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Republican Governors Seek to Charge Online Sales Tax

By: Brad Jackson (Diary)  |  July 16th, 2012 at 10:00 AM  | 

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the the President’s assault on business, Governors seeking to charge online sales tax on Amazon and the potential for an iTunes tax.

We’re brought to you as always by Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at bjackson[at]coffeeandmarkets.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Obama – ‘If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen’
Tax Break Nears End For Online Shoppers
Republicans Should Fight the Democrats’ iTunes Tax

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  • jccbin

    … Because I have to listen to all the talking instead of reading a concise piece of writing. Geez. This is the 21st century, not the golden age of radio. Ugh. #firstworldproblems

    No. I won’t try it. I refuse mayonnaise on general principle, and I refuse to listen to a web site.

    No matter how good your teases are.

    I wonder if others skip this thing for the same reasons…?

    • PowerToThePeople

      of crap as intelligence?

      Instead of attempting to knock on the show, how about you just admit your level of intelligence precludes you from being able to keep up with the intelligence of the show, so you skip it in order to save yourself further embarrassment.

      Do not feel to bad, the guys on the show are extremely smart and because of that it does tend to cause a certain amount of exclusion. I am sure there are a few others out there unable to keep up just like you.

  • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

    But it must be uniform. Retail sales are really suffering and I don’t see that trend changing. It is one thing to be for smaller government but we have to understand that even well run states are losing tax receipts at an astounding rate.

    I don’t like taxes in general but I think sales taxes are the best, fairest, and most efficient taxes. The alternative will be to increase income and property tax. These are bad taxes.

    Take my state for instance. In Texas we have a more or less well run government. and fairly low taxes. But we have an enormous amount of illegal aliens and a fair amount of people on various social welfare. The gap in sales taxes has led to a cry for higher property taxes or an income tax.

    In both scenarios it means that the illegals and the freeloaders and the criminals pay a smaller share of the burden, but the middle class gets hit in the pocketbook.

    Eventually I see something which is uniform and administered by the Federal government, because of the commerce clause, but parceled out to states based on who made the purchase.

    • acat

      Vertex Inc.

      What they do is a subscription service so retailers *can* know how much sales tax to collect, based on point of purchase and/or delivery.

      This does present a challenge (a new “fixed cost”) to doing business online – but it is not sufficiently onerous .. nor is it nearly as bad, IMO, as getting the Fed involved.

      Mew

    • Joliphant

      Avoiding it didn’t begin with the internet.People used to buy mail order or by from shops that would ship their purchases to an out of state address.

      But the last thing I would like to see is the federal government getting another power to tax and withhold funds from the states.

      • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

        I don’t see how you can keep the Fed out of it. It is interstate commerce. We have seen thousands of things classified as interstate commerce which really is not, but this really is.

        The fact that a service like vertex could be used to track the tax only makes it more likely that the Feds get involved, because it is easy to collect. But if they collected the tax they would have to remit it back to the states.

        The main problem would be how do you stop them from transferring some of the taxes from have states to have not states. There would be a big push for redistribution.

        • acat

          The point to Vertex is that an online sales outfit in Texas can know *exactly* how much to collect, and can *directly* remit it to the State of California for purchases originating or being delivered therein.

          The Fed would have *ZERO* role in collecting, there would be *ZERO* to withhold from the States. The Fed role would be mediating disputes, and obviously they would have to mandate the thing .. but that’s the end of their involvement. The rest gets handled by the free market.

          Mew

          • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

            How are you going to keep their hands off of it?

          • acat

            and there is no reason for the Fed to actually touch the money.

            All that’s really required is for some of the larger new-merchandise sites – Amazon.com for instance – to offer to use an existing product – Vertex, for instance – to do tax-gathering for the States and Munis.

            Present a fait accompli – an accomplished thing, a done deal – and the Fed have no reason to use this as a VAT-by-other-means….

            Mew

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