is soon expected to reintroduce the Streamlined Sales Tax (SST) bill, a federal mandate for collecting local sales taxes on interstate purchases. You buy organic Oreos from Oregon or moose meat from Montana, and Massachusetts sales taxes would track you across the Internet.
Supporters argue it’s unfair to make traditional “brick-and-mortar” businesses collect our state’s 5 percent (for the moment) sales tax while a shop next door can sell the same item online tax-free.
They’re right. Every business should be treated the same. What’s wrong is Delahunt’s convoluted, big-government solution.
SST would make every small business across America a tax collector for each of the 50 states. These businesses would be forced to collect data on every Internet customer; calculate their home-state sales tax; collect and report it, and send it to each state capitol. SST would simplify this somewhat by making sales taxes more uniform across the states. But there would still be conflict and confusion.
CNET News’ Declan McCullagh uses the example of Twix Crunchy Cookie Bars. Under some state tax codes, Twix is a “candy.” In others, it’s a potentially tax-exempt “food.”
And I can only imagine what would happen with grits - considered a vital foodstuff in South Carolina but a construction-grade bonding agent in New Hampshire.
Why so complicated? The fair and obvious solution is to treat every Internet purchase like an ice cream cone on Hampton Beach.
The Ben and Jerry’s guy there doesn’t ask where you’re from. For every dollar of ice cream he sells, he collects the same sales tax, period. Why not have Internet retailers do the same?
If a business in New Hampshire sells a product, online or at the drive-thru, it always...
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
You actually are expected to pay sales tax for that item you drove out of state to buy. Many states have a form and a provision for you to report out of state purchases and pay sales tax on them.
They can discern location from your IP address.
Either way, this is starting to get way out of hand. How many creative ways can representatives look to take more of our money? We have our income it gets taxed ,then we take that money andinvests it in the market, make a cap gain, and that gets taxed then you go sign up for internet, that service gets taxed, and now you want to buy something online and guess what that same money gets taxed. It never stops.
I heard a presentation by the director of our state Retailer’s Association where he talked about the concerns of retailers when the organization was founded about 100 years ago. The retailer’s biggest concern at the time ...catalog mail order sales from Montgomery Ward being unfair competition because they did not pay local property or sales taxes. It is ironic that many of these retailers are still around while their nemesis, Montgomery Ward, is nowhere to be seen.
So, why don’t every online seller just tell the govt. no?
Here in Washington State, my local Costco always asks me if I live in Oregon. When I asked the clerk why she wanted to know, she replied that they don’t collect sales tax on Oregonians. Just thought it interesting that some businesses are not collecting taxes on people who are from tax free areas, or the opposite of this proposal.
If they lay out on internet tax the money has to go to the Feds not the States.
This is about more than just taxes. Once this door is opened they will regulate all aspects of it including free speech/hate speech or what they deem so. “Commerce” has been the door through which all this socialization and “thought control” crap has been introduced, legislated and enforced.
Have you ever had a package caught in a customs inspection because you tried to have it slip through without paying tarriffs on it. Have you ever had to argue with someone about what the package is and under what category it should be taxed? Have you ever had something just disappear in the system only to show up months later? Believe me, you'll be begging to pay the tax on a US shipment after just one international shipment like that.
I'm not saying I like the interstate taxes. I'm just saying that a line which says 7% is much easier than dealing with customs.
Cars are taxed based on the residence of the purchaser because too many people were driving a few miles away to a lower tax county. As far as I know, that is the only thing where they ask for your residence. They might for local delivery too, but I haven't checked recently.
I bet additional software will opens us up to more credit card security problems.
Again, how long will that take?
Who buys ice cream on the Internet?
Why would anybody in their right mind fill out such a form? Just buy the product with cash and be done with it.
The form is also part of the state income tax return.
No one would fill it out, but my point is that the law is already in place in many states and you can get caught for not paying sales tax on out of state purchases. With budgets the way they are it can’t be long before they make a strong effort to seal this tax hole.
Does anyone remember the story about the cops watching people return from other states with tobacco products they had not paid taxes on? Even though they weren’t actually required to settle the taxes until they filed their tax return?
There was a long standing battle between a former lawyer turned bar owner and the state of Maryland about the collection of taxes. Basically the bar owner argued that the state did not pay him to be a tax collector and therefore he did not have to collect sales tax. He never collected the taxes for decades and Maryland never took him to court for fear of losing.
It's interesting - I do remember the form in Ohio, and that question is asked specifically. They use the term "use tax" rather than sales tax because federal law protects internet sales from being taxed if the entity does not have an established presence in a given state. I wonder if this has really been pushed through the courts - it would seem to me that if the feds say "no sales tax on internet sales", then the states wouldn't have a let to stand on. Then again, a "use tax" isn't a sales tax, though it would imply that the item bought would have to be put to use.
Greedy government boos-tards.
The States can put on duties (which is not proposed), but if they did the money would have to go to the Feds. Article I, Section 10: "No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress."
This should run a lot of small companies out of business.
Import taxes, fee's, tariffs....
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