Posted on 09/24/2007 9:57:56 AM PDT by Graybeard58
Meeting last week in Wyandotte County, officials from 22 states had hoped to move closer to their goal of collecting sales tax on all Internet purchases nationwide.
At the end of the two-day meeting, they left empty-handed.
Right now, many Internet vendors collect sales tax voluntarily at the urging of some states, but not all do. The patchwork of sales tax laws currently presents a burden on interstate commerce that courts have ruled unconstitutional.
To solve the problem, several states — including Kansas — have joined the “Streamlined Sales Tax Project.” The member states are working to simplify sales tax laws to make Internet taxes easier to collect.
However, several large states are reluctant to join the sales tax project because they feel changing their laws would be a burden on their businesses and cause some local jurisdictions to lose revenue.
Here’s why:
The project’s rules require all delivered merchandise to be taxed according to where it is delivered, not where the store is located.
Kansas changed its sales tax law in 2003 to comply, resulting in complaints by small businesses that it created an expensive burden on them to calculate the amount of sales tax on each delivery sale.
The same concern has prevented other states, including Missouri, from joining the effort.
Ohio, Texas and many other large states still use a store’s location to determine the sales tax on delivered goods. Switching to a delivery rate, they contended, would hurt localities with businesses that do a lot of deliveries.
Without more states aboard, supporters say it will be difficult if not impossible to persuade Congress to allow all 50 states to collect taxes from Internet sales.
A compromise, supported by Texas and Ohio, was hammered out this summer and would allow a state to keep its current system of taxing delivered items based on a store’s location.
But it drew strong opposition at last week’s meeting from business groups that presented their own proposal.
The business plan would have continued the delivery rate rule with some modification, but allowed states to allocate those dollars to local governments any way they chose. It was approved on a 15-5 vote.
Ohio Rep. Bob Gibbs, who backed the compromise plan, noted that all 5 “no” votes came from states negatively affected by the current rule — Ohio, Utah, Washington, Tennessee and Michigan.
Gibbs said the county he represents would lose 50 percent of its local sales tax base if Ohio changed its law.
“That’s a nonstarter in our legislature,” Ohio state Sen. Ron Amstutz told the governing board. “You’ve left us between a rock and a hard place.”
Missouri Sen. Joan Bray of St. Louis said it would be difficult for Missouri to join the project under either plan.
Missouri revenue officials say it would be difficult to develop a system that computes sales tax for every address in the state.
About 7,500 governmental units in the U.S. have the ability to levy a sales tax; 2,400 of them are in Missouri. Kansas has between 700 and 800 local sales tax units.
Supporters of the national tax collection effort hope the current impasse is temporary and will try again in December during a meeting in Dallas.
“These are not easy issues,” said Joan Wagnon, Kansas secretary of revenue and newly elected president of the project’s governing board.
Soon they’ll tax the air we breathe.
Collecting sales tax on Internet sales is like trying to gather up all the planet’s sand with a colander.
They’ve already declared the air we exhale a pollutant, which probably gives the EPA some sort of legal jurisdiction in the future to eliminate pollutants. If you get my drift.
ping
Futile-tax-collection ping.
Methane too?
Soon they’ll tax the air we breathe.
I’m sure Kansas will try to, if at all possible.
I wish I could share your sentiment. I believe it is only a matter of time. The parasite class will stop at nothing in their evil quest to gain more and more of our hard earned income. I absolutely despise these parasites and their arrogance. They truly believe it is rightfully "their money."
Definitely between a rock and the hard place.
Decisions, decisions... allow greed and unrestrained taxation to continue locally or give that power to the feds?
Decisons... decisions...
Frankly, I don’t understand a word of this since I don’t live in the US of A. (All though I am a US citizen, it is very foreign to me…) : )
Aside from that, though, can these folks move off shore and provide their services to US folks and elsewhere and by-pass all this crap?
Thank you.
Many of the opponents of this nonsense were (or are) on the bandwagon to make sure all tobacco taxes are collected on internet sales.
Sorry folks, but what’s good for the goose is good for the gander....unless you oppose collection of tobacco taxes on internet sales you best not holler about tax collections on other internet sales.
I'm not sure how it works but at least my state (Michigan) was able to obtain the sales records from an out of state internet tobacco outlet (Dirtcheapcigs.com). Armed with those records, the state treasury went after the buyers demanding all the applicable taxes. And if such taxes were not paid by a certain date, they promptly sent penalty notices equaling %100 of the alleged taxes due...........
Well, we told them so, AGAIN.
YEAH! Tell ‘em, Doll! Bet none of the usual suspects show up in this thread, either.
I just had a round about this very subject with one a couple of weeks ago.
They never learn, they’re one-trick ponies. Any discrimination, taxation, demonizing, etc; is ok, as long as it concerns tobacco. Unfortunately, it’s all going to come home to roost shortly. ;^D
I love the little line on the state return where you’re supposed to voluntarily estimate how much sales tax you owe them due to internet purchases. Too funny.
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