More compliance and regulation for us to deal with. How about you just tax property? It doesn't move. And also, how about the state stops spending money?
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States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules
41–50 of 613 posts
Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules
#42Someone needs to develop a service to make calculating and paying the sales tax easier. Something like plugin an address and it spits out the tax percentage and where to remit the payment to. Ideally the states would get together and create a centralized service so companies don't have to be mailing checks to every single county government that has a sales tax.
The problem with this is: how do you know what the tax rate is for the product you're selling? For instance, if you're in New Jersey and you're selling a clothing item like a pair of socks, then there's no tax. But if you're selling a fur coat, then there's full sales tax. There's different tax rates for different products, and it varies wildly across almost 10,000 different jurisdictions in the US.
Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules
#43I find it hard to argue with from a fairness perspective. Clearly, retail is in a much different place from when Quill was decided. My concern is more in how a mom & pop online shop operating independently complies as a practical matter, which means not only collecting the right amount for different types of items but presumably remitting and filing with a huge number of different tax jurisdictions.
In Colorado you're already asked when filing state taxes what the value of the goods you bought online that haven't been taxed yet, so the onus is on the filer to look up receipts from the year for tax purposes. Amazon already collects tax in Colorado, but a few smaller retailers will send you a letter at the end of the year totaling up your untaxed purchases. Since different counties and localities collect different…
I also live in Colorado and only got one such letter last year after a lot of online shopping. It was from B&H and was wrong, though the dollar amount wasn't very high. I placed an order where one item was back ordered, so separate shipments came. They said tax was owed on the back ordered item twice.
But, as you said, Amazon already collects tax at time of sale which was the bulk of my purchases.
Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules
#44The situation for retailers shipping to states where they have no physical presence reminds me of the situation of foreign retailers with significant online sales to customers in the EU. In each case, the seller (who has no physical or other presence in X) is required to collect tax from the buyer (a resident of X) and remit it to the tax authorities in X. The tax is owed by a resident of X, to the tax authorities in…
That is the price of doing business with customers of the EU, similar to how you must comply to EU regulations if you want to sell physical goods. In return, you get access to the EU market and can deal with a single ruleset for the whole EU instead of each country individually.
Also, this is only for consumers, to business customers you can reverse-charge the VAT so they have to handle it.
Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules
#45I find it hard to argue with from a fairness perspective. Clearly, retail is in a much different place from when Quill was decided. My concern is more in how a mom & pop online shop operating independently complies as a practical matter, which means not only collecting the right amount for different types of items but presumably remitting and filing with a huge number of different tax jurisdictions.
I live in an Illinois border community, and work in Iowa. I wonder what tax would be collected if I close an Ebay transaction in Iowa, but have the products shipped to my address in Illinois.
While I can't speak for US law, most of the time it's the delivery address that matters - if the location you're at when purchasing matters, you could do all of your expensive on-line shopping when on holiday in some place with low taxes (or using a VPN...).
Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules
#46This is potentially much broader though -- say you buy a domain on some registrar, do you pay taxes on that now? Every such place then needs your address, too.
And going down this road, p2p barter on the internet of any kind might be subject to a tax regime soon.
Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules
#47I find it hard to argue with from a fairness perspective. Clearly, retail is in a much different place from when Quill was decided. My concern is more in how a mom & pop online shop operating independently complies as a practical matter, which means not only collecting the right amount for different types of items but presumably remitting and filing with a huge number of different tax jurisdictions.
In Colorado you're already asked when filing state taxes what the value of the goods you bought online that haven't been taxed yet, so the onus is on the filer to look up receipts from the year for tax purposes. Amazon already collects tax in Colorado, but a few smaller retailers will send you a letter at the end of the year totaling up your untaxed purchases. Since different counties and localities collect different…
It’s called an use tax. It’s equivalent to a sales tax, reporting is required but voluntary. Not paying use taxes on internet purchases is tax evasion. Here’s what CA’s state tax collectors have to say:
Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules
#48This is good news for the country, even if it's bad for my wallet. The prior state of affairs was absurd. Online retailers already have major advantages in terms of convenience and inventory. Getting a N% discount vs. brick and mortar by not charging taxes was completely unnecessary.
Exposing consumers to more regressive sales taxes is in no way good for the country. What would be good for the country is to abolish sales taxes entirely.
Exactly; sales taxes generally just hurt the poor and middle class. A good case could be made for consumption taxes on luxury items, but taxing things like food and inexpensive consumer items (like non-luxury clothing) simply hurts poorer people while not significantly affecting wealthier ones.
Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules
#49Fascinating mix of justices on this one: > The vote was 5 to 4. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion and was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch. I can't imagine we're gonna see RBG agreeing with the Alito/Gorsuch/Thomas clan too often.
I can't imagine we're gonna see RBG agreeing with the Alito/Gorsuch/Thomas clan too often.
To some extent, sure, but that's also exaggerated. The one or two "ideological" decisions with stereotypical lineups get all the attention, because general readers can pick a team and root for it, just like sports and election politics, so it makes for lots of clicks and ad eyeballs. In reality, differing lineups happen frequently, because the justices have their own unique perspectives on most cases and areas of law, and over the past several years unanimous and 8-1 decisions are up compared to the past.
Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules
#50I tend to view the avoidance of paying local taxes as one of the internet's original legislation workarounds (1). The entire wholesale (you buy for resale, pay taxes when that happens) vs retail (you sell to the end user) division was abused to allow the historical "nobody pays taxes on the internet, so buy there and avoid them" logic many people used. It would have been interesting to see how differently retail sale…
This wasn't invented by the internet. Interstate mail order sales delivered by railroad in the 19th century were always tax free. E-commerce inherited that system.