Proposed Sales Tax on Online Shopping Threatens Adult Sites
 

Yikes!

You think BIGGIE would still be singing "Im going going back back to cali cali" if he was alive today?


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Proposed Sales Tax on Online Shopping Threatens Adult Sites

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Deficit-ridden California is considering levying sales tax on online purchases, including membership in adult sites.

Gov. Gray Davis vetoed a similar bill in 2000, wary of sending the wrong message to an emerging medium. At that time the state was flush with a pre-9/11, pre-energy crisis treasury. Now, as the state faces a $35 billion deficit, the potential revenue is looking more and more tempting in the face of the alternative: cutting social programs.

"We can no longer ignore an entire segment of the retail marketplace," said Pat Leary, lobbyist for the California State Association of Counties. Online shopping in California could generate $200 million in tax revenue.

Collecting taxes would be tricky, as existing law mandates only businesses with physical locations, or "nexuses", in the state can collect taxes. Brick-and-mortar businesses, such as Barnes & Noble, which has both a web and a physical presence in California, are already allowed to levy taxes on in-state buyers.

The National Governors' Association reports that its members sliced $13 billion from state programs last year. Though lawmakers approved a moratorium on e-commerce taxes through November, 2003, the potential revenue from web site taxation might be difficult to resist.

Fpr a related story, click here:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/techno...oph eds%2Dhed

Just a matter of time before all of the states start doing that...

Epoch and the other billing companies might need to move their Billing departments up to Oregon, Alaska or one of the other states without a sales tax...

Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon are the only 5 US States without a general sales tax.

Any one of those would be a great place for a billing company :)

No can do as long as the Feds have it under a moratorium... or so they have said. And Dubya has also repeated a couple of times that he will continue to sign that into being each time it runs out.

Isn't that also being reviewed by Bush's court... errrr the Supreme Court?? Maybe Davis is going to secede!! :1orglaugh

Mmm Who the fuck is Bush? Fuck him and his taxes - Next Iceland will be inventing some net tax, but who gives a fuck?

I can see very good reasons we never agreed to give up that DNA sample, sperm count and fork out $750 to a US processor.:)

It's only a matter of time:Graucho

The internet is too much of a living organism -- there's no way for a website to know if a consumer is from CA if they are surfing anonymously... I don't see how they could possible do this... unless the products are being delivered to CA, in which case that would not affect our biz... As for people doing physical biz in CA online -- they would probably leave the state or go out of biz... It seems like a pointless idea to me...

Bunch of hot-air bullshit... It'll never happen.

sales tax is a tax for the 50's, not now. there's just too many problems, especially with the internet being a larger part of retail sales every year.

Get with the program.....The internet is an evolving marketplace, and changes WILL be happening, and a sales tax will be 1 of them. It's a business just like anyother mainstream business, so a tax is inevitable........sad but true:(

The internet is anonymous for surfers -- and if a biz has problems w/ CA or the USA -- they will just move that operation offshore...

I'm not worried about this even 1%.

The internet is only anonomous for surfers untill they actually PAY for something, just like a person browsing through a store like walmart is anonomous untill they actually purchase something... See the correlation?

Ummm - are my maths a bit bad or are theirs? $200 million is a tiny drop in $35 <i>billion</i> - sounds like a crock of shite

i charge taxes on goods only from my states,

i think you should only tax when its something tangible
rather than something virtual,, i don't know any sales tax
applied to any type of non-merchandise items

Sales tax across interstate lines has been an issue for years in certain businesses.

Take furniture for instance, which IS a physical product. Now most people who are buying furniture realize they can buy it from North Carolina, where a ton of it is made, and have it shipped to their house. Not only do they get a screaming deal, they also pay shipping costs instead of sales tax.

For the last dozen years at least, certain states, namely Michigan, Maryland, Florida and New York, have been trying to force NC stores to collect and remit sales tax to them.

Still hasn't happened, and that's on physical products. States cannot pass laws that supercede the federal definition of something, or perhaps I should say they cannot enforce such laws, since appeals court at some point is federal and interstate commerce is regulated by the ICC, a division of the federal government.

It's possible right this minute that the state your checks are wired to could force you to collect and remit sales tax on sales to consumers in your state -- it's highly unlikely that cc processors, as service bureau type businesses, could be forced to remit to any state -- they are simply a collection agency, and for a state to force them to remit, they would also have to look at other collection companies, like credit bureaus who also do collections, and would have to attempt to make them remit sales tax on collections they did in the state, regardless of the product as well.

My bet is on a national sales tax if there is one -- HOWEVER, I don't think alot of states are going to go for that -- then you have one regulated rate, one federal body overseeing the payouts and one set of rules across the board. States that have high tax percentages, collect on all goods, etc, are NOT going to want to cede control of their intake to a federal agency...

oh shit don't even start that,, it damn near scared me when i heard thier legislation to have a national sales tax and just eliminate income taxes all together,

but the ones that suffer the most are the middle and lower wage earners like myself :)

sales taxes should be removed and the revenue from them be shifted to income tax. you'll see more business going offshore and also american businesses that are forced to collect taxes will be put at a disadvantage. sales taxes in the current environment is just plain stupid.

Anonymous ends when you put your name, address, and zip code into a signup form. Your zip code coupled with your credit card pretty much signifies whether or not you're from California and you're purchasing something.

Btw, Grey Davis is a flaming fucking idiot.

How can you even say that?
If you don't earn much, you can't buy much.
The higher wage earners make more money and therefore buy more (and more expensive) toys...
Besides, if I buy a loaf of bread and pay 15% tax on it, and Bill Gates buys a loaf of bread and pays 15% tax on it... what's the problem?

I hate that motherfucker.

there is alot of stuff that both the poor and the rich all need,

BTW, their isn't tax on groceries anyways at least in my city/state

no tax on groceries here either.

The logistics of collection the way they are talking will never work. Compliance will be impossible. Their best bet would be to do it like they scam on phone bills and bury a flat rate surcharge tax on phone bills / cable bills where someone has a net access account. That's the only thing that would be simple to generate revenues and each state would be able to scam their money off the main bell telco's and cable providers.

Somebody needs to shoot him in the face. (davis)

the problem is the lower wage earners can barely get by while bill gates has more money than he'll ever need.

I would have no problem with a national sales tax instead of an income tax, and I would have even less of a problem with a flat national income tax than the current system.

While I realize that a ton of cpas and tax attorneys would be out of work, the multi-million line US tax codes would no longer apply and there wouldnt be any room for bitching.

If it were 10% then a guy making a hundred bucks puts in 10 dollars and a guy making a hundred thousand puts in 10 thousand... what is wrong with that?

As for guys who make less paying more on goods with the sales tax, explain that to me? If you are spending 100 and the tax was 10% then you'd be paying ten bucks. If you were spending 100,000 then you be paying ten thousand...

The whole idea is absurd. Sales tax or no sales tax, there is no way in hell Grey Davis can come up with $35 billion from that source alone, and he certainly can't do it before the end of January when the fiscal budget for 2003 is due. Maybe he should call up our gov and have a little chat.

Apparently there is a law on the books that US states are not allowed to run on a deficit budget (funny that the Feds, those 4.2 TRILLION dollar deficit wisemen, made that law). Here in Colorado, the governor has been scrambling to shave $135 million off the proposed budget by cutting non-essential state jobs and some other things. Fortunately, he's a "no new taxes" kinda guy, and he seems to be sticking by his guns so far.

I guess I don't understand how a state with a population the size of California's can fail to generate enough money to meet their budget in the first place... boggles the mind.

Damn, this shit sounds bad. BRB calling my mom at matrixcontent

Davis was a million times better than the alternative in the last election. Simon was an anti-environment, anti-gay, anti-porn, anti-choice, anti-free speech, religious fucking idiot.