Obama enthusiastically supports higher taxes -- this time on your purchases online

Oh no!!!!!!!!!! She'd have to abide by tax codes? How could any nation call itself humane and have people have to abide by tax codes?

What a silly ad. Pretty much she'd have to pay a sales tax. That's not too difficult or that much trouble.

 

The complicating part is that she'd have to pay sales tax to the local/state entity that she's selling *to* rather than from. So if I live in Austin, TX and sell something to Fairbanks, Alaska, I'd need to know the local rate in Fairbanks and pay the tax to some Alaskan entity. That's easy for a company like Amazon, but not nearly as easy for an individual seller or small business.

That said, the solution should be simplifying the number of jurisidictions and/or tax rates and/or how the taxes are collected. The tax still should be paid - otherwise, as people have mentioned before, it creates an un-level playing field.

 

no, she has to collect a sales tax, and therefore figure out the rules where every single customer lives

 

That's why sites like amazon/etsy/ebay etc offer these services (and a much better distribution platform).

The Heritage foundation - friend to artists everywhere, LMFAO.

Again, I don't know where you people live, but most large states have collected sales tax from the big online retailers for years and years. I bought a blender yesterday on amazon for 90 bucks and they charged me 8 for sales tax. I didn't find this unusual at all.

 

There's actually software that can figure out the charge to add to her products, or she can just slightly raise her price and take the sales tax out of that.

It's not really that huge of a hassle.

 

It's still a huge hassle to pay all the different necessary entities, especially if you're a small business. As Sam said, there are sites that offer the distribution - but I think it does clearly limit your options. You are either locked into using a major distributor or have to add a lot of hassle.

I own a coffee shop. 99.99% of our sales are local. If someone wanted to place an order bulk coffee online right now, we could handle it and just mail it to them. If we had to figure out what the tax rate would be in Fairville, Alabama and whether this item would be tax-exempt there (it is in Texas), and who to send potentially ~$1 of sales tax to, we probably wouldn't bother. Alabama is not going to care, but it does then technically put us in violation of the law.

Implementation is always an issue. Its not an excuse to not fix the problem, but ignoring it is not an option either. Small businesses are clearly affected differently than large ones, but that's an issue that will likely be addressed on a state-by-state basis.

 

Its an ecommerce transaction for god's sake. When this kicks in, processing vendors will update their software to calculate local sales taxes. (some of them already do this by the way since small businesses are taxed on their home state and then not taxed on sales outside of their state)

For someone who loves the free market, you really lack faith in its ability to adapt to changes in the marketplace.

 

Generally speaking, local rules don't exist outside of the local rate, which may not even exist. Most laws are the same state to state, and finding sales tax rates is really easy.

I'm not saying it won't add time and cost to small business, but at the same time, it benefits small business by not allowing Amazon to have a 5-10% advantage based on sales tax, which is more important, because most small businesses are local only.

 

Maybe it's cause you sound like a parrot.

 

We are already supposed to pay tax on those purchases. This is about enforcement, not about creating new taxes.

 

We need to tax online purchases - smart move.

DD

 

It's still a hassle. Here are all the rates in Georgia of major cities:

http://www.sale-tax.com/Georgia

There are hundreds of different cities with different rates. Each state will have slightly different rules on what is taxable - and somehow, I have to keep track of when those laws change. I don't have a sales tax license in Georgia, so I don't even know how I'd pay sales tax to Georgia. This all takes research. If I'm dealing with dozens of orders a day and multiple states and cities, that's a lot of time and effort. I live in Texas and pay sales tax in Texas, and I don't even have any idea how I'd pay sales tax in if I sold online to multiple jurisdictions here at different rates, let alone in another state where I have no presence or business license.

Certainly - the current system is terrible and unfair to mainstream business and should be fixed. All I'm suggesting is that the logistics and implementation of any changes ARE important and worthy of consideration when states start implementing their new laws to collect internet sales tax. It's not nearly as easy as "oh, ecommerce will solve it all". Not everything is sold through fancy ecommerce platforms.

 

Georgia is a little unfair, as we have a ridiculous number of counties (they are charged by county, not city). Do have the same concern over income taxes, which are far more detailed and diverse location to location?

99% of the time, sales tax is charged on the final user of a good in any jurisdiction.

 

Well then I hope you have to pay taxes on Amazon stuff too.

 

That was out of line for a moderator to do. Kinda hard to be viewed as impartial in a forum like this one if you are participating in activity you are supposed to be policing.

 

I was referring to being impartial at policing the board. It appears that he lets his emotions / opinion on the subject overide his duty as a moderator. If you had fired the first name at him then I'd view it differently.

 

Legal change, not a marketplace change. And businesses fail to adapt all the time.

The increased operating costs are not a good thing. It creates barriers to entry and inhibits growth.

 

Income tax is not the same concern, because most income is generated in one place and is thus taxed that way. So wherever I am, I have to know one income tax rule. Sales tax is the opposite - it's taxed based on the buyer rather than the seller, so the seller has to know everyone's sales tax rules and distribute those taxes to all the relevant entities.

Honestly, as an Austin business, I have no idea how I'd even pay sales taxes to Georgia right now if I had an online customer there. I wouldn't know the rate (easy to find); I wouldn't know where or when to send the money; I wouldn't know the reporting requirements; I wouldn't know if I need a Georgia sales tax license; etc. And then if I did learn all that and got a customer from another state, I'd have to re-learn it all for that state.

Just the fact that I have to do that is a significant amount of work. I'm not sure the solution offhand, but it's definitely something that needs to be consideed.

 

Just emailed my representative in the US Congress to stop the Senate from corrupting our system of interstate commerce. This is just too ridiculous.