181–190 of 613 posts
I have a hunch that this will, in the end, be a massive win for large retailers vs. small ones. The task of figuring out how to calculate tax for all states is more or less the same amount of work regardless of size, which means for someone like Amazon it's more or less trivial, but for a mom-and-pop store it's a major hassle.
One of the nice benefits of the US system of government is that the ability to relatively easily pick and choose where to live, where to work, where to do business, etc forces the states to compete with each other to some degree. This ruling runs counter to that because using online retailers to avoid local taxes is a very low effort way to avoid local taxes or avoid funding a local government you disagree with and t…
> Grover Norquist, president of the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform, said in a statement, "Today the Supreme Court said yes -- you can be taxed by politicians you do not elect and who act knowing you are powerless to object." That doesn't follow. The people being taxed are the people living in that state, and their representatives are enacting that tax. As usually Norquist is making up BS to scare people.
It is so significant of a claim that brings the question...does norquist know how sales/use tax even works?
I have a hunch that this will, in the end, be a massive win for large retailers vs. small ones. The task of figuring out how to calculate tax for all states is more or less the same amount of work regardless of size, which means for someone like Amazon it's more or less trivial, but for a mom-and-pop store it's a major hassle.
That is an interesting take on it. I was thinking it would be more of a level playing field for small physical retailers if the larger online stores had to charge the same retail tax. My thoughts were that if you bought something from a store it would be x% more expensive with sales tax than purchasing off of amazon and having it delivered without needing to pay sales tax. This way both have to charge the same sales…
Fascinating 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.
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Cleaning up a loophole that evens the playing ground for different types of businesses is a good thing. If you have a problem with sales tax or taxation in general that's a different issue.
States not having jurisdiction outside of their borders isn't exactly a loophole. If California wants to punish people for buying from Oregon, a state free from sales taxes, it should use its existing use tax and take it up with its own citizens. This ruling is saying that California can tell Oregon businesses what to do.
I have a hunch that this will, in the end, be a massive win for large retailers vs. small ones. The task of figuring out how to calculate tax for all states is more or less the same amount of work regardless of size, which means for someone like Amazon it's more or less trivial, but for a mom-and-pop store it's a major hassle.
In 10 minutes I was able to file and pay all the sales taxes to several state, dozens of California counties and a handful of cities that charge additional taxes on top.
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But if you don't support it, are you liable for collecting more tax than required? How do you "not support" it? Just reject purchases from people in TN during the holiday?
Disclaimer: I am not an accountant. I would figure tax holidays are optional and might even require an application to take advantage of. So you would charge the regular sales tax and remit it to the state. UPDATE: Out of curiosity I looked it up. And it looks like sales tax holidays depend as usual on the state. The MO back to school one is optional if less than 2% of merchandise is affected. But the TN one doesn't l…
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Many online payment gateways already offer some kind of sales tax API. Keep in mind in California, sales tax changes per county. In places like Tennessee, the tax rate can change if your item is a grocery or isn't a grocery. There are companies that already sell massive lookup tables or API access to calculate a lot of this stuff. I think for most retailers, this won't be that big a change. Most mom-and-pop online st…
> Keep in mind in California, sales tax changes per county. More than that. Sales tax in California can change arbitrarily, not just by county. E.g. different cities in the same county can have different sales tax. To further complicate things, shipping address may have a city on it but they might not actually "live" in that city. E.g. in SoCal there is a city of "Westlake Village", which spans the Ventura-LA county…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many online payment gateways already offer some kind of sales tax API. Keep in mind in California, sales tax changes per county. In places like Tennessee, the tax rate can change if your item is a grocery or isn't a grocery. There are companies that already sell massive lookup tables or API access to calculate a lot of this stuff. I think for most retailers, this won't be that big a change. Most mom-and-pop online st…
> Keep in mind in California, sales tax changes per county. More than that. Sales tax in California can change arbitrarily, not just by county. E.g. different cities in the same county can have different sales tax. To further complicate things, shipping address may have a city on it but they might not actually "live" in that city. E.g. in SoCal there is a city of "Westlake Village", which spans the Ventura-LA county…
It doesn't matter what Westlake Village wants to charge in sales tax to Amazon. In order for the sales tax to survive South Dakota v. Wayfair, it must be minimally restrictive on an out-of-state vendor. This means that it can't include local sales taxes, because an out-of-state vendor can't be expected to know about such taxes unless they do sufficient business with that locality. Note that both of the current federal sales tax laws before Congress also disallow local sales taxes in favor of state-level sales taxes.
Long story short: there will be up to 50 sales taxes that online stores must deal with.