Internet Sales Tax bill

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FT reports Republicans will not let the Internet Sales Tax bill pass this session of Congress.

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"Marketplace Fairness" is the cynically coined title  of a bill that denies fairness and manipulates the  market.

Markets need to be free, not encumbered by price and  quota loopholes devised by a greedy, economically illiterate government.   Sales tax is imposed by most states at the cash  register.  If the cash register is in another state,  they cannot impose or collect sales tax.  That is  NOT a loophole.  That's fairness.

By renaming "Sales Tax" as "Sales and Use Tax" they  try to assert that the tax is due from the consumer well  separated and apart from the cash register.  It's  crooked.

Where I live, the state sales tax is 9.75% until  last year when the county added 2% sales tax to  food.  I'm not talking fine upscale restaurant food.  I'm talking bread, milk, baby formula, vitamins,  cough drops, rice, flour, beans, your family's  GROCERIES!

Sales Tax is justified if at all by the  infrastructure, services, and facilities furnished by  the local government.  That means that the brick and  mortar retailers in town get:  Police and fire  services, meat, kitchen, elevator, deli scale,  building, fire marshal inspections, courts, prosecutors, public defenders, jails, and probation  officers to identify, apprehend, detain, try,  incarcerate, and rehabilitate offenders who  shoplift, embezzle, steal, purse grab, armed rob the  retailer or his customers.  It enables street  cleaning, pothole repair, sewers, water supply,  traffic signals, snow removal, accident response and  ambulance service, tornado sirens, early disaster  responders, and on and on.  All very expensive services for the benefit and protection of the  local retailers.   Not one of those benefits accrue to the  interests of the out-of-state merchant.  None,  bubkis, nada, zilch, zero!  "Marketplace Fairness?"   I think not.

Doctors, lawyers, chiropractors, accountants,  therapists, UPS, FedEx, the post office, storage  spaces, veterinarians (except for pet food) are not  required to collect sales tax, and we users of those  services are not required to tally and pay tax for  their use.  

We consumers-tax payers have been struggling more  and more every pay period to make our ends meet  since 2008.  Internet merchants enable us to find  bargains and broaden our choices.  It is a trade off:  We have to pay  shipping.  The state tax authority will want sales  tax on the shipping, you can depend upon it. Each  state, I suggest will need to hire two additional  people, with offices, parking spaces, and generous  benefits to administer the sales tax collections  from each of the 50 states and several territories  subject to US law.  That's 50 times 50 more tax  collectors!  They want every resident to file a  Sales & Use Tax Return?  An army of new auditors on our state's payrolls making government yet even that  much bigger than the productive working sector.  How  are they going to deal with creative merchants who  take their fulfillment to Canada, Mexico, France,  Hong Kong, or Antigua?

What about the five states that have NO sales tax?   Is my state going to put 11.75% sales tax on any  maple syrup I bring in from New Hampshire, crab legs  from Delaware, rocky mountain oysters from Montana,  or granola from Oregon.  "Fairness?"  Hardly.  It is favoritism paid off to the legislators with billions  for new spending.  That's what it is--a sweetheart  deal!   The mobsters in Brooklyn were less rapacious as this. 

This proposal is an unmitigated outrage and insult  to the taxpayers and consumers of this entire  nation.  How Senator Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker,  and other Republican senators could support this  just shows how badly we need Tea Party, low tax,  shrink government leaders now.  These "Marketplace  Fairness" Republicans are sellouts with no right to  our vote.

Big Tax Increase, nothing for you.

Get ready folks for a Big Tax Increase, supported totally by Dems and largely by Republicans in the senate. They don't think it conflicts with the Grover Norquist pledge. But the "Marketplace Fairness Act," like so much legislation over the past several years is exactly the opposite of what it's title implies.

The MFA, or Amazon tax, will make a federal law that you have to pay state sales tax at the rate of your residence (TN is 9.45%) on anything you buy through the internet, by phone, or mail order from an out-of-state merchant. That's right: Your state will impose a tax levy on your out of state purchases. It's an Internal Tariff, forbidden by the Constitution.

They will argue that their sales tax is really a "sales and use tax" that is due from you the consumer because you used something. Used something tax!

They say it is in the state law now, so you owe it, it is due, and they want to make you pay. Fortunately, without this Act, they have no way to make you pay and no way to find out (short of spying on your bank records) what you are buying outside the state. They say it is due. But they can't collect. That means, if they are going to engineer a way to collect taxes that they are not collecting from you now, they are hitting your family budget with a Big Tax Increase.  And lying that it is not.  Look at how much money the proponents of this outrage claim it will bring in to state revenues.  That number, my friends, is the exact amount of your new Increased Taxes.

Of course that imposes a massive administrative expense on Amazon, eBay, and every other merchant to calculate and remit these taxes specific to your residence to your local political functionaries (bureaucrats)! PRICES MUST GO UP.   They are going to mess with your eBay sales and force you to collect and remit taxes for THEM across state lines.

Your state of course must hire many new employees (with pensions and benefits), buy expensive software programs, computer servers, e-commerce equipment to monitor ALL this economic activity which is BIGGER GOVERNMENT. New enforcement police will be hired, armed and deployed to travel all over the country, stay in three-star hotels, eat free, and rent cars to check the books of your out-of-state suppliers.

That's what my Senator Lamar Alexander wants.  He used to work for Reagan.  Reagan would never abide this theft.  Bob Corker has also told me that he supports this Massive Tax Increase and Enlargement of state Government.  They are working in concert (complicity and cahoots  with your Democrat Party Tax and Spend Liberals) to take more money from YOU and keep it for themselves!  Unbelievable!  

Enough is enough.  Stop it.  Get off our backs and cut government spending.  Stop taking our money and wasting it.  Stop trying to figure out how to get more money from us all the time.  Give a bonus to any and every government employee who can give a suggestion to cut the cost of government and reduce his budget.  Give him 10% of everything he can save.  Cut the crap.  You KNOW that would work.  The government employee unions have been screwing us for years.  Pick up on what Reagan did to the Air Traffic Controllers.  Get real. Make like you cared about the voter and taxpayer instead of the parasites that suck and live off of OUR blood.

Truly, Government is theft.

PS.  Control freaks like Bloomberg don't realize that we can set up business in Vancouver, China, or Tijuana to fill the demand from Americans sick and tired of being used and abused for politician's experiments.  That will be good for Americans and workers in those cities, but not for the US economy.

Take THAT, Wiley! You big bully.

AALL's Washington Blawg

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A Win for Libraries in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley Posted: 19 Mar 2013 12:45 PM PDT In a victory for libraries and consumers, the U.S. Supreme Court today issued a 6-3 opinion in favor of petitioner Supap Kirtsaeng, a Thai student who resold textbooks lawfully purchased by his family at bookstores in Thailand. AALL’s Copyright Committee chair Tracy Thompson-Przylucki wrote on the Copyright Committee blog: In its opinion in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., a decision released today, the U.S. Supreme Court has determined that the first sale doctrine is not subject to any geographical limitations (Justice Ginsburg dissents). The Court’s decision means that purchasers of works produced outside of the U.S., if the works are lawfully subject to U.S. Copyright protections, are entitled to invoke the first sale doctrine to justify their subsequent sale, lease or loan of those works. This is an important victory not just for consumers like Kirtsaeng, but for libraries and library users. AALL is a member of the Owners’ Rights Initiative, which released the following statement from Executive Director Andrew Shore: ORI is gratified by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in favor of Supap Kirtsaeng in this important copyright case. This decision is a landmark win for consumers, small businesses, online marketplaces, retailers and libraries nationwide and an affirmation of the ORI motto, ‘you bought it, you own it.’ This decision definitively affirms the first sale doctrine, cementing the right of consumers and organizations to sell, lend and give away goods that they bought and own, regardless of where those goods were made. While we are energized by this decision, we expect that some will continue attempts to eliminate owners’ rights, reduce competition in the marketplace and restrict the global trade of authentic goods. ORI will continue to be vigilant and diligent in protecting owners’ rights now and in the future and we expect policymakers to do the same. For more information about the case, please see AALL’s issue brief by Amy Ash, member of the Copyright Committee and George H. Pike, 2011-2012 chair of the Committee. AALL submitted an amicus brief in support of Kirtsaeng with Public Knowledge, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Special Libraries Association, and U.S. PIRG.

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