Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 613 posts

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

#281

Post by vkou »

rossdavidh wrote: post #20

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.

Except for the part where mom-and-pop stores were competing with large retailers operating out of state, who could undercut them because they weren't charging sales tax.

I suppose we should continue that state of affairs, because heaven forbid we hurt the mom-and-pop online stores... Which make up a tiny fraction of overall commerce, compared to physical mom-and-pop stores.

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

#282

Post by waffle_ss »

esturk wrote: post #213
Retric wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you assume. As a small business you are unlikely to be audited, but that software could easily be wrong creating a huge minefield and potential liability.

So that would be the software companies' liability. And such business practice can differentiate good ones from the bad ones. I'm seeing a new business market here even.

Nonsense. Your accountant isn't even liable if you're audited by the IRS. They're not gonna give a crap you used some rando SaaS

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

#283

Post by koboll »

redbeard0x0a wrote: post #236
gregrata wrote: post #125

Isn't this at some level taxation without representation? If I don't like how some other state is taxing, I can't alter that behaviour by voting. At least in my current state I might have a chance to do so.

The taxation is on the person living in that state. Most states require that a person buys something and doesn't pay sales tax, they are supposed to self-report and pay the tax. (Most people don't).

>The taxation is on the person living in that state.

Right, and before this decision, it was that person's responsibility to remit. Now it is the business's. So the burden of remittance has shifted to the disenfranchised party.

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

#284

Post by sdhgaiojfsa »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #176
mullingitover wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"What would be good for the country is to abolish sales taxes entirely." In favor of what, exactly? Don't pretend that sales taxes could just be abolished, and states would just go without that revenue. Kansas tried gutting their tax revenue; it failed miserably.

Progressive income taxes, or property taxes.

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

#285

Post by DoctorOetker »

gamblor956 wrote: post #252
Retric wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window There is zero economic gain from more complex tax rules. Further, the software does not absolve you of liability. At best they may agree to cover it, but that's unlikely and they can also go broke if they get it wrong.

Actually, current sales tax software provided by South Dakota and other states does absolve a merchant for liability if used to calculate sales tax due.

I agree with this approach!

Actually, the federal government should oblige each member state to provide the algorithm, and sign it cryptographically and have it expire every X fixed time interval, and have signed algorithms for the current and next time interval, so that software can automatically fetch and stay up to date.

Then the "business opportunity" of navigating FUD evaporates. Currently any such enterprise charging for such a service can spend a fraction of their budget lobbying against harmonization...

Since it would be an obligation of the states to the federal government, these algorithms (provided by each member state) should be hosted on a fixed federal government site.

Time to start a petition?

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

#286

Post by vkou »

gregrata wrote: post #125

Isn't this at some level taxation without representation? If I don't like how some other state is taxing, I can't alter that behaviour by voting. At least in my current state I might have a chance to do so.

If this is taxation without representation, you should see how green card holders and people on visas are dealt with.

[x] Taxation

[ ] Representation

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

#287

Post by joemi »

Retric wrote: post #211
saugnsckuigfh wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why the issue remains, as it has been since Quill, the extent of the seller's contacts with the state. If you're making $100k to each 50 states, then you've got $50 Million in Revenue and can afford to do it. If you've sold 10 t-shirts at $20 a piece, then your total sales of $200 isn't worth bothering with. If we want there to be problems we can certainly create them, but doesn't seem all that complicated i…

100k * 50 = 5M @ 2% profit margin that's 100k per year. Enough to live comfortably on, but not exactly a big money. Further, the ruling applies to all taxes and has no cutoff under 100k/year required.

I'm curious where your 2% margin came from in this estimate. From what I can tell, that number is often quoted as Amazon's profit margins, but I'm not sure smaller more-specialized online retailers necessarily need to match Amazon's low margins.

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

#288

Post by notheguyouthink »

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.

Funny, I hear anti-competitive not business opportunity.

It's a business opportunity now, but as with many government laws, in the future businesses end up depending on government forcing their markets existence. So then they lobby for the government to keep the system, even if it's out dated or badly thought out. We can't stream line anything, because entrenched businesses don't want anything to change.

It makes me sad the world is this way.

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

#289

Post by Tloewald »

beberlei wrote: post #273
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 :-)

The US system of local sales taxes doesn't look awesome ever. If there were one economic reform I would push in the US it would be advertised price is final price (i.e. if you say "I'm selling this for $9.99" then that's all you pay, and the taxes are all inclusive) this would pretty much force underlying tax reform as businesses lost their shit having to deal with the insanity.

Note that the disaster area that is US regulatory overlap means passing a law like this is probably impossible without constitutional amendment.

Right now in the US it's often difficult, and sometimes impossible, to know how much you'll actually be paying in any transaction. It's ridiculous, and from a pure Econ 101 perspective it's a first order problem in the market.

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

#290

Post by DoctorOetker »

kels wrote: post #280
DoctorOetker wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

what do you think about this idea ? :

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17367669

Post reply on HN