Live data from Hacker News

States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

bloomberg.com

601–610 of 613 posts

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

#601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Under color of law" means that you're a law enforcement official. No. Collection of taxes is done to enforce law, unless the state is compelling people with something else?

> Collection of taxes is done to enforce law To _comply with_ law.

comply with and enforce

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

#602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This disincentives savings and is in many ways the opposite of VAT taxes, which many tax scholars hold out as one of the most efficient ways to raise revenue without distorting desirable economic behavior.

The incentive to be wealthy is far more greater than 4% tax on wealth could be a disincentive. Beauty of this is you only pay if you are rich, not if you are poor or even if you earn a lot and still have lot of expenses (medical, live in nyc, or have children etc)

A perpetual 4% tax on wealth is a great disincentive to saving. It's like compounding interest, but in reverse.

I would be curious to know if any politician or scholar has ever proposed relying on a single tax like this? I studied tax in law school and practiced as a tax lawyer for the better part of a decade, and I have never heard it mentioned. I'm not up on all the latest developments since I left law to build a startup, and I'd be curious to know if things are leaning in this direction now.

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

#603

It's a shame that this wont apply to us here in the 51st state. US companies will continue to drive on UK roads, use UK security and UK law and UK infrastructure to access UK consumers, and will continue to pay less tax than me.

What? US companies have to pay VAT in the UK, just like anybody else.

1) Consumers pay VAT not companies. Companies only collect VAT, unless you mean they are buying goods in the UK.

2) Google use EU cross border services rules to avoid charging VAT in the UK. But since it is b2b it is generally reclaimable so no gain to exchequer either way

3) Uber avoid VAT by classing their drivers as self-employed so they each run a business below the threshold for registration. This is despite being found at fault for this.[0]

So there are some very large cases of US companies not charging VAT.

[0]: https://goodlawproject.org/uber-case/:

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

#604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ch…

This would reduce costs of tax collection for all parties. What is the most convenient format for this layered geographic data? Are the tax district boundary polygons already otherwise available as open data? What do localities call these? Sales tax tables, sales tax database, machine-readable flat files in an open format with a common schema? How much tax revenue should it cost to provide such a service on a nationa…

these are all very good questions, and only a community discussion of people with the right skills and interests can draft a petition, if enough people contribute to the discussion we can make the proposal more reasonable and robust against valid criticisms... but I believe we can make this happen by just starting the discussion. We can bitch on Hacker News, or we can draft a proposal for the different government levels. The more reasonable we draft it, the higher the probability the petition will be a success. I think it wouldn't be hard to argue against this proposal that a legally enforced computation should be open source, i.e. not just the algorithm for the computation but also all the data lists and boundary polygons used in the algorithm...

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

#605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the proper solution to that is to just declare that you don't have to pay taxes at all when you sell to someone far enough away. Simplify things if needed, but don't give a nonsensical advantage to certain businesses.

The proper solution is to put the onus on the payment networks. They're large enough to build out support for this issue without it being overly burdensome. Internet retailers should only be required to report what customers bought and whether taxes were collected. Then payment networks can report to the states who can send taxpayers a report of the use taxes they owe.

How about putting the onus on the party that wants to collect money off transactions between other parties. If a government wants a cut, they can make it reasonably easy to comply or they can get ignored.

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

#606
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not their entire sales, that's their entire sales to people in South Dakota.

If you do business nationally, with a million in revenue, $100k for South Dakota might not seem too bad, but $100k for California or Texas starts to feel really claustrophobic. It's an interesting precedent.

It's $100k or 200 transactions. 200 transactions is just 17 customers with a monthly subscription.

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

#607

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.

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…

> If you're making $100k to each 50 states,

Isn't it $100k or 200 transactions?

200 transactions is just 17 customers with a year of monthly subscription payments.

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

#608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've worked on price display for a large-ish company. The funny thing is that our company, and probably others, would really like to show all-in pricing! It's easier for us because we wouldn't have to do things differently in different countries. But we can't make the switch unilaterally because if we're the only ones doing it, then we look more expensive than everyone else and lose sales. Even if the final price is…

Yes it’s nuts and it seems like a popular thing to fix electorally. I think that it’s a case of lack of political imagination.

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

#610
post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the problem with that $100k/200 transaction law. Small businesses have to do one of three things: 1) Assume that they will hit one of those limits and collect tax from the start. Once they've told the customer that they've been charged tax, they will have to file anyway. I don't see anything that says the first $100k/200 transactions are exempt from the requirement. And if you hit the limits this year, you'll…

This ultimately comes down to the fact that each state in the US behaves like an individual country in many ways, especially when we talk about taxation. It doesn’t jive well with the current lay of the Internet, and it will be interesting to see the reaction here. In Australia a single GST was introduced (long ago, July 1 2000) and it’s a big simplification for online transactions. The catch: everyone would need to…

"jibe well"
Post reply on HN