Retail Parasites and the Online Sales Tax

Retail Parasites and the Online Sales Tax

American Thinker ^ | 5/14/13 | William A Levinson

Posted on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 12:09:31 PM by Winged Hussar

The Senate recently approved legislation that would allow states to require out-of-state businesses to collect and remit sales tax. The argument in favor of this legislation is “fairness” to brick and mortar retailers, who must collect sales tax in the states in which they are physically present.

Advocates of the Marketplace Fairness Act like to conjure the image of shadowy Internet businesses competing unfairly with the little Mom-and-Pop store on the street corner. The truth is, however, that these Internet businesses are far more likely to compete with entities such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy, all of which have their own websites but will not set their online prices so as to undercut in-store sales.

 

(EXCERPT!) ~ PROPOSED SALES TAX ON INTERNET PURCHASES IS JUST ANOTHER INCOME TAX ON RETAIL SELLERS – EDRIVERA.COM : EDRIVERA.COM

The idea behind the Marketplace Fairness Act is that it levels the competitive sales field between brick and mortar merchants and Internet sales operators. The truth is it just provides more illicit tax revenue to incompetent State governments.

 

obampoint (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

The American people freed themselves from the tyrant King George III and nothing short of a coronation of a new monarch can re-impose monarchical power upon them. This being a free country the people are free to enslave themselves individually or collectively. A sales tax is a government charge on the privilege of selling at retail. It is a tax on the retailer indirectly paid by the consumer in the cost of goods purchased.

 

rprprprp (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

 

 

 

 

Online sales tax set to pass in Senate [Media Yawns at Democrats Increasing the Cost of Living]

mussobama (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

Online sales tax set to pass in Senate [Media Yawns at Democrats Increasing the Cost of Living]

 

CBS ^ | 5/6/13

 

 

 

 

Posted on Monday, May 06, 2013 9:50:55 AM by SoFloFreeper

 

The Senate on Monday is poised to pass an Internet sales tax bill with strong bipartisan support, in spite of opposition from traditionally influential conservative groups and weak public backing.

 

The Marketplace Fairness Act, which easily cleared a set of procedural Senate votes in recent weeks, wouldn’t technically impose any new taxes. Instead, it would give state governments the ability to collect Internet sales taxes from businesses headquartered outside of their respective state borders — taxes that are technically already owed. Consumers are expected to declare those taxes on their state income tax returns but often don’t.

 

Beware the Internet Sales Tax…

Harry Reid (D-NV), United States Senator from Nevada and Majority Leader of the United States Senate (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Beware the Internet Sales Tax

 

Heritage Foundation ^ | 4/19/2013 | Amy Payne

 

 

 

 

Posted on Friday, April 19, 2013 7:44:41 AM by IbJensen

 

The Internet sales tax is back, and it could be the next big vote in the Senate.

 

obampoint (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

 

 

The proposed law would enable states to force businesses to collect sales tax from customers who live in their state—even when the businesses have no connection to that state.

 

As Heritage President Jim DeMint has said, this violates the classic American principle of “no taxation without representation.” Retailers would be forced to act as tax collectors for states in which they have no voice.

 

Kelleigh Nelson — Internet Sales Tax Coming…

“All the world should be taxed” —Caesar Augustus

 

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. —Mark Twain

 

mussobama (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

 

 

The power to tax is the power to destroy. —John Marshall – Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

 

On Thursday, February 14, 2013, Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican from Tennessee, joined fellow lawmakers in reintroducing a bill that would allow all states to require online retailers to collect sales tax just like their “Main Street” rivals.

 

The idea isn’t a new one. However, a 1992 Supreme Court decision stated that a business must have a physical presence within the state in order for the state to collect sales tax when someone purchases from that business.

 

barbflag (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

Online sales tax to be added to defense authorization bill [Goodbye Internet Sales]

This may be the last Christmas of online shopping without paying sales tax.

 

A proposed online sales tax has been offered as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, much to the ire of opponents.

 

obamadash (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

The Computer and Communications Industry Association, a group that opposes this move, says that an online sales tax will burden small businesses, “some of the most promising candidates for future economic growth.”

 

Destroying Internet Freedom by Taxation :

 

Government taxation is as old as the first brute using force to steal from those intimated by threats. So why should it be any different for the internet? In today’s political environment of choosing winners and losers, the rush to tax online sales is gathering steam.

 

realobam (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

What Do Governments Hate, but Can’t Control? – The Plain Truth – Freedom Watch – Fox Business

Does the government work for us or do we work for the government? Is it possible for us to change Washington by by-passing Washington? Tonight, what do governments hate because they can’t control?

In America, the government seems to control everything. Light bulbs, shoe leather, refrigerators, water strength in your shower; your banker, your doctor, your lawyer all are regulated beyond belief. What is it in America that the feds cannot control? The answer is simple. Human nature. We need to eat and we need to move about; and that means we will use the free market, with or without the government.

Every capable human on earth engages in market exchanges, even in those countries where it’s illegal. Through all of known history, humans have advanced civilization by building up the avenues of trade so as to increase their standards of living. When you buy a loaf of bread or a gallon of gas, you are freely choosing to engage in what remains of the free market. I emphasize the phrase “what remains,” because, when you buy bread, you are paying the local or state government a tax for a product that was baked under conditions set forth by the feds and one of the fifty states, and when you buy fuel for your car, up to one quarter of the cost of the fuel consists of state and federal sales taxes. I believe that sales taxes constitute a grand theft concocted by politicians and bureaucrats so as to provide them with a never-ending supply of cash which they can use to bribe people for their votes. Sales taxes also make items that we need more expensive.

Amazon Supports a Bill Forcing Online Shoppers to Pay Sales Tax

Amazon Supports a Bill Forcing Online Shoppers to Pay Sales Tax

Time ^

Posted on Saturday, November 12, 2011 10:39:16 AM by Perdogg

The days of skirting around having to pay retail sales tax by shopping online may be coming to a close—and Amazon, of all companies, is supporting the effort.

Cain’s ‘9-9-9’ tax plan hits poor, helps wealthy, experts say

The “9-9-9” plan that has helped propel businessman Herman Cain to the front of the GOP presidential field would stick many poor and middle-class people with a hefty tax increase while cutting taxes for those at the top, tax analysts say.

The plan would do away with much of the current tax code and impose a 9 percent personal income tax, a 9 percent business tax and a 9 percent national sales tax, which tax experts say would mean that low- and middle-income Americans would pay more.

“Right now, we have a strongly progressive income tax. High-income people are paying a higher share of income in taxes than lower-income people,” said Alan Viard, a former Federal Reserve Bank economist and a resident scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “That is a pattern that would be disrupted by adoption of the Cain plan.”

The 9-9-9 plan has helped define Cain’s candidacy. Coupled with his buoyant, plain-spoken style, it has helped transform the former long shot into a front-runner. Cain has touted the proposal’s apparent simplicity and fairness, but he rarely delves into details in person. His campaign website shows that the plan is only a step toward achieving his ultimate goal: to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service after replacing all federal taxes with a national sales tax.

Meanwhile, analysts said the 9-9-9 part of Cain’s vision would place a further burden on those hit hardest by the nation’s economic problems.

Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, is working on an analysis of Cain’s signature policy proposal. Although the plan’s details remain sketchy, Williams said that it would increase taxes for the poor and middle class, despite Cain’s statements to the contrary.

For starters, about 30 million of the poorest households pay neither income taxes nor Social Security or Medicare levies. “So for them, doing away with the payroll tax doesn’t save anything. And you are adding both a 9 percent sales tax and 9 percent income tax. So we know they will be worse off,” Williams said.

At the top end of the income scale, meanwhile, the opposite would occur, he said. The top 1 percent of earners would get a tax cut under Cain’s plan, Williams said.

The nation’s top income earners have reaped the vast majority of the nation’s income growth over the past quarter century, pushing income inequality in the country to levels not seen since the Depression. The tax plan would exacerbate that gap, Williams said.

“People at the top end pay 20 or 21 percent in income and payroll taxes now,” he said. “This plan zeroes out their payroll tax and suddenly their tax is down to 9 percent. Then, like everyone else, they pay 9 percent on what they spend. But the rich don’t spend everything they earn.”…..

EXCERPT,,,,,

via Cain’s ‘9-9-9’ tax plan hits poor, helps wealthy, experts say.

Nein! Nein! Nein! The wild world of Cainonomics

Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 proposal — a 9 percent personal-income tax, a 9 percent corporate-income tax, and a 9 percent federal sales tax, to replace all current federal taxes — is attractive in many ways. It is not a flat tax, but it is a flattish tax; it eliminates some (but by no means all) of the divide-and-conquer features of the federal tax code; it simplifies taxes for most households and many businesses; it might reduce compliance costs. All to the good.

A few things should be understood about the 9-9-9 plan. The first is that 9-9-9 is not Herman Cain’s real fiscal plan. He proposes 9-9-9 as an intermediate step en route to his preferred solution, the so-called Fair Tax, about which I have some serious reservations, along the lines of those spelled out by Ramesh Ponnuru here. In fact, Mr. Cain proposes an unwieldy and unnecessarily complex multistep program on the way to the Fair Tax, 9-9-9 being Phase 1, Part 2 (“Phase 1 Enhanced,” in his words). Getting Phase 1, Part 1 would be difficult enough, and the program is marked by Mr. Cain’s most distressing hallmark: wishful thinking that borders on fantasy. How is he going to get to Phase 2, the Fair Tax, a radical restructuring of U.S. public finances that invites not only fiscal questions but constitutional ones as well? “Amidst a backdrop of the economic boom created by the Phase 1 Enhanced Plan,” Mr. Cain writes, “I will begin the process of educating the American people on the benefits of continuing the next step to the Fair Tax.” May I propose a Williamson’s Rule of Politics? Here it is: “Any plan that includes the words ‘educating the American people’ will fail.” Mr. Cain’s proposals are always bolstered by that economic boom he sees just around the corner, but he never is able to answer the question: What if the boom fails to show up on schedule? What then? And that is one important reason Herman Cain should not be the Republican nominee. (Based on my single encounter with Mr. Cain, at a meeting with National Review’s editors, I would have hesitated to hire him to run a pizza company, much less the country.)

But let’s take a look at 9-9-9 on its own merits. Mr. Cain says the proposal would be revenue-neutral. I have my doubts. The federal government took in about $2.2 trillion last year. Based on personal-income and business-income figures from the IRS, and consumer-spending figures from the Gallup survey, my English-major math suggests that a 9 percent tax on all of the above produces about $1.7 trillion in revenue, meaning that 2010’s $1.7 trillion deficit would have been more like a $2.2 trillion deficit — from calamity to catastrophe. If Mr. Cain’s team is building in some growth assumptions into the fiscal forecasts, they must be sunny indeed.

In any event, Mr. Cain has not spelled out in any detail a spending proposal that would allow the federal government to get by on $2.2 trillion, much less on $1.7 trillion. If the Tea Party stands for anything, it stands for smaller government, meaning lower spending. And yet the allure of magical thinking on taxes is so powerful that the tea-party favorite has given a great deal more detail about his tax proposals, with actual figures and everything, than he has about his spending proposals, which remain remarkably vague: Spending must be “reviewed with a keen eye and a red pen,” he says. Well, gee willikers, why didn’t I think of that. (Other than his pie-in-the-sky growth assumptions, my least favorite thing about Herman Cain is that his response to every challenge is to appoint a committee of smart guys to do the right thing. He seems incapable of appreciating the fact that moral failing is not the only reason Washington fails to do the right thing.) As I have argued before, the real danger of tax-cuts-and-growth utopianism is that it draws attention away from spending cuts, which is where the real action is needed. Mr. Cain is nibbling at that bait.

The 9-9-9 proposal also creates some perverse incentives. With business income taxed at 9.0 percent while dividends and capital gains are taxed at 0.0 percent, there is an excellent reason to pay out something approaching 100 percent of business income as dividends, or to hide it by “reinvesting” it in the business. I like dividends and am sympathetic to the case for giving them preferential tax treatment — a company that concentrates on paying a high dividend rather than on raising its share price probably is a better-behaved company, in most cases — but it is always and everywhere true that if government creates a tax shelter it will be exploited to maximum effect.

What about that national sales tax? Though I remain hesitant about imposing a federal sales tax, on both Burkean and prudential grounds, Andrew Stuttaford and others have argued persuasively that income shouldn’t carry the entire tax burden, and that consumption has to carry a piece, too. I can live with that. But Fair Tax enthusiasts ought to be ready to deal with the emergence of a very large black market in untaxed consumer goods — a 30 percent sales tax will ensure that. You may get to abolish the IRS, but the sales-tax enforcers might prove just as expensive and intrusive.

Which is to say: There is no easy way out of this mess. Cain’s 9-9-9 program and the Fair Tax might very well constitute improvements on the status quo, but neither is a substitute for comprehensive entitlement reform and deep cuts in discretionary spending, the sine qua non of serious fiscal-reform efforts.

via Nein! Nein! Nein! The wild world of Cainonomics.

Combined State and Local Sales Taxes: Here are the states with the lowest and highest sales tax.

Today we released a new report on local sales taxes, which updates a study we published in February. The new report updates the state and local sales tax rates across the country and ranks each state on its combined state rate and average local rate……………

MORE…..

via Combined State and Local Sales Taxes: Here are the states with the lowest and highest sales tax..

There is No Such Thing as a “Fair” Tax| The Post & Email

IS ANY TAXATION THE ANSWER?

by JB Williams, ©2011

Cartoon from 1933 regarding the argument about a sales tax vs. an income tax. Why have Americans accepted the imposition of many different taxes on their earnings?

(Jul. 14, 2011) — Nothing in life is more certain than death and taxes. But the notion that there is or will ever be anything fair about either of these life realities, is just plain foolhardy.

Ever heard the phrase – you can’t get blood from a turnip…? Sounds like a silly old analogy from days gone by, but it happens to remain true today. People who can’t pay taxes don’t pay taxes, and that’s why people, who can pay, will always pay for everyone. Fairness isn’t even part of the equation.

In his July 11 Part III of his Economic Vision statement, presidential candidate Herman Cain does his best to pitch the “Fair Tax” – a libertarian economic proposal that offers to replace the federal income tax with a national sales (consumption) tax.

via There is No Such Thing as a “Fair” Tax| The Post & Email.

JB Williams — There is no such thing as a fair tax

Ever heard the phrase – you can’t get blood from a turnip…? Sounds like a silly old analogy from days gone by, but it happens to remain true today. People who can’t pay taxes don’t pay taxes, and that’s why people, who can pay, will always pay for everyone. Fairness isn’t even part of the equation.

In his July 11 Part III of his Economic Vision statement, presidential candidate Herman Cain does his best to pitch the “Fair Tax” – a libertarian economic proposal that offers to replace the federal income tax with a national sales (consumption) tax.

The Fair Tax concept would replace a federal tax on gross income with a national sales tax on everything you purchase. The allure is the idea of no more withholdings from your paycheck and that idea is embraced by a lot of people who are sick and tired of working 1/3 of their job for the federal government and then watching the federal government waste their earnings and then some.

But the problems with a national sales tax are significant

• The tax rate would be at least 30% in order to deal with the insane level of federal spending

• A direct 30% tax on consumer activity will absolutely reduce consumer activity

• A consumer driven economy must have healthy consumer activity

• We would pay taxes…………………………

 

via JB Williams — There is no such thing as a fair tax.

Will You Ever Sell Your House E-mail on ObamaCare tax in 2013

Did you know that if you sell your house after 2012 you will pay a 3.8% sales tax on it?That’s $3,800 on a $100,000 home, etc.When did this happen? It’s in the health care bill.Just thought you should know.SALES TAX TO GO INTO EFFECT 2013 Part of HC Bill Why 2013? Could it be to come to light AFTER the 2012 elections?

via Will You Ever Sell Your House E-mail on ObamaCare tax in 2013.

Illinois Gov. Quinn Signs Off on Internet Tax, Arkansas Senate Follows Lead [Illinois Fattens Gov.]

The so-called “Main Street Fairness Act” attempts to force online retailers that aren’t based in the state to collect sales tax if they use in-state advertisers or other affiliates. The measure is a legally dubious run-around of current U.S. Supreme Court law under Quill v. North Dakota, which only permits a state to force a company to collect tax if they have a physical presence.

via Illinois Gov. Quinn Signs Off on Internet Tax, Arkansas Senate Follows Lead [Illinois Fattens Gov.].

Hidden Real Estate Sales tax in Health care bill – Surprise!

Hidden Real Estate Sales tax in Health care bill – Surprise!There are already at least 20 hidden taxes in the Obama Health care plan coming down upon us the next few years. So, along with rationed care for seniors and forced health insurance, we now find there is a Real Estate Tax snuck into the Health care plan.

You may ask, what in God’s green earth does health care have to do with Real Estate taxes??? Absolutely nothing, that is precisely why one got snuck in there…..I was forwarded this latest tax scheme by Van Hipp, President of American Defense International and the former Deputy Secretary of the Army under Bush senior and Ronald Reagan. He recommended the well known accountant and expert witness on tax matters, Paul Guppy who wrote a commentary on the various hidden taxes in the Spokesman Review paper, “Health Law’s Heavy impact.”Starting in 2013, not only will you pay the closing costs and real estate fee when you sell your house but now you will pay a 3.8% Sales Tax. So, if you sell your home for $400,000, perhaps wanting to down size if you are a senior you will pay $15,200 in Tax.

Here we have another assault on our seniors again. Many downsize their homes as retirement comes closer, so along with long lines and rationed care that is substandard, seniors and anyone will have to pay more tax on the home they just sold.

Excerpt

ANOTHER OBAMA and PELOSI NIGHTMARE: A TAX ON HOME SALES

09-23-2010 • Rense.com

ANOTHER OBAMA and PELOSI NIGHTMARE:

A TAX ON HOME SALES

Did you know that if you sell your house after 2012 you will pay a 3.8% sales tax on it? That’s $3,800 on a $100,000 home etc. When did this happen? It’s in the healthcare bill. Just thought you should know. SALES TAX TO GO INTO EFFECT 2013 (Part of HC Bill) REAL ESTATE SALES TAX So, this is “change you can believe in”? Under the new health care bill – did you know that all real estate transactions will be subject to a 3.8% Sales Tax? The bulk of these new taxes don’t kick in until 2013 (presumably after obama’s reelection). You can thank Nancy, Harry and Barack and your local Democrat Congressman for this one. If you sell your $400,000 home, there will be a $15,200 tax. This bill is set to screw the retiring generation who often downsize their homes. Is this Hope & Change great or what? Does this stuff makes your November and 2012 votes more important? Oh, you weren’t aware this was in the obamacare bill? Guess what, you aren’t alone. There are more than a few members of Congress that aren’t aware of it either (result of clandestine midnight voting for huge bills they’ve never read). AND, there are a few other surprises lurking. http://www.gop.gov/blog/10/04/08/obamacare-flatlines-obamacare-taxes-home Forward this article with the emailer below to every single person in your address book because an election is coming in November.