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Go ahead, pass the Internet tax. Your (foreign) competitors thank you.

blog2.easydns.org

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Re: Go ahead, pass the Internet tax. Your (foreign) competitors thank you.

#51

Post by wolfpackk »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #32
coldtea wrote: post #22

> What lawmakers fail to understand is that taxation specific to the internet, ostensibly to boost revenues into government coffers, in practice will probably diminish them as US businesses lose competitiveness against foreign companies. And what you fail to understand is that if everything is sacrificed in the name of "competitiveness", then every country will be in a race for the bottom. It already happens, with ou…

The world, sir, will get along just fine as the US slinks into its sunset years. As an American citizen, I can assure you the writing is, and has been, on the wall.

As an American citizen, I can assure you this guy is talking out of his ass, and America will continue to be a leader in many cutting edge fields for years to come. American economic prowess may decrease relative to the rest of the world as they finally catch up, but "the writing is on the wall" is sensationalist bullshit. I will never understand the correlation between technophiles and Libertarian pseudo-economic bullshit; 0 empirical evidence to back it up, yet the same stupid causal chain of events is brought up all the time.

Re: Go ahead, pass the Internet tax. Your (foreign) competitors thank you.

#52

Post by _delirium »

davidrudder wrote: post #48
cmircea wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything was taxed, equally (with a few exceptions like food). No wasted time figuring out which tax to use, keeping up with tax changes, arguing why the brick & mortar store has a 5% rate while the online shop has 10%, etc. Over the pond it's the same for everybody. Doesn't seem so in the US.

I think you misunderstand. The proposed changes are simply to remove the tax exemption. State sales tax will apply to internet purchases, just like they do for mail order. The confusion comes from the weird sales tax systems in place. I live in Colorado where the sales tax rates change according to a maze of Byzantine laws.

The main thing the EU did to simplify that is require one set of VAT rules per country. They can differ. For example, Denmark charges VAT on books, while the UK doesn't. And, like with the proposed US legislation, it's based on destination: if you order from amazon.co.uk to a Danish address, you pay VAT based on Danish rules.

But what can't happen is a situation where Herning, Ishøj, and Copenhagen charge different rates for different products. That simplifies the system considerably.

Re: Go ahead, pass the Internet tax. Your (foreign) competitors thank you.

#53

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

dangrossman wrote: post #40
rayiner wrote: post #25

I must have missed the memo. Why are we ranting and raving about collecting sales tax on internet purchases? Is there some other internet tax I'm not aware of?

Yes, the "internet sales tax bill" (marketplace fairness act) passed the Senate this week. It has White House support, so only needs to pass the House to become law. A summary: http://www.dangrossman.info/2013/04/24/what-startups-need-to...

The post implies that there is some additional "Internet only" tax above and beyond regular sales tax. This is the confusion, I believe. The Marketplace fairness act is not imposing extra taxes on top of normal sales tax. It is simply removing the exemption that mail order and internet sales currently enjoy. Jeff Seems to be OK with the idea of Canada's goods and services tax - I'm not sure why he thinks sales tax is so different.

Re: Go ahead, pass the Internet tax. Your (foreign) competitors thank you.

#54

Post by smokeyj »

coldtea wrote: post #22

> What lawmakers fail to understand is that taxation specific to the internet, ostensibly to boost revenues into government coffers, in practice will probably diminish them as US businesses lose competitiveness against foreign companies. And what you fail to understand is that if everything is sacrificed in the name of "competitiveness", then every country will be in a race for the bottom. It already happens, with ou…

> I'm not even arguing in favor of the internet tax. Just against the arguments easyDNS used here against it

Is that what you did? The main point was that corporations outside US jurisdiction will have a competitive advantage simply by not being in the US. You rebut claiming competitiveness is a non-factor in considering regulation, citing outsourcing and cheap foreign labor as evidence?

> a company can be American in name, but in no more benefit to the US as a country than Toyota or Samsung.

What does this mean? Toyota and Sumsung are a huge benefit to the American economy. A Toyota Tundra has more US manufactured parts than most "American" trucks. It seems you fail to realize the benefits of a globalized economy, and therefore promote American isolationism to bring us back to our glory days.

Re: Go ahead, pass the Internet tax. Your (foreign) competitors thank you.

#55

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

coldtea wrote: post #22

> What lawmakers fail to understand is that taxation specific to the internet, ostensibly to boost revenues into government coffers, in practice will probably diminish them as US businesses lose competitiveness against foreign companies. And what you fail to understand is that if everything is sacrificed in the name of "competitiveness", then every country will be in a race for the bottom. It already happens, with ou…

>What lawmakers fail to understand is that taxation specific to the internet

What I fail to understand is what this internet specific tax is. The Marketplace Fairness act currently under consideration doesn't create new taxes - it just pushes the responsibility for collecting existing taxes on vendors instead of relying on consumers to pay those taxes voluntarily, like they are supposed to do right now. (at least in my state. YMMV)

Re: Go ahead, pass the Internet tax. Your (foreign) competitors thank you.

#56

Post by adventured »

mrgoldenbrown wrote: post #41

This post seems to imply that we're considering a special Internet tax here. Last I heard, the proposed bill was simply about removing the special exemption Internet and mail order purchases currently enjoy. Since when is there an additional, special Internet tax being proposed?

So re-frame it as the removal of the exemption. Makes no difference how you spell that out, it adds up to an increase in taxes on goods sold / bought for American companies.

Re: Go ahead, pass the Internet tax. Your (foreign) competitors thank you.

#57

Post by msvan »

betterunix wrote: post #12
StuntPope wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's where Bitcoin comes in :)

That's where federal regulations on Bitcoin comes in. How would you like to live in a world where Bitcoin is a black market product?

Where I live, kids under 15 have to wear a helmet while biking. But I never see any kids wearing helmets. Because laws that cannot be enforced will be ignored freely. Piracy is supposedly illegal, but look at the attitudes towards it: it's not considered a crime because it's impossible to enforce.

Perhaps bitcoins while be regulated, but will it not get green-stamped by the general public just like piracy?

Re: Go ahead, pass the Internet tax. Your (foreign) competitors thank you.

#58

Post by ojbyrne »

This post is idiotic for at least 3 reasons I can think of:

1. The tax is not "specific to the internet" but is designed to make it so that internet-only businesses are required to collect the same taxes that bricks'n'mortar businesses are required to.

2. EasyDNS's right to sell to US customers is regulated under a giant freaking, bureaucratic law known as NAFTA. If they every got large enough to compete with large US corporations, they could become subject to all sorts of mechanisms to ensure that US corporations can compete with them (countervailing duties for starters). They should shut the hell up.

3. Everything they say also applies to US companies selling to Canadian customers.

Re: Go ahead, pass the Internet tax. Your (foreign) competitors thank you.

#59

Post by tokenadult »

The legislation now before Congress simply allows states to collect sales taxes (if the states have sales taxes) on transactions to residents of their states by online retailers. (There was a special act of Congress that exempted online retailers that don't have "nexus" in a particular state from such taxes.) The immediate effect of this legislation, in my opinion, is that Amazon will open a distribution center in my metropolitan area, located in a state with sales tax, and offer same-day delivery for Prime customers. And I will probably take up Amazon on that offer rather than shop in my locally owned retail chains such as Target (walking distance from my home) and BestBuy (which I loathe shopping at, and hardly ever visit). The United States Senators from my state support allowing states to impose sales taxes on online retail transactions, because Target and BestBuy (and some other large retailers) employ a lot of their constituents, and because new tax revenue for Minnesota will be spent by a governor and legislature who belong to the same political party they do. But I will shop at Amazon if this happens. The new law is not going to hurt my favorite online retailer at all.

Re: Go ahead, pass the Internet tax. Your (foreign) competitors thank you.

#60

Post by dclowd9901 »

wolfpackk wrote: post #51
dclowd9901 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world, sir, will get along just fine as the US slinks into its sunset years. As an American citizen, I can assure you the writing is, and has been, on the wall.

As an American citizen, I can assure you this guy is talking out of his ass, and America will continue to be a leader in many cutting edge fields for years to come. American economic prowess may decrease relative to the rest of the world as they finally catch up, but "the writing is on the wall" is sensationalist bullshit. I will never understand the correlation between technophiles and Libertarian pseudo-economic bu…

> American economic prowess may decrease relative to the rest of the world

Not just decrease but get overtaken by.

- Our public K-12 education is a pile of shit and our colleges are riding on a public dollars bubble that makes the housing crash look like spilled water. Any attempt to deal with the problem ignites fury over teachers' rights, causing policy makers to run shitting their pants to the nearest podium to apologize.

- At every possible juncture, policy decision is leaning on pervading status quo: patents, bullshit municipal license bureaucracies, congressional players pandering to businesses, not constituents

- Health is a disaster, and even with Obamacare, it's looking like it got neutered just enough to do precisely shit for the long term. People go bankrupt to get care, if they can even get it.

- Culturally, a sweeping wave of anti-intellectualism has taken hold and bolsters everything above. We can't get anyone to care about any of these issues if they're fucking retarded.

- All the while, the smartest, very smartest people in our country are jacking each other off in silicon valley inventing the next cat-picture collection app, while the economic, technological and social divides keep growing. They're more interested in becoming their idoled psychopathic CEOs than actually fucking solving real problems. They're living in an absolute bubble, unaware of what 60% of the country cares about or actually needs.

How are we supposed to be the leader of anything if we're in a constant state of regression?

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