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States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

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Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

#271

Post by johns »

tomrod wrote: post #265
kels wrote: post #258

What no one is talking about here is how this would be handled, especially for a small online sellers. There are almost 10,000 tax jurisdictions ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/mccon... ) and you're not allowed to collect sales tax unless you register for that jurisdiction. There is also a fee collected by most jurisdictions to register and most make you send in periodic reports, even if you…

Sounds like a business opportunity.

Avalara just went public and is benefitting from the ruling: https://www.geekwire.com/2018/avalara-stock-soars-following-...

Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

#272

Post by [deleted] »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #70

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…

[deleted]

Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

#273

Post by beberlei »

kels wrote: post #258

What no one is talking about here is how this would be handled, especially for a small online sellers. There are almost 10,000 tax jurisdictions ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/mccon... ) and you're not allowed to collect sales tax unless you register for that jurisdiction. There is also a fee collected by most jurisdictions to register and most make you send in periodic reports, even if you…

suddenly the EU VAT system looks awesome :-)

Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

#274

Post by kruipen »

nlh wrote: post #14

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.

All nine Justices agreed on the merit, including Justice Thomas who was in majority on Quill which he now voted to overturn. The decedent argued that the precedent, while wrongly decided, should be upheld on stare decisis grounds, and it should be left to Congress to correct the mistake.

Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

#275

Post by mrfredward »

jedberg wrote: post #261
datamingle wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it from the perspective of the business selling goods. Then the quote makes more sense.

No it doesn't. The business isn't paying the tax. They are only collecting it on behalf of the taxing agency.

Maybe a more precise wording is "you can be forced to collect tax from others and must pay registration fees to collect said tax by politicians you do not elect and who act knowing you are powerless to object."

The sentiment is still the same.

Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

#276

Post by Cerium »

jethro_tell wrote: post #244
datamingle wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it from the perspective of the business selling goods. Then the quote makes more sense.

The business isn't paying the tax though? If the people paying the tax don't want it, they should replace their reps or move to a state that doesn't have that tax. So we could think of it from the point of the business but that wouldn't be based in fact.

If the business isn't paying the tax, then I'm sure the people paying the tax can pay the tax themselves. No need to add a middleman.

Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

#277

Post by shkkmo »

Eridrus wrote: post #137
Nasrudith wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two against it on fairness grounds I can see but your mileage may vary on practically and definitions of fairness. One is that they don't use the infrastructure in the state. Shippers are either already taxed for their use if private or self funding government in the case of UPS. The second is a more slippery taxation without representation which also gets into all sorts of semantic issues with who is reall…

> One is that they don't use the infrastructure in the state. This is one way of looking at things, but I think sales tax is much closer to a tax on consumers than on businesses. Or at least is intended as a tax on consumers to fund their state infrastructure, often because imposing an income tax is impossible (e.g. Washington State constitution) or just politically unpalatable. Normalising taxes is basically impossi…

Do the consumers pay the tax to the federal government? No? Then it's not a tax on them, but on the businesses that pay the tax. Business's can choose to charge consumers directly for this, but for online retailers that means additional complexity in the checkout and billing process.

Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

#278

Post by watchdogtimer »

cm2012 wrote: post #113
WiseWeasel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still difficult to comply with. Imagine 50 different laws like that, each with their own tiers, and consider the difficulty accounting for them all and staying in compliance. That's not even getting into municipal taxes.

Shopify/BigCommerce/Authorize.net/eBay/Amazon, etc. will handle it for you. Everyone uses SaaS software at some point in the process nowadays.

We don't. We're one of those mom-and-pop businesses that uses a self-hosted shopping cart, and use Braintree as our payment processor which has no sales tax recording system that I'm aware of.

Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

#279

Post by Aloha »

I see a opening for a SaaS business, that can automate and outsource this, and figure out how much tax is due per transaction, and then make the payments for small businesses - its something online payment processors like stripe, for example could do too.

Re: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

#280

Post by kels »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #269
kels wrote: post #258

What no one is talking about here is how this would be handled, especially for a small online sellers. There are almost 10,000 tax jurisdictions ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/mccon... ) and you're not allowed to collect sales tax unless you register for that jurisdiction. There is also a fee collected by most jurisdictions to register and most make you send in periodic reports, even if you…

With fee, do you mean that you have to pay a yearly fee for simply registering as possibly collecting taxes for that jurisdiction? Not sure what most is, but ~30-50 pay-to-play fee's a year will certainly hurt the small businesses. I think it's good to start harmonizing the sales taxes, but such a fee (if I understand you correctly) should be removed...

I'm in Colorado and I had to pay $66 up front. $50 is a deposit and $16 is the fee every two years. I see that California doesn't have a fee but I know other states do.

TaxJar will register for you in the States that you need for ~$100 per state, plus their fees (https://www.taxjar.com/state-registrations/) -- I'm sure Avalara does something similar but that's ~$5000 that a small business probably won't have.

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