Just call me a lawbreaker, criminal, tax cheat. Good thing my readership is so limited or I might not have such a bold confession. Today bet 99% of my neighbors are law breakers also.
Currently there is a debate in congress over requiring on line retailers to collect and remit sales tax by a customer’s address. I am as anti-tax as they come, in this country we tax your income, your expenditures, and your assets, so avoiding a tax is almost a citizen’s American Duty right? What I am trying to make clear is I am not a tax and spend guy, I want smaller government and I want to pay less taxes.
My first reaction to the Federal requirement for online retailers to collect sales tax was nay!, don’t!
A sales tax is a tax on the purchaser and we should remember that fact. Most jurisdictions that require a sales tax, require its citizenry to disclose items purchased without sales tax and pay the local tax directly. Additionally most of these require if you travel to another taxing district to buy something and their tax is lower than if you had bought it in your home town you are to report that purchase and pay the remaining tax. In other words current law requires the purchaser to disclose and insure that the local tax or its equivalent is paid on taxable purchases brought back into their home town. Say I travel to Denver and buy a washing machine, current law requires the merchant in Denver to collect his local tax, I pay it before I leave with the merchandize. Upon taking it home I am supposed to calculate the local tax, subtract what I paid in Denver and remit the balance to my local taxing authority…. Yeah that works… Currently the same is true for online purchases, if I buy something and am charged less than my local sales tax rate I owe that difference.
I live in a rural area where there is not an abundance of shopping so I use the internet for lots of purchases, seed for the garden, running shoes, two bikes, a special size washer and dryer, music, games, coffee, and I will continue to make such purchases. I bet I use the internet much like my Grandparents used the Montgomery Ward catalog, not to avoid taxes but to buy things that are just not available locally only because of the small size of this rural market.
Sales taxes are truly different than most taxes we pay, they are usually voted on by those being taxed, and benefit that same community. We don’t send our sales tax money to fight wars around the globe or to pay salaries of over staffed offices in Washington. Unlike my Social Security Tax, locally we could stop sales tax the second we decided to do without some local services like a police force, EMT service, or the city parks I enjoy. These taxes are not even a tax on a business, they are a tax on the consumer, the people who voted to pay such a tax.
Because one state cannot enforce its laws on another, and congress is given the right by our constitution to govern trade between the states it does fall to them to find a solution. The current bill is not a new tax, nor an adjustment of tax rates, nor does any new money flow to the federal government, it is an effort to insure that the laws in each respective state are enforced. Laws like those where I live, passed sometimes with my vote but at least passed by a majority of those living in my small town. The sales taxes are due my city no matter where I made a purchase, that’s how we voted. But it is one that takes considerable effort for the average citizen to comply.
The only argument that has any credibility with me is that “requiring businesses to comply with 1000’s of taxing jurisdictions could be cumbersome”. But that seems a stretch in such an electronic age as ours. If this is your argument, are you telling me that there is not software available to link to your online store that will calculate the sales tax correctly and send payment on your behalf?… if not I know a business opportunity! Seriously, I can negotiate a hotel price, buy overstocked merchandize, trade stock, buy gold and find the cheapest price on my colorful Asics, seems you are saying I can do all this except pay my sales tax online. Now if your online business is so small that it can’t afford such software, I think there are a few cities or states that just might underwrite your need.
Or (back to my true conservative roots) we could just do away with sales taxes altogether … yeah like that will happen
I don’t even know where to pay unpaid sales tax, do you? There are only two reasons I am not in jail, one is there is not enough sales tax revenue to build a jail big enough for all us law breakers and second the judge would likely be right there with us. I think it is time we made this easy.
This week proverb.. sometimes in arguing a point there is a lot of self-discovery, sometimes ignorance is lots cheaper.
David
