Wednesday, May 01, 2013

Yeah, What a GREAT Ideer This Is!



I'm bein' sarcastic, in case ya didn't notice, but the Heritage Foundation isn't:
The rule now, if you order from Amazon or any other website, is simple: Your items are taxed only if the retailer has a physical store or warehouse in the state where you live — a bricks-and-mortar presence, to use the industry lingo. If you live, say, in New York and you order from a retailer who is based entirely in California, you pay no sales tax.

That would change dramatically under the Marketplace Fairness Act. Every time you bought something online, you would be charged taxes you don’t have to pay now.

It’s worse if you are a merchant — and, let’s face it, with the rise of sites such as eBay, nearly all of us are at one time or another. It’s not just large retailers such as Amazon that would have to assess these taxes. Any retailer with more than $1 million in sales would have to collect sales taxes.
The relative simplicity of selling something online suddenly would get a lot more complicated. Sorting through the tax codes of 9,646 jurisdictions in the United States would be no easy task. At one per state, retailers would have to complete and file 46 state tax returns. Who wants to take a chance on making a tax-related mistake?

“How can we possibly know the tax rates in [those] jurisdictions?” said Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne. “In one jurisdiction, cotton candy is food; in another, it’s entertainment or candy.” Anyone who has ever tried to fill out a simple tax form knows how ludicrously complex it can get.
RTWT.  Call your congresscritters.

10 comments:

  1. I didn't have to watch the games last night (which I did--I've got that "Rabbit TV" app you see televised so one can watch channels throughout the country and get local feeds and not be dependent on local feeds) to know the Wings lost by absence of hockey post, lol. They just seemed "off their feed" for some reason. But HOW ABOUT THOSE OTHER TWO STEM-WINDERS! My two favorite teams both eaked-out wins in OT. I was especially pissed in the Blues game for the Blues letting the Kings score in last 31 sec to tie and then Kings seemed to have ALL the momentum in OT and then , in one of the most remarkable goals I've EVER seen, to have the Blues steal it short-handed during a Kings penalty power-play! If you didn't see it you should hit YT or Yahoo ports and watch--simply remarkable! My Hawks?....A disappointment also even tho they won--gonna have to play better than that if they want to advance, let alone win it all..

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    1. I watched the 'Hawks before the Wings dropped the puck and switched back to that game during commercials. You're right: the 'Hawks won by the skin of their teeth. I didn't think Minnesota were that good, especially since I watched more than a few of their games this year.

      I saw that brain-fart by Quick on the NHL highlights show. That was a REALLY dumb move on his part, especially since he played so well for the whole game before that bonehead move.

      You're right about the Wings, too. I don't know who those guys in white and red were last night and I have no ideer what they did with my Wings. They might as well have called themselves "turnovers R us." Slow, too.

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  3. PS: It was especially ironic in the Blues game that the winning goal came because of a mistake by the King's Goalie who had played LIGHTS OUT for the ENTIRE game up to that point.

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  4. Hey, whats up with the "blog administrator" bit? I didn't even MAKE a comment other than the two that posted, lol

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  5. Marketplace Fairness Act...my buttocks. Here's a novel idea, how about you lift the taxes on those bricks-and-mortar stores and let them make $$ like the internet folks do? Not to mention the fact that most bricks-and-mortar have a website receiving orders for their goods that allows them to stay open. So really, what is the goal here of Mr. Politician?

    Check out the Glockstore. Minimal physical stores, massive web presence.

    Wings had to shake off the jitters from the Kids. They will be fine on Thursday. If not, I will give them hell from row 7....

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    1. I find it amazing the asshats in Congress have time to pursue something NONE of their constituents want yet can't find the time to work on something like... say... a budget.

      I hope you're right about the Wings. They really looked bad last night.

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    2. All about revenue coming in. Once a tax is in place it never is lifted. We are still paying Federal phone and communications taxes that were temporarily set to fund the Spanish/American War of 1898. Congress figured only rich people would have phones, so who cares about the rich?

      The U.S. Boat Manufacturing Industry was destroyed in the 80's by a three tiered "Luxury Tax" indicated by an A, B or C sticker on your boat. Now there are only a few makers of any kind of boat and there is no competition left. The largest sailboat manufacturer in the U.S. is Beneteau, a French company.

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    3. @Darryl: Sick, innit?

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Just be polite... that's all I ask.