Senate to Vote on Internet Tax

[chum202]

In the recent years the growth of e-commerce websites had been steady. One reason of this for sure is that merchants took advantage of this as online sales has no tax. I am an avid online buyer and i am not aware that online sale transactions have no tax at all.

 

[mrenglish]

Ohio is considering their own bill to tax out of state purchases. They want the money to shore up their budget.

 

[peckinpahhombre]

To be truthful, if I was a senator I would vote in favour of it as well. The objective of sound tax policy is to levy taxes in a manner that is the least distortionary to the economy - and by distortionary, economists mean that people act differently than they would have done in the absence of the tax. Subjecting people to taxes on goods bought from B&M stores but not exposing them to the same taxes on the same goods bought from online stores is clearly distortionary from this perspective. I am a low tax guy and believe that taxes generally should be much lower than they are, but to the extent that there is taxation, it should be applied in a manner that is the least distortionary to the economy as a whole.

 

[lumberjakpipester]

I certainly agree with you on the distortion principal, but not necessarily on low taxes. I don't have a problem with a 15-20% sales tax, as long as it is fair. There is no moral justification for "special" taxes under any circumstances and even less for "sin" taxes. I know it makes economic sense to tax products people will have a hard time not buying, but it's despicable nonetheless. I feel that taxes are important as long as everyone pays them equally and that the money collected is injected right back into essential services, like healthcare, education, roads(especially here in Canada, god know we need it!) etc. But hey... what are we gonna do?

 

[wildcat]

Folks, the mad scramble has begun.

Yes sir.

 

[hodirty]

Im with wildcat on this, we the "sheeple" will bitch and moan about big gov until... oh is that a new flavored taco at the Bell? Just enjoy "civilized" society while its here.

 

[hodirty]

Roth, you got me there lol. Just hard not to be so cynical.

 

[peckinpahhombre]

Roth
Perhaps the most seductive argument of the flat-taxers is the argument from the perspective of simplicity. Unfortunately you are delusional if you believe it would be all that simple. We would still need a complex process to determine what our net, taxable income might be. Those of you who are self-employed, for example, would still have to figure out your expenses and net incomes. We would still need a complicated regime for taxing foreign income earned by domestic enterprises, and the list goes on and on. I don't know of a single credible expert who believes a flat tax system would be much simpler at all.
But let's assume for the sake of argument (and in the face of common sense to the contrary) that it would be simpler. I would suggest there are worse things in the world than complexity. And one of them is paying higher taxes. In short, what most flat-tax proponents don’t seem to understand are some of the reasons for all the tax complexity. The reason is that many people are willing to wade through a great deal of complexity in order to lower their tax burden. So that, in a sense, given the tax system, much of the complexity that everyone denounces is voluntary. In fact, if we desire simplicity, we can achieve it right now, and without the flat tax. We could just eliminate all deductions, full stop. I can assure you that that is an outcome that most would not like (how many of my US friends out there take a deduction for their mortgage interest?)
And I don't fathom your animosity for tax lawyers and accountants. Denouncing tax lawyers and accountants is like blaming doctors for the existence of disease. The fact is that we live in societies led by governments whose main objective in life seems to be to encroach on our economic liberty through an extortionary tax system. I wish tax rates were far lower and that government was far less intrusive in my economic sphere, but until that occurs, my complaint is not with tax lawyers and accountants, but with the high tax system that makes them necessary to protect me from out of control governments who can't control their spending. So long as that system exists (and I don't believe a flat tax would be any different), we must realize that they are our last defence against the continuing encroachment of the state into our economic lives. Tax lawyers are heroes. And some of them are even pipe smokers.

 

[ffmurray]

The government wants its tax even if you don't live here, even if you don't use their services. They want to pay billions and billions and billions to bomb the world, because pissing off people and killing their friends and family is how we stay safe from terrorism.....

The state's want their money to spend recklessly too. They don't care about the loss of jobs or the loss of people spending power as long as they get their cut.

I am more than willing to pay for services rendered... but paying them more so they can keep stealing my freedom to smoke, or in places like NYC drink a soda? So they can nanny me and treat us all like children and not let us make our own judgments on how to live our own lives?

I don't want to pay for that.

 

[pstlpkr]

Ok guys tone it down please.

::

 

[dragonslayer]

I'm with you Roth, Steve Forbes has been yelling from the mountain top for over a decade and smacked down every "what if" thrown at it. Very plain and very simple, everything over $35K gets 14% period. Fill in all the "cost of doing business" and that's the same book keeping you do now. This gets shot down more by those in the government who call for simpler and easy, but what they want is hard and complex to slip things through. I'm so sick of the way things are working in congress these days. Yeah it’s always has been done, but not to this degree and not in the condition we’re in today. You take a bill about widgets and add 50 things on it that have nothing to do but pander to special interests or to slip things through. Then there's the old executive order...%$&3 that one.
Soon as our lending rating falls to “B” we are screwed. People have this illusion that we borrow money from China etc. The real case is they lend us money based on our “A” rating. By 2015 you are going to see the dollar drop like a rock. Wish I had the time to get into it, and this is political sooooo.

Craig