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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

#421

Post by hnburnsy »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #378

This decision has effectively killed the "internet lemonade stand", where a person with a bit of web knowledge could go online and a day or two later have a store that sold something. Oh sure, you can still do that. But now it's going to all be channeled through gatekeepers that will ensure regulatory compliance. And run their own little walled gardens. Better not tick them off. (This is a nice little website you hav…

Yes on international, just bought a one plus phone, came from Hong Kong, not one penny in sales tax. Quite the advantage over the iPhone x where I would have paid close to 100$ in sales tax.

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

#422

Post by risotto_groupon »

sseveran wrote: post #375
panda888888 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. The most annoying part is that tax jurisdictions don't correspond to ZIP codes. If they did, this would be so much easier.

That's because zip codes don't really align with anything in the general case. There are even zip codes that span multiple states. https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/53918/determining-wh...

There are even imaginary zip codes... as in they are real zip codes but don't map to physical space.

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

#423

Post by sequoia »

vxNsr wrote: post #216
jonathanmoore wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully with Shopify it is extremely easy and straightforward to manage for my wife's small online store. Their platform does a great job properly charging taxes by state, county and city in certain situations. Then using an inexpensive plan from https://www.taxjar.com/ the entire filing and paying process is 100% automated. In 10 minutes I was able to file and pay all the sales taxes to several state, dozens of C…

This assumes these mom and pop shops have heard of these services. Personally I was helping someone get their little internet store off the ground and it was a huge hassle even with woocommerce.

And what would it look like if Mom & Pop were starting an ice-cream shop instead of an online storefront? Would they _not_ have to pay tax then?

I get that being subject to regulation or taxation is more burdensome than not being subject to it, of course that's the case. But it does not follow that requiring sellers to pay sales tax is unduly burdensome.

If the underlying complication of tax is the problem, fix that.

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

#424

Post by c3534l »

The federal government was granted the power to regulate interstate commerce. They seem more than happy to regulate matters of in-state commerce, yet when it comes to actually doing a job they have legal authority to do, standards are conspicuously absent to the points where it's quickly becoming a problem for everyone.

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

#425

Post by ScottBurson »

spaginal wrote: post #312
anonymous5133 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is so significant of a claim that brings the question...does norquist know how sales/use tax even works?

If a state the business doesn’t operate in imposes the requirement to collect sales tax on your business out of state, you do have a multitude of costs and issues as a small business. If the federal government wished to circumvent this with a VAT split amongst the states, that is one thing, both sane and constitutional in the face of this, but this invites a mess. First, if you are required to possess a sales tax lic…

I too would prefer to see a federal VAT, but that would not receive Norquist's blessing any more than this has. Anyway, this decision leaves the door very much open for Congress to step in and fix things; it just throws out the nexus rule created by the Court in the Quill decision. One would think that Republicans would celebrate the reversal of an example of "legislating from the bench".

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

#426

Post by ScottBurson »

koboll wrote: post #283
redbeard0x0a wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really disenfranchised. You don't have to sell to someone in another state if you don't want to.

The laws of various states place many restrictions and requirements on businesses who want to sell to their citizens. This is just another one of those.

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

#427

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

It's very simple how it would be handled:

(1) very large organizations with retail over a wide area as a core business focus would handle relations with taxing jurisdictions directly as a central function.

(2) medium scale organizations would outsource tax compliance to specialized vendors that would handle it.

(3) very small organizations would either do the same as medium orgs (assuming vendors handle them) or just not sell into many jurisdictions.

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

#429

Post by seandougall »

jonknee wrote: post #366
reaperducer wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a few bucks Please be more specific. Also, remember that every single one of those bucks will be passed on to the customer in higher prices.

https://www.taxjar.com/pricing/ Considering you are already required to do it for where you are located it's just a little more work to automate it for all locations.

That page doesn't appear to factor in filing costs, which run up to $5000/year.

Also, I wouldn't generally classify it as "a little more work", since in many cases the old system could be hard-coded and the new system requires reworking the checkout flow to capture the full mailing address and pass it through an external API before calculating the transaction total.

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

#430

Post by ScottBurson »

mullingitover wrote: post #320
Dirlewanger wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

- I don't live in SV - I don't hate taxes - I wasn't babysitting this thread - The idea that, of all things, regressive sales tax is the only conceivable and fair thing to get state tax revenues from is ridiculous. Tax land value, most of the appreciation in land value is windfall gain.

I'm strongly supportive of the LVT, but I'm not sure it can be the only tax strategy for every locality in a large and extremely heterogeneous country. Not every locality is seeing rapid appreciation in real estate values.
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