Go ahead, pass the Internet tax. Your (foreign) competitors thank you. • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by dangrossman » Wed, May 08, 2013, 5:26 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #109

dangrossman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have time to read 50 states' tax codes, file 50 tax returns and potentially be audited 50 times a year. What small business does?

> I don't have time to read 50 states' tax codes, file 50 tax returns and potentially be audited 50 times a year. What small business does? If, even with the streamlining and support required for states to opt-in to the provisions of the MFA, you can't do that, you can just choose not to sell into those states. Why should remote sellers be favored over local sellers by not being required to make that choice about whe…

This is a false equivalency. Opening a retail store in a state is not the same as opening a website people in that state can access. There's no conscious decision, or deployment of capital to that state. My website does not use any of the public resources of infrastructure of other states. There's no legal or practical justification for having me taxed by those states.

Laws should also consider practical aspects like whether they're going to dampen the economy, restrain commerce and favor corporations over small businesses. It may be equivalent in your academic mind, but it's not equivalent to the people who will have to do 50 times more work just to continue running their single-location family-owned business as they have for the past 10-20 years.

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

#112

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, May 08, 2013, 5:30 PM UTC

michaelmartin wrote: post #3

Absolutely agreed here, this is just going to give an edge to companies outside the US. Worse still, it's going to hit small businesses worse because they will simply have no choice but to pay it. The mega corps have their accounting down to an art, they'll figure out a way past it given how many gray areas are inevitable in a completely new form of tax like this.

> The mega corps have their accounting down to an art, they'll figure out a way past it given how many gray areas are inevitable in a completely new form of tax like this.

Its not a new form of tax. Its permission for states to opt-in to a more efficient collection method for existing sales and use taxes if they also agree to certain streamlining requirements for those taxes and certain support mechanisms for the retailers that would be required to collect and remit the taxes.

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

#113

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, May 08, 2013, 5:36 PM UTC

CanSpice wrote: post #47

tss20147 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author and you are confused. There is no internet specific tax being discussed in the US. The "Internet tax" bill just allows states to require companies to collect state sales tax when they sell an item to someone in the state. This is the same tax which is collected by brick and mortar stores within the state. Currently if I buy items online each year when filing my state taxes by law I must declare the value o…

So as a hypothetical business owner in Washington who sells things online, I have to keep track of the tax laws of the other 49 states, and remit 50 checks quarterly (or maybe annually)?

> So as a hypothetical business owner in Washington who sells things online, I have to keep track of the tax laws of the other 49 states, and remit 50 checks quarterly (or maybe annually)?

Well, you have to either keep track of those laws for the states you choose to sell into, or use the free software provided by each state that has opted into the arrangement (the MFA provides an opt-in regime for states, with conditions including the provision of free software, with retailers not liable for any failure to collect and/or remit tax that is due to errors in the software.) But, yeah, you have to pay each taxing "state" (which will probably be less than 50 initially, but more than 50 in the limit case, since "states" under the MFA include the the 50 states, DC, plus other US territories and possessions.)

Or, instead of using the State-provided software and doing it yourself, you can pay a "certified software provider" to do it, and be immunized against liability for any errors that are the fault of that provider.

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

#114

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, May 08, 2013, 5:43 PM UTC

Svip wrote: post #17

jedmeyers wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is already taxing all internet purchases made within it's borders. I was buying some shoes in UK and only after I assured the seller that Ukraine was outside of EU was the tax taken off the price.

But that's because of the internal market, that isn't some specific internet tax, is it?

> But that's because of the internal market, that isn't some specific internet tax, is it?

Despite the dishonest label "internet sales tax" frequently used by the media and opponents, the US measure being discussed "isn't some specific internet tax", either. Its a feederal law that gives permission, with conditions, for states to require remote retailers to collect and remit sales and use tax that are already due on purchases (and which, for remote sales, would otherwise generally have been the responsibility of the purchaser to report and remit). It is neither a new tax, nor is it "internet specific" in any way.

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

#115

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, May 08, 2013, 5:45 PM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #111

dragonwriter wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't have time to read 50 states' tax codes, file 50 tax returns and potentially be audited 50 times a year. What small business does? If, even with the streamlining and support required for states to opt-in to the provisions of the MFA, you can't do that, you can just choose not to sell into those states. Why should remote sellers be favored over local sellers by not being required to make that choice about whe…

This is a false equivalency. Opening a retail store in a state is not the same as opening a website people in that state can access. There's no conscious decision, or deployment of capital to that state. My website does not use any of the public resources of infrastructure of other states. There's no legal or practical justification for having me taxed by those states. Laws should also consider practical aspects like…

> Opening a retail store in a state is not the same as opening a website people in that state can access. There's no conscious decision, or deployment of capital to that state.

Yes, its much more expensive to open a retail store, and involves some contribution to the local economy to operate it, so the two are not equivalent.

On the other hand, they are similar in that each is a conscious decision to conduct business with people in the State, and there is no rational reason to favor remote business.

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

#116

Post by dangrossman » Wed, May 08, 2013, 5:49 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #115

dangrossman wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a false equivalency. Opening a retail store in a state is not the same as opening a website people in that state can access. There's no conscious decision, or deployment of capital to that state. My website does not use any of the public resources of infrastructure of other states. There's no legal or practical justification for having me taxed by those states. Laws should also consider practical aspects like…

> Opening a retail store in a state is not the same as opening a website people in that state can access. There's no conscious decision, or deployment of capital to that state. Yes, its much more expensive to open a retail store, and involves some contribution to the local economy to operate it, so the two are not equivalent . On the other hand, they are similar in that each is a conscious decision to conduct busines…

Neither should be favored. If a customer that lives in each of the 50 states walks into our retail store, we still only have to collect a single sales tax and remit it to a single entity. If a customer that lives in each of the 50 states logs into our online store, we have to collect 50 sales taxes and remit them to 50 entities. That's a law that favors retail store owners over online sellers. A law with the same practical effects could be written that favors neither by having a single federally-operated sales tax that's distributed to the states according to the relative sales volume to residents of those states.

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

#117

Post by smokeyj » Wed, May 08, 2013, 8:17 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #106

smokeyj wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I merely said, in a lot more words, that competitiveness should not be the BE ALL END ALL factor in considering regulation. Who was making that point? > Moreover, I said that this kind of "competitiveness" while great for the company that benefits from it, it's not that great for the country that hosts the company and its general population, and it can be a race to the bottom. How do you know? Would countries that…

> Who was making that point? Lots of people. Including the EasyDNS post, implicitly. > How do you know? Would countries that employ child labor be slingshotted into the first-world because they adopted effective regulations? I speculate they'd be unemployed and go hungry. Only I made the reverse argument: that countries without child labour should not introduce it to compete with those countries. And in general, that…

> Would you be OK with forced labor, ie slavery, if that was their only way to be competitive and not "go hungry"?

You're equating forced labor to slavery. I agree! I also agree taxation is a way of extracting labor via the use of force. So the question is, why do you support slavery so much?

Ideologically speaking, I prefer to argue out of principle -- a main one being non-agression. So no, I don't support forced labor in any shape or form. Furthermor, I don't support any relationship that comes from force or the threat of violence.

> Should I also assume a caricature of you as some Fox News watching foaming at the mouth republican?

Haha, I'd be pretty used to it. The ironic part is republicans think I'm liberal..

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

#118

Post by coldtea » Wed, May 08, 2013, 10:54 PM UTC

smokeyj wrote: post #117

coldtea wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who was making that point? Lots of people. Including the EasyDNS post, implicitly. > How do you know? Would countries that employ child labor be slingshotted into the first-world because they adopted effective regulations? I speculate they'd be unemployed and go hungry. Only I made the reverse argument: that countries without child labour should not introduce it to compete with those countries. And in general, that…

> Would you be OK with forced labor, ie slavery, if that was their only way to be competitive and not "go hungry"? You're equating forced labor to slavery. I agree! I also agree taxation is a way of extracting labor via the use of force. So the question is, why do you support slavery so much? Ideologically speaking, I prefer to argue out of principle -- a main one being non-agression. So no, I don't support forced la…

>You're equating forced labor to slavery. I agree!

You don't have to agree. That's the definition of slavery.

>I also agree taxation is a way of extracting labor via the use of force. So the question is, why do you support slavery so much?

Well, I never agreed that "taxation is a way of extracting labor via the use of force", so I don't know who you "also agree with" there.

Taxation, in my books, is the voluntary (as decided via the democratic process), transfer of private wealth to the government for use in public works, maintenance of the military defence and such.

>So no, I don't support forced labor in any shape or form. Furthermore, I don't support any relationship that comes from force or the threat of violence.

Agreed. But isn't the dire need to eat and put a roof above you a kind of violence too? For people threatened with that violence (which can be even more dire and hard than a few slaps or kicks), it's common to be forced to accept unfavourable and backwards working conditions, just because their job is a "buyer's market". Child labor is a blatant case of this, but most sweatshop jobs in the third world also are.

As western countries we have set up our standards higher (than, say, Dicken's London, or J.D Rockfeller's miners, paid in company scrip) , we should demand that they are held higher in the third world too, instead of lowering ours to compete with them.

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

#119

Post by aidenn0 » Wed, May 08, 2013, 10:57 PM UTC

smokeyj wrote: post #117

coldtea wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who was making that point? Lots of people. Including the EasyDNS post, implicitly. > How do you know? Would countries that employ child labor be slingshotted into the first-world because they adopted effective regulations? I speculate they'd be unemployed and go hungry. Only I made the reverse argument: that countries without child labour should not introduce it to compete with those countries. And in general, that…

> Would you be OK with forced labor, ie slavery, if that was their only way to be competitive and not "go hungry"? You're equating forced labor to slavery. I agree! I also agree taxation is a way of extracting labor via the use of force. So the question is, why do you support slavery so much? Ideologically speaking, I prefer to argue out of principle -- a main one being non-agression. So no, I don't support forced la…

Aren't all laws ultimately enforced by the threat of violence? Including the ones that forbid violence?

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

#120

Post by smokeyj » Wed, May 08, 2013, 11:49 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #118

smokeyj wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you be OK with forced labor, ie slavery, if that was their only way to be competitive and not "go hungry"? You're equating forced labor to slavery. I agree! I also agree taxation is a way of extracting labor via the use of force. So the question is, why do you support slavery so much? Ideologically speaking, I prefer to argue out of principle -- a main one being non-agression. So no, I don't support forced la…

> You're equating forced labor to slavery. I agree! You don't have to agree. That's the definition of slavery. > I also agree taxation is a way of extracting labor via the use of force. So the question is, why do you support slavery so much? Well, I never agreed that "taxation is a way of extracting labor via the use of force", so I don't know who you "also agree with" there. Taxation, in my books, is the voluntary (…

> Well, I never agreed that "taxation is a way of extracting labor via the use of force"

You don't have to agree, it's empirically evident. Try not paying your taxes and guys with guns will come get it. Now, maybe these guys with guns are justified -- but that's strictly your opinion.

> Taxation, in my books, is the voluntary (as decided via the democratic process)

By definition, your definition is wrong. Non-democratic governments impose taxes as well.

Why do you define "voluntary" relative to the political landscape? You're telling me slavery never really happened in the US, because it was voluntary labor -- as decided by the "democratic process"? Why do you defend slavery with such fervor?