White House Endorses Internet Sales Tax

Aren't internet transactions already required to use a "billing address" as well as a shipping address (although for most people those are the same) ... as long as the info associated with the tax on the billing address is readily available is it that much of a burden to tax based on the billing address?

To figure out how much to collect, and to just collect the tax, no? That is easy. There are apps for that, so to speak. Though some of them cost millions of dollars, and do a lot more than just figure sales tax.

Dealing with 40 odd different state's varying tax laws, and collection enforcement departments/agencies? Hell on earth! Especially for a small business.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039821398 said:
As much as I dislike having to pay sales tax on stuff, I can't help but feel like the current system is unfair.

Local mom and pop's are forced to charge sales tax, while internet companies gain an unfair advantage and steal their business by circumventing state tax laws.

This isn't about local mom and pop's. The organization pushing the Marketplace Price Fixing Act is the National Retail Federation. Despite their protests to the contrary, they represent the Walmarts, Targets, and Best Buys of the world, not the small mom and pop's.

The biggest complainers about online retailers have not been the mom and pops but the large retail behemoths who simply do not wish to adapt to changing times. As such, they are throwing tons of money into buying laws that penalize their competitors while providing them an advantage.

This law is absolutely murderous on small businesses (it is very easy to exceed $1 million in revenue, especially if you sell high dollar low margin items, while still being a small business) because it forces them to deal with mountains of sales tax regulations and paperwork.

That being said, I'd rather disband the armed forces, replace them with a conscription style homeland defense force

I hardly think slavery is the answer.

spend more on education and healthcare

We spend plenty on both. The fact that they are both pitiful is an indication of systemic problems (namely, parasitic pencil pushing bureaucrats) rather than a lack of money.

lower taxes, and still balance the budget.

Taxation is incompatible with a balanced budget. So long as the government acquires money through theft, it has no motivation to balance anything because it can simply steal more to make up for an unbalanced budget. See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard

We spend WAY too much on the military today.

Yes because the military-industrial complex buys politicians and contracts that are favorable to them.
 
The military has been slashed a few times already and its really a lot smaller than gets attributed because the VA and military pensions aren't going away anytime soon even if we disbanded the military completely. Even so, the military is far from driving our debt any longer. You could disband it and you wouldn't balance the budget. So this propaganda campaign to lay it all at the feet of the military is pretty funny and defies simple math.

Military spending, if you include special wartime appropriations, and exclude VA benefits is still an ENORMOUS part of the budget.

Unfortunately VA spending is TINY compared to overall military spending. Yes, VA cost will stay even if you did something about military spending today, but its a really small portion of the overall cost.

The problem is, it's almost impossible to find the real total spending figures, because whenever you look up the "federal budget" you get just that, the annual budget, which does not include special appropriations, etc. etc.
 
Everyone keeps talking about how this would "kill small online businesses". Businesses with less than $1,000,000 yearly in online sales would be exempt. People also keep acting like it's "raising taxes" when it's really just a new way of collecting a tax that you're already supposed to be paying.
 
Everyone keeps talking about how this would "kill small online businesses". Businesses with less than $1,000,000 yearly in online sales would be exempt. People also keep acting like it's "raising taxes" when it's really just a new way of collecting a tax that you're already supposed to be paying.

Only a fool would think that you could determine the size of a business solely by annual sales. We do $5 million a year but it is in high-dollar low-margin items for laboratories which means that we do not have any more money than a typical small business.
 
Whoa hold your brakes there, corporations like GE and Google are pillars of capitalism and job creators; you don't want to make them angry by increasing their taxes and lowering their profit margins, leading them to offset the cost with laying off employees. /s

Fuck em. If they offshore, stop buying their products. /See who has the longest prick, I guarantee that it's the consumer.
 
Only a fool would think that you could determine the size of a business solely by annual sales. We do $5 million a year but it is in high-dollar low-margin items for laboratories which means that we do not have any more money than a typical small business.

+1

I find it amazing that people don't understand sales does not equal net profit, money that should be reinvested into the company but is wasted on fulfilling idiotic/over burdensome regulations.
 
Except ironically the Sales tax is one of the more balanced taxes there is ... everybody who buys stuff pays it (including the poor) ... and it is exclusively for your state or city (unlike the federal taxes where some states pay more than they get back in services) ... I would rather see the income taxes go and keep the sales and property taxes (which is what most states with no income tax do) :cool:

What we need is the fairtax where you only pay fed tax on what you buy. However the politicians will never go for it.

OFF topic>>>>Speaking of UNFAIR tax I was checking my last cell bill and I paid 19.42% tax rate.
 
What we need is the fairtax where you only pay fed tax on what you buy. However the politicians will never go for it.

OFF topic>>>>Speaking of UNFAIR tax I was checking my last cell bill and I paid 19.42% tax rate.

A fair tax is anything but fair and hits the poorest and middle class the hardest
 
+1

I find it amazing that people don't understand sales does not equal net profit, money that should be reinvested into the company but is wasted on fulfilling idiotic/over burdensome regulations.

Heh, yeah, that's ignoring an entire side of the equation.

COGS is very important.
 
Medicare and Medicaid...

Your shitting me? So, how about I get all of the money I've dropped into these programs my entire working life back. Then I won't feel 'entitled' to the services when I need them later in life.

The issue isn't Medicare and Medicaid. It's medical practitioners milking those programs for every cent they can. Combine that with the insane cost of medical care in this country.....
 
I'd much prefer a huge federal property and vehicle tax to impose a heavy penalty on people who wrongfully purchased homes they couldn't afford and then cost society as a whole dearly when their inability to pay contributed significantly to economic slowdown.

Property tax is a tax on wealth, and is one of the most destructive taxes possible, as it keeps people from increasing their wealth.

How about the person who bought a home they could easily afford, paid it off before they retired, and can’t afford your huge taxes because the value of the house has gone up? This is what was happening in California before Prop 13 that limited property taxes.

At the peak of the housing bubble, my house went up in value by 4x, even now it’s still worth 2.5x what I paid . Meanwhile my pay went down due to the .com bubble bursting. Are you saying my taxes should have gone up by 4x also? Luckily we still have prop 13 out here in California what limits how much they can raise property taxes each year. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to hold onto my house.
 
A fair tax is anything but fair and hits the poorest and middle class the hardest

The biggest expenses for the poor are food and housing. Simply exempting food (except for restaurants) and housing from the sales tax will balance it out to help the poor/middle class. This is how California has their sales tax setup and is one of the few things California has right about taxes.

The big advantage of a sales tax is that even the drug dealers and other criminals pay it when they buy their fancy cars & gold chains.
 
The biggest expenses for the poor are food and housing. Simply exempting food (except for restaurants) and housing from the sales tax will balance it out to help the poor/middle class. This is how California has their sales tax setup and is one of the few things California has right about taxes.

The big advantage of a sales tax is that even the drug dealers and other criminals pay it when they buy their fancy cars & gold chains.

Food is the 4th after transportation/gasoline and utilities. Housing is the first. But how are you going to make any money on fair tax if you exempt those things. The flat tax works on getting a piece of volume. If you remove the highest volume pieces how are you going to make up that deficit?
 
Dealing with 40 odd different state's varying tax laws, and collection enforcement departments/agencies? Hell on earth! Especially for a small business.

This is the real problem. Every state has different rules about collecting sales tax. Most require that you have a license and a tax account with the state (this costs money). Many only allow payment to be made by bank transfers (more money), and some require that you estimate sales and even prepay a percentage of the taxes.

Large corporations have entire departments to handle this. It would be impossible for a small business to comply with this, so they would have to hire someone else to handle it for them (more money).
 
Food is the 4th after transportation/gasoline and utilities. Housing is the first. But how are you going to make any money on fair tax if you exempt those things. The flat tax works on getting a piece of volume. If you remove the highest volume pieces how are you going to make up that deficit?

The poor will still have to pay sales taxes on thier Nikes and other bling :)
 
Your shitting me? So, how about I get all of the money I've dropped into these programs my entire working life back. Then I won't feel 'entitled' to the services when I need them later in life.

The issue isn't Medicare and Medicaid. It's medical practitioners milking those programs for every cent they can. Combine that with the insane cost of medical care in this country.....

Medicare being unable to negotiate prices is one of the big factors, probably followed by specialists controlling scheduling rather than the hospital - this leads to hospitals being full or half full instead of the more optimal 80% occupancy rate

A study out of Texas saved tens of millions a year at ONE hospital by getting them to take scheduling out of the hands of the doctors. If you combined that with medicare negotiating pharma prices and applied it to the whole nation, we're talking hundreds of billions a year
 
Property tax is a tax on wealth, and is one of the most destructive taxes possible, as it keeps people from increasing their wealth.

How about the person who bought a home they could easily afford, paid it off before they retired, and can’t afford your huge taxes because the value of the house has gone up? This is what was happening in California before Prop 13 that limited property taxes.

At the peak of the housing bubble, my house went up in value by 4x, even now it’s still worth 2.5x what I paid . Meanwhile my pay went down due to the .com bubble bursting. Are you saying my taxes should have gone up by 4x also? Luckily we still have prop 13 out here in California what limits how much they can raise property taxes each year. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to hold onto my house.

The tax landscape is currently unnecessarily complex, and unfair Here is what I would do to fix it:

Federal Personal tax:
- Eliminate all taxation except income taxation.
- Transform income taxation to a luxury tax. In other words, give everyone a standard deduction of a regionally adjusted basic middle class existence adjusted for their family size.
- Eliminate ALL other deductions, itemized or not.
- Tax every dollar above that basic subsistence level in a highly progressive fashion.
- Scale the progressive scale such that revenues equal what is currently netted between all other taxes that are being eliminated.
- Do not be afraid of very high top marginal tax rates.
- Treat ALL sources of income the same, whether they be earned income, investment income, inheritance, gifts, etc. etc. If you get money, or property of any value, it is income no matter what it is, or how you get it, and taxed at the same rate.
- Allow inheritances to be placed into a fund and spread out over several years in order to avoid the highly progressive tax from completely gobbling up an inheritance.

State & Local Personal Tax:
- Prohibit states and localities from enacting taxation other than income tax.
- Allow states to tax at a level that is a fixed percentage of the federal tax only (to prevent states from circumventing the fair progressive nature of the tax).
- States can determine how high they want that percentage to be all the way from 0 up to hundreds or thousands of percent.

Federal Business tax:
- Completely throw out the current tax code, and replace it with a flat percentage rate tax based on total income (revenues - costs).
- Make any and all sweetheart tax deals to individual companies illegal. If you want to lower taxes to draw in a certain company, do it for all businesses, don't pick winners and losers.
- Only exception to the above will be a short - publicly available and easy to understand - national priorities list, to help government kickstart industries critical to the strategic well being and future of the nation. List may not include individual companies,must be industry wide. May include such things as "green energy" or "medical research".
- Eliminate any and all other loopholes.
- Change international transfer pricing laws, such that global corporations can't shield their incomes and pay taxes only through shell corporations in low tax havens. Require tax to be paid where value is earned. create rules for how this applies to products and services developed in one country and sold in another.

State and Local Business Taxes:
- Just as with personal taxes, eliminate all taxation other than the federal taxation, and allow states and localities to tax businesses as a simple percentage of the federal tax. Allow them to independently set that tax.

Exceptions:
- The only exceptions to the above would be to allow punitive taxation on such things we as a nation wish to dis-incentivise people from buying (like tobacco, alcohol, trans fats, gasoline etc.) Do this in a similar structured federal approach as the federal strategic industry list.

The goal of all this is not to raise or lower tax rates. Initially it would target a steady state, allowing the rate to be increased or decreased as congress see fit, in such a matter that eventually down the line the budget can be balanced.

The intent is instead to change the WAY those taxes are paid, to make them simpler, more uniform and more fair, so that there are not some paying excessive taxes and others next to nothing, while at the same time including the basic subsistence deduction so that taxes never are what stand between a person and feeding their family or putting a roof over their heads, and giving individual states and localities the ability to increase their taxes up or down.
 
And I've been shifting my purchase to other out of state companies since Amazon has started charging sales tax in California.

This is the problem even if you don't believe in anything else you should support online sales tax because it pushes people to make bad buying decisions. 2 things have equal price, then you should buy from the person with the best service, or closest to you but instead most of us purposely harm the environment and create inefficiency by purposely choosing some place far away.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039822289 said:
The tax landscape is currently unnecessarily complex, and unfair Here is what I would do to fix it:

Federal Personal tax:
- Eliminate all taxation except income taxation.
- Transform income taxation to a luxury tax. In other words, give everyone a standard deduction of a regionally adjusted basic middle class existence adjusted for their family size.
- Eliminate ALL other deductions, itemized or not.
- Tax every dollar above that basic subsistence level in a highly progressive fashion.
- Scale the progressive scale such that revenues equal what is currently netted between all other taxes that are being eliminated.
- Do not be afraid of very high top marginal tax rates.
- Treat ALL sources of income the same, whether they be earned income, investment income, inheritance, gifts, etc. etc. If you get money, or property of any value, it is income no matter what it is, or how you get it, and taxed at the same rate.
- Allow inheritances to be placed into a fund and spread out over several years in order to avoid the highly progressive tax from completely gobbling up an inheritance.

State & Local Personal Tax:
- Prohibit states and localities from enacting taxation other than income tax.
- Allow states to tax at a level that is a fixed percentage of the federal tax only (to prevent states from circumventing the fair progressive nature of the tax).
- States can determine how high they want that percentage to be all the way from 0 up to hundreds or thousands of percent.

Federal Business tax:
- Completely throw out the current tax code, and replace it with a flat percentage rate tax based on total income (revenues - costs).
- Make any and all sweetheart tax deals to individual companies illegal. If you want to lower taxes to draw in a certain company, do it for all businesses, don't pick winners and losers.
- Only exception to the above will be a short - publicly available and easy to understand - national priorities list, to help government kickstart industries critical to the strategic well being and future of the nation. List may not include individual companies,must be industry wide. May include such things as "green energy" or "medical research".
- Eliminate any and all other loopholes.
- Change international transfer pricing laws, such that global corporations can't shield their incomes and pay taxes only through shell corporations in low tax havens. Require tax to be paid where value is earned. create rules for how this applies to products and services developed in one country and sold in another.

State and Local Business Taxes:
- Just as with personal taxes, eliminate all taxation other than the federal taxation, and allow states and localities to tax businesses as a simple percentage of the federal tax. Allow them to independently set that tax.

Exceptions:
- The only exceptions to the above would be to allow punitive taxation on such things we as a nation wish to dis-incentivise people from buying (like tobacco, alcohol, trans fats, gasoline etc.) Do this in a similar structured federal approach as the federal strategic industry list.

The goal of all this is not to raise or lower tax rates. Initially it would target a steady state, allowing the rate to be increased or decreased as congress see fit, in such a matter that eventually down the line the budget can be balanced.

The intent is instead to change the WAY those taxes are paid, to make them simpler, more uniform and more fair, so that there are not some paying excessive taxes and others next to nothing, while at the same time including the basic subsistence deduction so that taxes never are what stand between a person and feeding their family or putting a roof over their heads, and giving individual states and localities the ability to increase their taxes up or down.

this isnt bad but ditch the inheritance tax and and all property taxes
also nix any and all sales taxes
these are the taxes that hurt the low and middle class the most as well as people on fixed incomes
 
Ah yes, we need big savings so lets go after that huge .06% of the budget that goes to foreign aid.

Is that before or after the cost of all the arms the US government freely hands out? The US government is the world's premier arms dealer, after all.
 
this isnt bad but ditch the inheritance tax and and all property taxes
also nix any and all sales taxes
these are the taxes that hurt the low and middle class the most as well as people on fixed incomes

My plan was to all sales and property taxes. Essentially replace ALL other taxes with this plan, regardless of type.

I did intend to consider inheritance as income though for purposes of taxation, but allow people to set up a fund and spread it out over many years to avoid losing it all to the progressive tax curve in one year.
 
You're only taxed on what you buy. How is that unfair?

Because poor people spend all of their money and rich people do not. If you make 20 times someone that doesn't mean you neccassarily spend 20 times what they do on food or on a car or on shelter. So the more you earn, the lower your effective tax rate gets.
 
You're only taxed on what you buy. How is that unfair?

Depends on the tax rate. A person with high income can afford to pay 15 cents on the dollar more than a person with lower income.
The lower income people will have less buying power.

Unless the tax rate is considerably higher for high dollar purchases, such as luxury homes, boats, and cars, I can see how the rich will have a major tax break.
But then how will you define luxury? People would just spend just below the threshold to avoid entering into a new tax bracket.

Right now the rich has to pay taxes based on income, which is unavoidable. Whether or not they're paying less than your average W2 worker through loop holes is another discussion. The point is that they're paying.
Consumption tax can cause unintended high levels of money hoarding, so it best to take off the top.
 
Because poor people spend all of their money and rich people do not. If you make 20 times someone that doesn't mean you neccassarily spend 20 times what they do on food or on a car or on shelter. So the more you earn, the lower your effective tax rate gets.


Fair tax doesn't apply to food.

Effective tax rate doesn't apply to the fair tax only the current fed tax system. (based on what you buy not what you make)

So let me gets this straight, under a fairtax, a "rich" person goes and buys a new yacht for $500,000 dollars, are you saying that "rich" person hasn't paid their fair share in taxes? They've definitely paid more than a "poor" person has in taxes, for the whole year!
 
Don't be fooled. This is a new tax and it does not close a "loop hole". Previously you didn't have to pay a state sales tax on good bought from outside your state. This was predominantly mail order purchases. All internet sales is is mail order made a little easier and with better advertising. It's an improved version, instead of a Sears and Roebuck catalog you go to Sears.com.

As for mom and pops, this isn't about saving Mom and Pop, this is about saving Barnes&Noble, Walmart, and the rest.

I'll ask you, when Amazon starts collecting sales tax for my purchases is my money going to go to California or to Arizona where I live?
 
Fair tax doesn't apply to food.

Effective tax rate doesn't apply to the fair tax only the current fed tax system. (based on what you buy not what you make)

So let me gets this straight, under a fairtax, a "rich" person goes and buys a new yacht for $500,000 dollars, are you saying that "rich" person hasn't paid their fair share in taxes? They've definitely paid more than a "poor" person has in taxes, for the whole year!

Rich people pay more actual dollars in taxes because they get more benefit from society.
 
Fair tax doesn't apply to food.

Effective tax rate doesn't apply to the fair tax only the current fed tax system. (based on what you buy not what you make)

So let me gets this straight, under a fairtax, a "rich" person goes and buys a new yacht for $500,000 dollars, are you saying that "rich" person hasn't paid their fair share in taxes? They've definitely paid more than a "poor" person has in taxes, for the whole year!

That is a little bit of intellectual dishonesty right there.

Yes they've paid a larger dollar sum, but it comes from a much larger pot.

It is nice that the plan exempts food. Does it also exempt housing? Clothing? Transportation to work? Basic necessities like kitchen appliances?

I'm all for a system that only taxes luxuries and leaves any and all basic necessities untouched, but who gets to decide what is a basic necessity, and what is a luxury?

For most people in today's world having a car, a cellphone per family member, and a computer with internet access are all basic necessities to be able to function in the modern economy. So who decides where the line is drawn?

That, and if a system like this is implemented, the number would have to be WAY higher than 15%.
 
Really? more benefit from society. What is it that "society" is providing to rich people?
 
What I find hilarious is that Obama says this about everything ... from the consequences of his federal sequester cuts to what will happen if we don't support every federal tax hike he proposes.
  1. funding from roads and bridges are supposed to be paid with tolls and gas/property taxes.
  2. education, police, and fire are supposed to be paid with property taxes or by those that actually use those services.
  3. don't even get me started on this affordable health care bs ...
Yep! Whatever it takes to get the people on your side. It's sad that there are so many retards that buy this shit.
We have multiple taxes for the same thing and still ... our roads/bridges are crumbling, our education system is horrible, and our police/fire depts always says they are underfunded. I don't know how one more tax is going to fix that.

How about going after companies like GE and Google to pay their fucking "FAIR SHARE"?!?

Bullshit.

How about they tackle the massive amounts of blatant corporate tax evasion first?

We really need a leader of the people to stand up and bring these issues to the doors of the politicians. If we were to amass and say, "stop taking the bribes and fix this shit, or it's your head" they might listen.

A fair tax is anything but fair and hits the poorest and middle class the hardest

Wouldn't a flat tax be fair where everyone pays the same % of their income?
 
Ah yes, we need big savings so lets go after that huge .06% of the budget that goes to foreign aid.

This adds up. Point is, why are we giving away money to other countries when we are in debt?
Your shitting me? So, how about I get all of the money I've dropped into these programs my entire working life back. Then I won't feel 'entitled' to the services when I need them later in life.

The issue isn't Medicare and Medicaid. It's medical practitioners milking those programs for every cent they can. Combine that with the insane cost of medical care in this country.....

Don't forget all the people that also get to reap the benefits of these programs without ever having paid into them...
 
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