Regards,
The state sales tax issue is only the beginning of taxes to come. Why? Because there's still money on the table. Just be glad our President is going after taxes from foreign shippers or it could be worse from a competitive standpoint. While it took states a while to get their sales tax collection laws in place it may not take as long for them to get their income tax laws in place.
The immediate windfall for each participating state for Sales Tax is suddenly realizing sales tax on ALL internet transactions, meaning all those Sellers who dodged reporting internet sales or didn't have a Tax ID for wholesale purchasing and reporting will now have sales tax levied on their transactions. Now, as long as they don't get a PayPal or future eBay Managed Payments 1099K the government will be hard pressed to collect tax on their income from online sales ... THIS is where the future tax push is heading, and don't think anyone in state government hasn't thought this far ahead.
At some point the venues will be tasked by the state and or federal government to generate 1099Ks for ALL members of the venue and there will be a minimum dollar threshold and my guess is it will be well below the current $ 20,000 on PayPal. And why do I think this? Its because the states will do the math after a couple venue sales tax reporting cycles and compare that with their registered Tax ID citizens and see what I am guessing to be a rather large difference. All they have to do is some simple math to see that they are getting far and away more sales tax on what their Tax ID holders are reporting in actual sales ... this will gave them a general idea of the dollar amount many people are NOT reporting anything for either Sales Tax or Income tax purposes. In our state it means another 3.07% on the table for Income tax not to mention the Federal Government's cut on that increased income tax.
@equid0x wrote:
@southern*sweet*tea wrote:
@pjcdn2005 wrote:slightly off topic...What I find interesting is the many posts that I've seen over the years as to how buyers in other countries shouldn't complain about having to pay duty and tax on their ebay purchases when it's likely that many of those same posters never paid the user tax in their own state.
Yep.
Everyone wants the benefits without having to pay the price for those benefits. The money for the roads, the schools, the fire departments, the police departments, the county hospitals, etc. has to come from somewhere.
There's no such thing as a free lunch...someone (or everyone) has to pay for it.
I don't live in Michigan. Why should I pay for Michigan's roads, schools, fire departments, police departments, county hospitals, etc?
I agree. The sales tax you pay goes to YOUR state when you buy online - or more specifically the state you have the item shipped to. If you live in another state and ship something to great aunt Gussie in MI, you'll pay MI sales tax. Don't want to pay MI tax on aunt Gussie's gift? Send it to yourself, then mail it to her personally.
If you avail yourself of Michigan's roads by traveling there to personally deliver aunt Gussie's gift, and you stop and buy a soda from a MI gas station, the tax you pay goes to MI to help pay for the road you traveled on, among other things. Don't want to pay tax to MI, don't buy anything while you are there.
Seems pretty clear to me, unless I've totally missed the point of this whole thing. 
People are upset because now they won't be able to dodge the taxes they should have been paying all along. Nobody likes taxes. I don't like taxes. If you don't like the taxes your jurisdiction has, work to change them. Vote down amendments for higher taxes. Vote out the elected officials who brought forth those taxes. Until then, follow the law, and if you don't like the law, work to have it changed.
Where I live, every new tax or tax increase is placed before the voters. They are the ones who decide if a tax goes through, or is raised. So people DO have a choice - most just choose not to bother...and then they are the loudest complainers when they don't get what they want.
@southern*sweet*tea wrote:
@equid0x wrote:
@southern*sweet*tea wrote:
@pjcdn2005 wrote:slightly off topic...What I find interesting is the many posts that I've seen over the years as to how buyers in other countries shouldn't complain about having to pay duty and tax on their ebay purchases when it's likely that many of those same posters never paid the user tax in their own state.
Yep.
Everyone wants the benefits without having to pay the price for those benefits. The money for the roads, the schools, the fire departments, the police departments, the county hospitals, etc. has to come from somewhere.
There's no such thing as a free lunch...someone (or everyone) has to pay for it.
I don't live in Michigan. Why should I pay for Michigan's roads, schools, fire departments, police departments, county hospitals, etc?
I agree. The sales tax you pay goes to YOUR state when you buy online - or more specifically the state you have the item shipped to. If you live in another state and ship something to great aunt Gussie in MI, you'll pay MI sales tax. Don't want to pay MI tax on aunt Gussie's gift? Send it to yourself, then mail it to her personally.
If you avail yourself of Michigan's roads by traveling there to personally deliver aunt Gussie's gift, and you stop and buy a soda from a MI gas station, the tax you pay goes to MI to help pay for the road you traveled on, among other things. Don't want to pay tax to MI, don't buy anything while you are there.
Seems pretty clear to me, unless I've totally missed the point of this whole thing.
People are upset because now they won't be able to dodge the taxes they should have been paying all along. Nobody likes taxes. I don't like taxes. If you don't like the taxes your jurisdiction has, work to change them. Vote down amendments for higher taxes. Vote out the elected officials who brought forth those taxes. Until then, follow the law, and if you don't like the law, work to have it changed.
Where I live, every new tax or tax increase is placed before the voters. They are the ones who decide if a tax goes through, or is raised. So people DO have a choice - most just choose not to bother...and then they are the loudest complainers when they don't get what they want.
I'm not sure if it was this thread or another, but one of these tax conversations actually prompted me to go pull up the full text of the ruling from Lexisnexis and I actually sat down and read all of it.
So a couple of interesting points are in what was posted there... I would post it here but you generally need a membership to pull this stuff up there and I can't legally post it here for copyright reasons, although it would appear some fulltext copies might be available with the proper googling.
This is what I found:
1. The Supreme Court ruled solely on the point of reviewing the prior decisions about interstate collection of Sales Taxes.
2. The prior rulings did not necessarily illegalize the ability of individual states to collect sales taxes on out of state sales, but they did say the basis of the negative rulings at the time was that there was no legitimate way to hold sellers responsible for collection of those taxes in the context of the facilities available at the time (snail mail and checks).
3. The Court also stated that it was constitutionally legal for the states to levy the taxes, so long as they did not violate the interstate commerce clause of the constitution, and in particular, the portion which cites placement of undue burden on collection parties.
4. The Supreme Court states that they were willing to reconsider (effectively invalidate) the prior ruling on laws concerning interstate tax collection.
5. However, they also stated that this judgement would still need to be evaluated in reflection of the interstate commerce clause of the US constitution, that those burdens were not dismissed and that it was remanded to the lower courts to provide consideration to those issues in the context of the new ruling.
I would point out, that the state that started all this, Michigan, struck this law down not once(district court), but twice(appeals court), on the point that the law was a violation of the interstate commerce clause of the US constitution.
So, I went forward and searched for further cases concerning this law in the District Courts of the State of Michigan and could not find any.
In a nutshell, what's been determined is that the prior ruling citing that it was not possible to enforce the law has been overturned. However, since that was the only question posed by the State of Michigan to the Supreme Court, no other modifications to Judicial Precedent have been made, with the rider that the the Supreme Court may still believe that the collection violates the Interstate Commerce clause of the US Constitution and has specifically asked the lower courts to review that application on further cases.
However, no further legal challenges have yet been made. It appears that the Michigan Legislature went ahead and passed the law anyways.
So, in conclusion, the law has already been struck down twice by the Supreme Court, and twice by the State. Will this modification to precedent allow it to be declared constitutional now?
It will require another legal challenge to take place and likely be appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court for a final decision.
I still stand by what I have been saying all along. The tax collection out of state is illegal. It violates the interstate commerce clause on the basis of undue burden and interference.
If Congress can get together and pass a law creating some type of unified interstate sales tax collection mechanism then I think then, and only then, can it can be argued that collection of such taxes would not pose an undue burden and would not unduly interfere with interstate commerce.
