That Congress has had aspirations on collecting sales tax on online purchases, which comprise an increasingly bigger portion of all retail sales in the US, in the past is nothing new. However, following last night's passage of the Marketplace Fairness Act in the Senate with a cloture-busting 74 votes for (and 20 against), the US may be very close to finally adopting a uniform standard taxing all online transactions, regardless of physical jurisdiction or any other geographic boundaries.
As Ars Technica reported last night, "your tax-free days of online shopping are numbered. If S743, also known as the Marketplace Fairness Act, becomes law, the millions of Americans who have been able to avoid sales tax online will have to start paying it. Given the broad support shown by today's US Senate vote, some version of it is likely to come to fruition."
And since a tax is a tax is a tax, it means that the purchasing power of online shopping Americans will be uniformly reduced by some X%, depending on what the final tax structure is agreed upon, which also means that the volume of all online transactions will have to decline by a corresponding amount all else equal, in turn leading to lower overall revenues and profits for online retailers. But at least the Federal government will have more cash to waste on such high ROI generating projects as Solyndra and Fisker.
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5 comments:
FU! Makes everyone selling liable to write 50 checks quarterly to 50 states! NO.
Amazon was all against that until recently when they opened more warehouses in more states. Now they want this to protect themselves against any new Amazon ever happening.
How does it make sense to collect taxes for another State that provides the business with absolutely nothing? It is just legal thievery. Stealing money from a business in another state.
This is very confusing. Is this going to be a federal tax that is collecting from the buyer and the seller sends it to the federal govt?
At first I just thought each company would charge the sales tax for the state they are in.
Motorcycle tire, $.50, Tax, $.03, Shipping and handling + $129.85. Thank you for shopping!
A tax. ANOTHER tax. Keep voting. The laws of probability state that, sooner or later, you WILL elect SOMEONE with integrity.... I'm thinking the time span for that probability is equal to that of a thousand monkeys typing away at a keyboard until they write a novel. I think the monkeys would be successful first. By that time, we might have actually rid ourselves of head lice and politicians. Like I said before, these slimebags will NEVER stop raising taxes, fines, fees, surcharges, levies, and penalties until we MAKE them stop, along with breathing.
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