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Posted on 06/20/2011 11:42:54 AM PDT by justlittleoleme
With sales tax revenue slumping more than 30 percent in most states between 2007 and 2010, lawmakers across the country are grasping for ways to collect those unpaid taxes. Retailers and lawmakers in several states have proposed ways to solve the problem, some with more support than others.
Internet retailers cite a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving catalog sales, Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, which ruled that states could require only companies that had a physical presence within the state to act as tax collector.
Last year, New York enacted a law that said Internet retailers' practice of paying commissions to marketing agents based within the state constituted a presence. Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Rhode Island and North Carolina quickly followed with similar laws.
Bills are pending in Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. Texas lawmakers passed such a measure, but Gov. Rick Perry vetoed it. Now legislators are trying to resurrect the bill by attaching it to a larger budget measure. The matter is now before a conference committee.
While the U.S. Supreme Court sided with online retailers in its Quill decision, the ruling also said Congress should pass a law standardizing sales tax collection under the Interstate Commerce Clause. Perry, the pro-business and states-rights Texas governor, said in his veto message that a national solution is the only way to settle the issue.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
“all this will do is force the companies to base themselves offshore and the money they make will be kept in foreign banks.
brilliant”
Exactly right. Even more than that, in the affiliate marketing world (of which I participate), there are marketers from all over the world. Lots in the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, even developing countries like the Philippines.
If these states keep passing these laws, the only thing it does is hurt the individual marketers within the states who can no longer be affiliates. Even if all 50 states passed laws like this, all Amazon would have to do is ban all U.S. based affiliate marketers (like they have in some states already).
Believe me, there are plenty of marketers around the world that would be more than willing to pick up the slack. Amazon and other “E-tailers” wont be hurt that much. But the states and federal govn’t will lose tax revenue because all that income will go to foreign affiliate marketers.
Government spending has increased!
They aren't "unpaid taxes."
They are "unsustainable spending."
This the same kind of (idiotic) mentality that argues that "tax cuts must be paid for."
So far, not a penny has been collected from any of these bills. Companies like Amazon and others at which they were aimed never had real physical presence in these states.
These bills tried to pretend that any “affiliate” web site that received a commission for forwarding a link to Amazon or other actual business was a “physical” presence.
Amazon and the others promptly responded by firing all of their affiliates in these states. As a consequence, several thousand small businesses either folded or moved to other states. The net effect was substantial revenue loss by all of the states that passed these bills.
BARF!
Having shut down every other form of commerce...the BOrg are now going to finish things off.
All your moneys are belongs to us.
“When I was a child I did childish things like spend more than I should have, more than I could afford.”
Your parents need a good whipping!
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