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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

#471

Post by anonymous5133 »

deathanatos wrote: post #124
djsumdog wrote: post #100

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…

Tennessee also has a "Sales Tax Holiday" on which certain items are tax exempt during certain times (during the holiday). And because we know how much programmers love date and time manipulations, it starts on "the last Friday in July" (I mean, it kinda had to, to be a weekend). [1]: https://www.tn.gov/revenue/taxes/sales-and-use-tax/sales-tax...

You dont have to participate in the holidays though. If you charge a tax on an exempt item during the holidays then you just have to remit the tax. No system changes required.

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

#472

Post by rconti »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #300
moomin wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s zero national economic gain from _any_ variation in law from state to state, but either you’re in favour of state’s rights or you’re not.

>here’s zero national economic gain from _any_ variation in law from state to state Yes there is. States compete with each other and this prevents any one of them from having laws that are much crappier and more oppressive than average because when that happens businesses and people leave.

Wrong. You'd move to New Hampshire if this was true.

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

#473

Post by anonymous5133 »

windows_tips wrote: post #188
cpburns2009 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Collecting 'tax' on an untaxed item could be considered acting falsely under color of law.

No you just have to remit the tax.

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

#474

Post by beojan »

moomin wrote: post #454
scarface74 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on your political leaning, you wouldn’t want the same laws in GA as in CA.

That’s a relatively unusual leaning. Most people think their values should be universal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

Not as unusual as you would think, given that it is a basic principle of both the EU (despite what Eurosceptics would have you think) and the US.

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

#475

Post by voidmain »

moomin wrote: post #451
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>here’s zero national economic gain from _any_ variation in law from state to state Yes there is. States compete with each other and this prevents any one of them from having laws that are much crappier and more oppressive than average because when that happens businesses and people leave.

You’ve just described variation as a way of mitigating the effects of variation. There’s a case to be made for variation, but that ain’t it.

The model [1] GP alludes to claims that competition forces small governments to provide better (more efficient, more optimally chosen, etc) local services than monopoly governments, for the same reasons that competitive companies are expected to provide better services at a lower price.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiebout_model

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

#476

Post by pishpash »

nkurz wrote: post #233
gamblor956 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ruling is technically limited to states which do not impose burdensome restrictions on interstate commerce. The ruling specifically notes that South Dakota streamlined its sales tax process. 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 ca…

In order for the sales tax to survive South Dakota v. Wayfair, it must be minimally restrictive on an out-of-state vendor. While the outcome you describe might be a good one, I think you are greatly overstating when you read into this decision a new standard of "minimally restrictive". Major vendors already charge local sales taxes to the best of their abilities, and almost certainly will continue to do so. This deci…

Exactly. If the goal is parity with B&M stores, then little vendors will be required to match all the locale taxes as well.

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

#477

Post by Eliezer »

ballenf wrote: post #390
ajross wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100k of South Dakota revenue is either an almost exclusively local single-owner business or a much larger internet shop. But regardless, that kind of number is a full time job. If you're selling over the internet and making a full time job out of it, you can handle computing sales tax for SD residents. Yes, it's burdensome. Yes, it would be good to have a simpler federal framework for this. No, it's not the end of t…

I think you've got it kind of backwards. The absence of tax collection is what allowed Amazon to become Amazon and this change is now a barrier to a new entity challenging Amazon. Amazon voluntarily started collecting taxes nationwide without a blip to its bottom line. The new law will in fact put Amazon's first-party goods in parity with 3rd party sales. Third party sellers could often undercut Amazon's own pricing…

The stock market disagrees with you.

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

#478

Post by pishpash »

ghaff wrote: post #3

I 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.

It's never going to be fair, since online shops don't have physical plant costs (as an example). Are you going to penalize them for that too and make them pay a phantom imputed presence tax? That's why fairness is the wrong path to go down.

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

#479

Post by blairanderson »

I think Amazon will figure out a way to make things good for the end customer.

- They already collect taxes properly for all cities and counties for everything THEY SELL. - They already calculate/collect/remit sales taxes for all orders(including merchant orders) shipped to Washington && Pennsylvania && Ohlahoma.

For other states, they can fairly easily take on this burden if it benefits the customer.

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

#480

Post by pishpash »

gnopgnip wrote: post #415
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.

This is about whether using a common carrier to ship goods somewhere is considered a business nexus. And the supreme court ruled that it is, if you are making 200+ shipments a year or $100k in revenue.

Doesn't cover what happens with electronic delivery. Pretty slippery slope towards banning the use of VPN's when shopping, for example.
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