Net Tax Ban Soon

[HardOCP News]

InfoWorld has the lowdown on a new bill that seeks to permanently extend a ban on taxes on items bought on the internet.

If Congress does not extend the ban, consumers could face significant increases in the cost of Internet service, Wyden said in a statement. "Why should a product that's not taxed on the street or taxed in a store be taxed on the Internet?" Wyden said. "It's unfair, anticompetitive and would greatly harm one of the booming sectors of our economy."

 

[J-Mag]

Hmm interesting... It would be nice to not have to root through all my receipts to report to my damn state all the internet purchases I made.

 

[kush]

This doesn't make much sense..

If I'm reading this right..Unless you:
a) live in a state that doesn't charge sales tax, but still get charged from the e-tailer for some reason
b) the e-tailer has a retail store-front (or at the least I suppose a will-call pickup) or untaxed catalog sales
c) ??

it wouldn't affect you on buying a product (ie: the $14 state tax I just paid in purchasing [mwave] a TT Armor 8003BWS)..This seems more geared towards 'service' based products that otherwise shouldn't be taxed in the first place, like VOIP phone service and the like; not hardware/software sales (ie: stuff that if you walked into a store for you're likely to pay tax on in most states).

Perhaps I'm totally off-base here -- nothing Congress ever does is clear and to the f'in point .

 

[stabilep]

Thats because it is not just one bill but several bills they discuss.

You have one bill that talks about taxing objects you buy online if that state does not have a sales tax on things purchased from catalogs and phone based purchased. Also that bill would ban a tax being placed on access the internet. So right now your ISP bill should not have a tax on it. This bill insures that it stays that way. They talk about a sticky point where because a bill was passed that banned them from collecting money on VOIP services and the likes and because of that there should be NO permanent ban on those items listed above.

Then you have ANOTHER bill also being pushed through that would ban states from charging so much damn taxes on cell phones compared to the sales tax in the area. So like I live in Philly they can tax me like 14-21% on my mobile phone bill if they wanted. But under this new bill they could not tax me more then the sales tax here which happens to be 7%or thats how I read it.

I am all for the ban. Stop taxing the crap out of everything. Give me one tax on my income tax and thats it. Or a fair tax one or the other. Next thing you know we will have to pay a tax on the air we breath.

 

[RockECU]

This doesn't make much sense..

If I'm reading this right..Unless you:
a) live in a state that doesn't charge sales tax, but still get charged from the e-tailer for some reason
b) the e-tailer has a retail store-front (or at the least I suppose a will-call pickup) or untaxed catalog sales
c) ??

it wouldn't affect you on buying a product (ie: the $14 state tax I just paid in purchasing [mwave] a TT Armor 8003BWS)..This seems more geared towards 'service' based products that otherwise shouldn't be taxed in the first place, like VOIP phone service and the like; not hardware/software sales (ie: stuff that if you walked into a store for you're likely to pay tax on in most states).

Perhaps I'm totally off-base here -- nothing Congress ever does is clear and to the f'in point .

If you own a business, and make multiple out of state purchases/internet purchases, you are required to claim those and pay taxes on them if you have not already. (This actually applies to individuals as well, but the gov't doesn't really go after them due to the fact that it's usually such a small amount, but the businesses they DO go after).