On Fri, 08 Apr 2011 12:19:12 -0400, Harryk
wrote:

Frogwatch wrote:
A friend and I were discussing the state budget and he advocated a
sales tax on internet sales.
Sales taxes are supposed to be to fund infrastructure related to the
company but if the company is not in the state where the purchaser is
located, then it is simply another tax for no purpose.

It is often said that internet sales compete unfairly with local brick
and mortar stores. I do not think this is true very often. Most of
the time, if you are going to purchase something, you want to see it
first so you would prefer to go to a local vendor. If the local
vendor either does not have the item or is so inconvenient as to
discourage a sale, then you buy online. If you know exactly what you
want and the local vendor charges too much you buy online and you save
the gas it would take to go to the local vendor. So, this idea of
unfair competition is simply a myth.

How would a company deal with an internet sales tax, badly I am sure.
Can you imagine having to report sales to 50 different states and even
then some cities charge their own tax. The paperwork alone would
drive some companies out of business. So much for job creation.


Translation: "I don't want to pay any taxes so I can have as free a ride
as possible as I use what society has made available for me."

We charge sales tax to customers who live in California. For those
outside of California, we don't charge sales tax. There's been a
history of not charging tax for items purchased outside one's state,
Internet or not. If this is going to implemented, it would need to be
across the board, not just for Internet sales. I believe it would
probably hurt sales in a break-in period, then things would reach a
steady state again. It would be quite a hassle but not an
insurmountable one.

I think this isn't the time to tax individuals more, which is what
this would do. We want people to buy. I'm not as concerned about the
effect on business for the long term, esp. if this were enforced
equally among the states, but that puts it at the Federal level. There
hasn't been much appetite for raising taxes.