Interesting People mailing list archives
Fed Internet Sales Taxes
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 21 May 2008 12:12:38 -0400
Begin forwarded message:
From: John Levine <johnl () iecc com> Date: May 21, 2008 11:54:04 AM EDT To: David Farber <dave () farber net> Cc: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick () ianai net> Subject: Re: [IP] Fed Internet Sales Taxes
I hear this a lot and I always wonder: Will they tax 800-number ordersas well? They are the same thing, just two ways to get a company to mail you a product. The "web" is just a way to remove the human operator from a mail order service.The Quill case, which is the 1992 case the article refers to, was about paper mail order catalogs, presumably with telephone ordering, since thecatalogs that Quill sends me have always had a phone number to call. I've never understood why this sales tax question has been framed as an Internet issue, when in fact it applies equally to mail order catalog sales, which are still about the same size as online sales. I suppose online stores are new and sexy while mail order is so 19th century. But the tax issues are the same. Incidentally, I've been making the same points this article does for many years. A decade on the board of my village, including three years as mayor, let me see up close and personal how unfair it is to both the local services that are paid for by sales tax (most of our budget goes to police, fire, and public works) and to the local merchants who have collected the taxes all along. If online stores can't exist in 2008 without an artificial 5% or 8% price advantage due to tax quirks, they're in the wrong business. Regards,John Levine, johnl () iecc com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex- Mayor"More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.On May 21, 2008, at 10:11 AM, David Farber wrote:Begin forwarded message:From: Robert Atkinson <rca53 () columbia edu> Date: May 21, 2008 10:07:38 AM EDT To: David Farber <dave () farber net> Subject: For IP: Internet Sales Taxes Dave, A call in Wall St. Journal for imposing sales taxes on internet commerce: http://online.wsj.com/article/portals.html Excerpts: Real World Needs 'Net' Taxes May 21, 2008; Page B9 Do you think that billionaire Internet moguls should continue tobenefit from a tax loophole that hurts parks and schools, and makes it harder for your neighborhood bookstore to keep open for business?I didn't think you did. *** For starters, by giving online businesses a permanent advantage over their bricks-and-mortar competitors, it helps those who needit least -- huge, profitable e-commerce companies -- at the expenseof often-struggling local retailers. In addition, the tax policy is regressive. It disproportionately benefits the upscale citizens most likely to shop online. Worst of all, as commerce increasingly moves online, state and local governments are being deprived of the sales-tax revenues they relyon to run schools, build roads, pay police and firefighters, and doall the other things they're supposed to do.A dozen years ago, one might have been able to make the case that aholiday on collecting sales tax would help the fledgling Internet get off the ground. I don't think that was particularly true even in 1996; it certainly isn't now. *** Opponents of the tax collection are fond of the effective but dishonest slogan that collecting a sales tax would amount to a new"tax on the Internet." But making Amazon collect sales tax on booksis no more "taxing the Internet" than requiring stores to collect taxes on Valentine's Day chocolates amounts to "taxing falling in love."
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Current thread:
- Fed Internet Sales Taxes David Farber (May 21)
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- Fed Internet Sales Taxes David Farber (May 21)
- Re: Fed Internet Sales Taxes David Farber (May 21)