Amazon To Charge Sales Tax In Massachusetts

Chunder said:
Most countries have some form of online tax for sales. It's only logical a small tax be applied online in the USA as well. It'd greatly help with budget problems and it's not like people are gonna stop shopping online either. Unless they want to drive to a store, pay $5 a gallon, hope they have the product your looking for, wait in line and STILL pay tax on the same item...
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Most countries are less powerful, prosperous, and free as we are. Why should we want to be like most countries?
 
Stiletto said:
Most countries are less powerful, prosperous, and free as we are. Why should we want to be like most countries?
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So we can keep being powerful, prosperous and free.. None of that appeared out of thin air and is magically staying with us. Our budget deficit threatens all of that and more. And before it's said.. no, I'm not suggesting that we only raise taxes to solve the problem.
 
If Amazon is making me pay tax in TX, they better make everyone else (who isn't in a sales tax free state) pay! :p
 
Chunder said:
Most countries have some form of online tax for sales. It's only logical a small tax be applied online in the USA as well. It'd greatly help with budget problems and it's not like people are gonna stop shopping online either. Unless they want to drive to a store, pay $5 a gallon, hope they have the product your looking for, wait in line and STILL pay tax on the same item...
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It helped out California


Oh wait....
 
A. You're supposed to be paying tax on online goods anyways.
B. Most states are broke, and targeting a huge seller of goods is a cheap way to increase revenue, since hardly anyone reports online purchases.
C. Be thankful you can buy from other vendors that don't collect sales tax (yet).
D. If anything, until sales tax is collected on ALL online orders, Amazon may lower prices even further to compete with other retailers that aren't forced to charge sales tax. Once it's fair across the board, they'll go back to business as usual, which isn't a bad thing...
 
c4v3man said:
A. You're supposed to be paying tax on online goods anyways.
B. Most states are broke, and targeting a huge seller of goods is a cheap way to increase revenue, since hardly anyone reports online purchases.
C. Be thankful you can buy from other vendors that don't collect sales tax (yet).
D. If anything, until sales tax is collected on ALL online orders, Amazon may lower prices even further to compete with other retailers that aren't forced to charge sales tax. Once it's fair across the board, they'll go back to business as usual, which isn't a bad thing...
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Legal issues be damned! Cronyism 2012!
 
Chunder said:
So we can keep being powerful, prosperous and free.. None of that appeared out of thin air and is magically staying with us. Our budget deficit threatens all of that and more. And before it's said.. no, I'm not suggesting that we only raise taxes to solve the problem.
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I'd have no problem paying more taxes...as soon as the government makes enormous cuts, and I do mean enormous. For fuck's sake, our spending has doubled in the last decade. It was half of what it is now when we "balanced the budget". Get rid of the wars, the foreign aid, the DHS, the domestic surveillance, the war on drugs, etc...there is so much fat that could be trimmed. We could have a balanced budget literally overnight if we were serious about being fiscally solvent...but we're not. We're serious about getting checks from the government. If you try to take away our "free" shit, shit just got real. :mad:

Entitled, selfish, overprotected brats are now in charge of the freest societies in the world. Now the fall begins.
 
c4v3man said:
You could say the same thing about any tax, and it'd carry as much merit... Caesar will collect his dues either way, might as well be realistic about it.
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I am being realistic. If Amazon is made to collect sales tax revenue for the state, so should all other retailers that operate within the same borders.
 
Wow wtf. This was the main reason I used Amazon all of these years, guess I'll look elsewhere.
 
Stiletto said:
I'd have no problem paying more taxes...as soon as the government makes enormous cuts, and I do mean enormous.
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I agree with cuts, we can make things a lot more efficient and get rid of programs that are corrupt and just not working. But there is no reason to make "enormous" cuts. America is the richest nation in the history of the world, it currently has some of the lowest taxes in its history, and also has some of the lowest tax rates in the world (in blatant contradiction to the many lies certain politicians spew). It just comes down to revenue intake and cracking down on those who abuse the loopholes. We also have to thank Bush for the massive deficit by being the first president in history to not only not RAISE taxes during a war, but to CUT them.
 
TheBuzzer said:
well California already pays for sales tax now. which kind of sucks, but oh well.
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I hate that I now have to pay the high California sales tax when buying from Amazon, but Amazon still had the best shipped price on the last couple items I've bought on-line.
 
Chunder said:
I agree with cuts, we can make things a lot more efficient and get rid of programs that are corrupt and just not working. But there is no reason to make "enormous" cuts. America is the richest nation in the history of the world, it currently has some of the lowest taxes in its history, and also has some of the lowest tax rates in the world
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You need to quit drinking the koolaid.

Lowest taxes in history? If you said top income tax RATES you might at least be somewhat correct, but as a percentage of income, overall taxes are now some of the highest in the history of this country.
I'm tired of people who throw out that the top rate used to be 79% (or higher). NOBODY paid that rate because there where so many shelters, write-offs, ect, that many of the rich paid almost nothing.

When the US income tax was first passed, it only applied to a very small (much less than 1%) of the population. The 99% didn't pay ANY income tax at that time. I'm sure that 99% would disagree that the pay less now.
I also remember the sales tax out here in California at 6%, now it's 8% to 9%, doesn't seem lower to me.
We also have a new top rate over 13%, that when combined with the new federal rate (assuming the bush tax cuts are dropped for the rich) would push the income tax rate (Fed+State) to over 52%, plus you have Social Sec, local taxes, property taxes, sales tax, etc.

You can also look at the percent of GDP we are currently spending, which is at a record high. Even if we don't pay the taxes directly, we will end up paying eventually due to inflation.





Even the medieval surfs only paid around 25% of what they produced to the king.
 
Monkey34 said:
The only thing that might help California at this point are a few tactical nukes to wipe it clean, and start over.
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Just need the nukes in the bay area, sacramento and maybe hollywood. :)
The rest of California's not that bad.
 
nutzo said:
Lowest taxes in history? If you said top income tax RATES you might at least be somewhat correct, but as a percentage of income, overall taxes are now some of the highest in the history of this country.
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I wasn't aware of this, could you point me to the source where you learned it?
 
Stiletto said:
Nobody complain. If you do, you're nothing but greedy unpatriotic extremists who aren't paying their "fair share".
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You should be paying it regardless when you file your tax returns. Of course most people I know say "no" when asked by their tax accountants if they've made any online purchases in the past year. This isn't a new tax. They're just making it unnecessary to lie to your tax accountant.
 
Our great gov Deval Patrick said that this was going to benefit the consumer.

How the fuck does it exactly benefit the consumer?
 
Budzman said:
Our great gov Deval Patrick said that this was going to benefit the consumer.

How the fuck does it exactly benefit the consumer?
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He's a politician multiply everything he says by -1 and that is what he really means.
 
In order to save money, potholes were being filled in not with asphalt but with the first born children of upstanding Massachusetts citizens. Now that Amazon is collecting sales tax, all the children will be saved!

Rejoice!
 
demingo said:
They werent.... thats part of the problem. MA has a budget shortfall.
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I love how the answer to a budget shortfall is automatically "how can we raise taxes?", rather than "what stupid shit should we stop spending money on?", because it's perfectly accurate to state that government in the United States pays for lots of stupid shit that it shouldn't.
 
demingo said:
They werent.... thats part of the problem. MA has a budget shortfall.
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Here in CA we have paid our fair share of taxes to fix our roads, bridges and infrastructure thousands of times over.

Taxing business and the rich has never been the answer, more like cutting inefficient government spending and mismanagement. Those who believe that increasing taxes actually fix problems are misguided.

As far as Amazon is concerned, you could see this coming due to their future plans of having a presence in each state for same day delivery, as another poster noted.
 
It isn't considered fair because politicians dont have as wide an avenue for rent seeking for online goods.

Its a pie that mommy and daddy put on top of the fridge so junior can't reach it.

Junior is pissed.
 
Stiletto said:
I love how the answer to a budget shortfall is automatically "how can we raise taxes?", rather than "what stupid shit should we stop spending money on?", because it's perfectly accurate to state that government in the United States pays for lots of stupid shit that it shouldn't.
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Again, nobody's raising taxes. Current tax laws are being enforced.

As an aside, prices go up. The amount of things that we (as a state) have is much more than before too. Everything cost money. Surely you don't expect states to stick with dirt roads and buggies and brick schools because nobody wants to foot the bill?

I'm sure there are wasteful spending too - the military, luxury items, unneeded bureaucracies - but they only make up a small percentage of the overall budget. It's like supporting Romney's desire to defund PBS because it'll help the budget.
 
backpedaling my last comment. I meant to say "but they (except the military of course) only make up a small percentage of the overall budget."
 
Azhar said:
I'm sure there are wasteful spending too - the military, luxury items, unneeded bureaucracies - but they only make up a small percentage of the overall budget. It's like supporting Romney's desire to defund PBS because it'll help the budget.
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The "PBS" meme is still as stupid as it was before. It was one of many, many programs that Romney was proposing cutting, but it was focused on solely because they know that they can appeal to a lot of voters by claiming that Romney was going to kill Big Bird, pegging him as a comic book villain. And I say this as someone who didn't vote for the idiot.

Saying the military is a small percentage of the budget is blind beyond belief. True, they didn't fuck us in the ass with massive debt quite as much as the "TARP" and "Stimulus" bills did, but our military expenditures over the last decade runs an average of 700 billion a year since the beginning of the Iraq war. That's 7 trillion over ten years. You're claiming that's a small percentage? And go ahead and tell me that the 70 billion every year towards the Department of Homeland Security, another 70 billion to the Department of Education(a 30 year old department that serves almost no purpose other than to justify further spending like Bush's failed NCLB initiative), 26 billion to the Department of Energy, etc. It's true that PBS isn't a large part of the federal budget. However, the sound byte of suggesting it was used as a major distraction from discussion of true reform of bloated government like the parts I'm pointing out, and especially to distract away from our entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, which are the real threats to our solvency, sapping us for trillions every year.

We have to stop and consider what is most important, and what can be afforded...not how much more can be stolen from the American people, or how much more we can raise the debt ceiling, or how long we can go before our bond status reaches "junk".
 
Azhar said:
backpedaling my last comment. I meant to say "but they (except the military of course) only make up a small percentage of the overall budget."
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Then please disregard my comment about such a view being "blind beyond belief", as you clearly do not hold it. :cool:
 
Azhar said:
Again, nobody's raising taxes. Current tax laws are being enforced.
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I believe this is the second time someone's said something to this effect in this thread, and it hasn't gotten any less ridiculous with its repetition.

Enforcing current tax laws would mean enforcement of use tax declaration. That isn't what's happening.
 
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