Re: Keeping the internet sales tax at bay - Failed
Quote:
Originally Posted by
williaty
The threshold [...] is $100,000 per year per state or greater than 200 transactions per year per state.
200 transactions seems small. For the equivalent $100k threshold, that is an average of $500 per item. How many small-time sellers are selling $500 items? $50 average (2,000 transaction threshold) seems much more reasonable but well I'm not the one making the rules.
Keeping the internet sales tax at bay - Failed
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dan Fromm
Jason, what you say might be true. Or not. But it has nothing to do with the mechanics of collecting sales taxes on, um, imports.
You might just see it as senseless whining because it doesn’t affect you, but I’m the guy staying literally up all night already to provide something kinda cool to the community. When does all the governmental burden no longer make it worthwhile?
Re: Keeping the internet sales tax at bay - Failed
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Nodda Duma
...being a tax collector for locations I derive no benefit from?...
You apparently don't perceive locations providing you customers / a market as beneficial to your business. Interesting perspective.
Re: Keeping the internet sales tax at bay - Failed
Folks, posts clarifying the factual details and operational implications of the Supreme Court ruling are fine, but this is not the place to debate taxation policy or politics.
Re: Keeping the internet sales tax at bay - Failed
EDIT: Oren posted while I was writing and I think he'd want me to delete it.
Re: Keeping the internet sales tax at bay - Failed
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sal Santamaura
You apparently don't perceive locations providing you customers / a market as beneficial to your business. Interesting perspective.
Sal, those are your words, not mine. The benefit between buyer and seller is mutual and doesn't need to be stated -- it's not a one-way street. Nor does the transaction, at a fundamental level, need to involve a third party.
But it's a red herring. I don't think you're *really* advocating for what is essentially an interstate tariff. Fundamentally, the drafters of the Constitution understood how detrimental interstate tariffs would be to the nation's economic growth (and raise in the standard of living and all the other benefits). It was a compromise to get the states to sign on to the formation of a strong central government. This decision entirely ignores that history.
If you've followed my venture (which I'm guessing you haven't), you would know that I basically only cover my material costs. I don't need to earn a living off this, which keeps the cost down. I want to make dry plates available to the community *for* the benefit of the community. If it were to become too much of a burden to keep making plates (right now it isn't), then I would simply halt the venture. But that would be unfortunate.
By the way, in New Hampshire, there is no sales tax (except on prepared food, go figure) or use tax.
To Oren's point above .. the implications are that as time goes along I spend less time sleeping and more time dealing with red tape, or I just stop selling plates because it becomes too much of a pain in the ass to make them available to the community.
Re: Keeping the internet sales tax at bay - Failed
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Nodda Duma
But it's a red herring. I don't think you're *really* advocating for what is essentially an interstate tariff.
No, it's not. You misunderstand what taxes are then. An interstate tariff would be if I (as an Ohio resident) could buy a camera without any additional fees if that camera were made and sold in Ohio but, if that camera were made or sold in another state and shipped to me, I'd have to pay an additional fee on the camera. This situation is very different. If I buy a camera made and sold in Ohio, I pay Ohio sales tax. If I buy a camera made and sold in another state but delivered to Ohio, I still pay Ohio sales tax.
Interstate tariff: different fee schedule depending on where camera comes from
State sales tax: identical fee schedule regardless of where camera comes from
Re: Keeping the internet sales tax at bay - Failed
Quote:
Originally Posted by
williaty
No, it's not. You misunderstand what taxes are then.
Please be respectful. We are all adults here. I've been paying my fair share taxes for decades, just like any other law abiding citizen should, and understand them very well.
Quote:
An interstate tariff would be if I (as an Ohio resident) could buy a camera without any additional fees if that camera were made and sold in Ohio but, if that camera were made or sold in another state and shipped to me, I'd have to pay an additional fee on the camera. This situation is very different. If I buy a camera made and sold in Ohio, I pay Ohio sales tax. If I buy a camera made and sold in another state but delivered to Ohio, I still pay Ohio sales tax.
Interstate tariff: different fee schedule depending on where camera comes from
State sales tax: identical fee schedule regardless of where camera comes from
What you are missing is the burden it places on the seller. The law ruled on by USSC required the out-of-state business to collect the taxes for ND, then send in a check (essentially). For now it's limited to min $100k income, but that will surely be tested by state governments eager for more tax dollars. The other aspect is enforcement: How is North Dakota justified enforcing their state tax law outside of their jurisdiction (the other original debating point regarding taxation of interstate commerce). It would have been *much* better to have drafted as a Use Tax, except they wanted to specifically challenge the restrictions on taxing interstate commerce.
Keep in mind that I am already taxed on sales. I will pay to the state and to the federal government. So this isn't a complaint about losing free money. Nothing's free, even in New Hampshire.
This is not a big burden for a company like Amazon or Overstock.com. Not at all. The burden will fall on the very small cottage industries and side businesses which are far more common than you probably think, and which won't have the resources themselves to track all the new tax laws we will undoubtedly see in the coming years. As Dan said, certainly software will be written to handle it, but that is still a burden.
Re: Keeping the internet sales tax at bay - Failed
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Nodda Duma
What you are missing is the burden it places on the seller. The law ruled on by USSC required the out-of-state business to collect the taxes for ND, then send in a check.
This is not a big burden for a company like Amazon or Overstock.com. The burden will fall on the very small cottage industries and side businesses which are far more common than you probably think.
Again, you need to read the actual decision. One of the key factors of the decision was that the state in play had a service that made it easy for out of state sellers to pay state sales tax and indemnifies them against errors in the paying or distribution of the collected tax. The decision also protects cottage businesses by noting the threshold as a key decision point. The wording of the decision indicates that, absent that and some other seller... safeguards... I guess... they would not have found in favor of the state. So the burden is no larger than paying sales tax for in-state sales.
I am one of the cottage businesses you're worried about. As far back as 2007 my payment processor would flag sales that required sales tax based on the address and add the tax to the total. For as long as I've been in business, some piece of software has always tracked if tax was necessary, what the tax rate was on that day, how much tax to assess, and spit out a report quarterly on how much tax I'd collected and who to send the check to. The SCOTUS decision will change nothing in that process for me other than the software will tell me to send out one check for each state in which I have a customer. I can handle that.
Re: Keeping the internet sales tax at bay - Failed
It's understandable that people have strong concerns about how this ruling may affect them. But evidently this means that even a discussion about implementation details becomes a debate about rights and wrongs of policy. The Forum is not an appropriate venue for such a debate.
EDIT: I've merged with the new thread started by MikeH.