Quote:
Originally Posted by Leon
As a small business owner, so far, I want to see how this plays out. There should have already been taxes being collected on many items. A lot of my ebay stuff has sales tax added. All (or almost all) of my Amazon purchases do.
This law could help the small, especially brick and mortar businesses, who get hurt by the current law. We shall see. I am generally never in favor of new taxes otherwise.
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Leon,
These aren't NEW taxes. States have had Sales AND Use tax laws in effect so that if the seller isn't required to collect the Sales tax, the buyer is supposed to report and pay the comparable Use tax on what they purchased. Very few people voluntarily do this. Just look back at the threads where people complain about having to pay Sales taxes on auction winnings from some AHs and not others.
It is exactly because of all those people that have not followed the law and properly calculated and paid the Use tax on their online and other such purchases that the states have had to resort to finally going after the large online retailers to make them start collecting it. To try going after all the individual buyers would be unbelievably complicated, difficult, and most likely political suicide for any state politicians who tried to get that going and backed such a plan. By going after the big online retailers instead, the states can get more revenue all at once than they would by trying to go after each individual buying online. And even though the individual consumers/buyers would still end up ultimately paying the sales taxes, the states and politicians have a little more cushion and less direct anger by not going directly against the individual buyers themselves.
On the state's side of things, as more and more people switch to online/internet buying, the states are losing out on Sales tax revenue they used to get from the brick and mortar stores. It is also helping to more quickly kill off many brick and mortar stores as they can't compete with online retailer prices. When the buyers know they aren't going to get charged Sales tax from an online vendor but, if they buy the exact same item from a store down the street from where they live, they know they are going to get charged sales tax at the store. So guess where the buyer is more likely to make their purchase from, especially the higher the price of the item they are looking to buy?
All the states are trying to do is figure out how to best get the current laws on their books complied with by the buyers, the majority of whom seem to always be trying to figure out how to get around paying Sales or Use taxes they actually owe.