More Taxes On the Way...

[Cryozombie]

Internet purchases soon to include sales tax

Tom Barlow
Apr 20th 2009 at 9:00AM
Filed under: Shopping, Tax
If you're planning a major purchase via the Internet, you might want to do it quickly. Congress is expected to introduce a bill this week that would require Amazon.com, L.L. Bean, Cabela's and other online merchants to collect sales tax on all online purchases and return that money to the state in which the purchaser resides.

YAY! More Taxes! Cmon, everyone tell me how this is good, and neccessary to keep the cogs of America Spinning...

 

[Big Don]

A democrat President
+
A democrat House of Representatives
+
A democrat Senate
=
More and Higher taxes

 

[jetboatdeath]

Well i am glad to see the "no new taxes" promise holding up...
But I can here it now....
"But this is congress not Obama"
yea whatever....
When is that "change" comming all I see is change leaving ...as in my pockets...

 

[Cryozombie]

Chicago is also instituting a new tax on services. Taxation is so bad here that 4 or 5 towns have petitioned to leave Cook County to get away from the oppressive taxation.

 

[Thesemindz]

I don't know if you guys are familiar with the author Neal Stephenson, but in his book The Diamond Age, taxation of electronic commerce leads to the complete downfall of the statist system.

the nation-states of the world collapsed when electronic communications started using an untraceable relay system that made it impossible to enforce taxes on online transactions. Deprived of their funding, large-scale governments collapsed, and small, voluntary governments like the burbclaves depicted in Snow Crash emerged in their place.

So perhaps, this could be a good thing?


-Rob

 

[Cryozombie]

I don't know if you guys are familiar with the author Neal Stephenson, but in his book The Diamond Age, taxation of electronic commerce leads to the complete downfall of the statist system.

-Rob

Yes, but we need Nanofeeds into our homes to auto build things we need, or, as the case may be don't need, like a bunch of Mattresses.

;D

 

[Empty Hands]

I don't know about the legal particulars, but a lot of sites already do this. Sales tax is based on your billing address, I think.

 

[jks9199]

And some states want you to report and pay the taxes on your own. It's part of the Virginia income tax paperwork, for example.

 

[Big Don]

I can't wait until someone advances the idea of a tax on taxes.

 

[Thesemindz]

You know, the constitution doesn't set an upper limit on taxation. Theoretically, you could have your income taxed at 300%. Or pay a vice tax of 800% on cigarettes.

A tax on taxes wouldn't suprise me. If they thought for a second they could get away with it they would. Without remorse.


-Rob

 

[Cryozombie]

I don't know about the legal particulars, but a lot of sites already do this. Sales tax is based on your billing address, I think.

Actually, here at least, it depends. I only pay tax for online purchases from buisnesses that reside in Illinois. The other 56 (LoL) states dont charge me when I order from them.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

I can't wait until someone advances the idea of a tax on taxes.

Don,
NY already taxes our taxes.

 

[Thesemindz]

Actually, all states tax taxation.

Approximately 22% of the end cost of all consumer products pays the associated costs of collecting and remitting income tax to the federal government. That means absent federal income tax, a $100 item would only cost about $78.

But the states collect sales tax based on the end price to the consumer without considering the imbedded cost of the federal income tax system. So while the consumer is paying all the income tax costs of all the employers responsible for each step of bringing a product to the point of consumption, he must also pay sales tax on the portion of the cost of the product which represents those costs.

Remeber, all taxation is payed by the end user. Always. And because of sales taxes, the end user is, quite literally, paying taxes on taxes.


-Rob

 

[Deaf Smith]

Internet purchases soon to include sales tax



YAY! More Taxes! Cmon, everyone tell me how this is good, and neccessary to keep the cogs of America Spinning...

Yes.. Change we can believe in! Somehow this is going to 'stimulate' the economy. Beats me how cause I'll just buy less.

Deaf

 

[tellner]

The Greedy Old Plutocrats really are desperate, aren't they?

The Obama Administration has just lowered the witholding taxes on 95% of the country. What he's proposing is letting the special privileges and laws which shoveled money into the greedy maws of the top one percent expire.

 

[Thesemindz]

The Greedy Old Plutocrats really are desperate, aren't they?

The Obama Administration has just lowered the witholding taxes on 95% of the country. What he's proposing is letting the special privileges and laws which shoveled money into the greedy maws of the top one percent expire.

How does that apply to a discussion about whether or not sales tax should apply to internet commerce?


-Rob

 

[Big Don]

How does that apply to a discussion about whether or not sales tax should apply to internet commerce?


-Rob

It doesn't, but, he got to call republicans names.

 

[cdunn]

Said it before, I'll say it again.

Taxes went up when we declared war on the Taliban. Taxes went up when we declared war on Iraq. Taxes went up every time we raised the recruitment bonus for new soldiers. Taxes went up when the bridge in Minnesota fell down, and we decided to make sure a minimum of other bridges were going to fall down. Taxes went up when we bailed out the banks. Taxes went up when we started sending boats to the waters near Somalia.

Every time you ask the government to do something, taxes go up. It's just a matter of when. Maybe it's time to evaluate what you actually want government to do.

PS: Internet commerce is already taxed, it's just poorly enforced.

 

[CoryKS]

The Greedy Old Plutocrats really are desperate, aren't they?

The Obama Administration has just lowered the witholding taxes on 95% of the country. What he's proposing is letting the special privileges and laws which shoveled money into the greedy maws of the top one percent expire.

Don't you just hate it when the people you are trying to buy off refuse to be bought off?

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Every time you ask the government to do something, taxes go up. It's just a matter of when. Maybe it's time to evaluate what you actually want government to do.

If the government taxes a factory that makes widgets at 10%, it collects a certain amount of taxes. Say a million widgets at a buck a year @ 10%, so it collects $100,000.

One could say that it can double that tax to 20% and collect $200,000, but it may not work out that well. The widget-maker may not be able to absorb that additional tax out of gross profits, so it raises prices. Raise them sufficiently, and people buy fewer of them. Tax revenue may actually fall. This is fact - the government uses the same argument to suggest that excessive taxes on 'sins' such as alcohol and tobacco are actually intended to discourage use.

One could also that the position that if widgets are popular, lower taxes might result in lower prices to consumers (especially in the presence of competition), and more widgets are sold. Lowering the tax to 5% would result in revenue to the government of $50,000 instead of $100,000, but only if sales stay flat. If they go up due to being less expensive to consumers, revenue may keep pace or even exceed the monies collected at the 10% rate.

This is not always the case, but it can and does happen.

Thus, increasing government revenue does not necessarily require a tax increase. The government itself depends upon the fact that burdensome taxes REDUCE consumption (and thus revenue), but many seem to deny the fact that the opposite it also true - lower taxes can INCREASE consumption and thus revenue.

This is a basic fact of economics that Democrats have seemed utterly incapable of grasping. They usually hoot such statements down, as if pretending rain doesn't exist keeps people from getting wet.