Online Sales Tax And Buying Ancients

The sales tax cat is out of the bag and he's not going back in.

I've already had one online seller on Amazon try to charge me 8.25% sales tax on an unprocessed food item shipped to Texas. It took me 4 emails to get the tax removed.

From a consumer viewpoint, I used to go to a brick and mortar store to buy something and expected to pay a sales tax. If the store was in a different state than the one I lived, I wound up paying state sales tax in a state in which I wasn't represented. I also understand that my state depends on sales tax revenue to provide the services on which its citizens depend. So it seems perfectly logical that, as retail transactions move to the online realm, a way of states maintaining their tax revenues would emerge.

From the point of view of a small business owner, I also understand that needing to provide tax remittances to 45 states will be burdensome. On the other hand, that business owner derives benefits from online access (reach, lower fixed costs,etc.) that are presumably translating to higher profit. Without ebay, I never would have been able to sell the small volumes of things that I sell there, or I would have had to sell them off in bulk to a buyer near me, and made far less money.

The end of net neutrality did bring back the free and open internet. It was a hinderence to try and make it "fair". It was also very short lived and an example of great marketing to scare people. Everyone seems to either forget or be unaware of the fact that it didn't exist until very recently and was only around a couple years, the internet grew for decades without it and is better off without it

Going to be alot more than 50 jurisdictions (I've read even thousands!). States like NY can also tax by county/city. Going to be very difficult for mom and pop business's. Unfortunate ruling by SCOTUS to say the least.

In Illinois there are so many taxes on everything we are just used to them. Not sure but I think we have taxes on our taxes.

There are two different themes in the thread above. The OP was talking about the application of sales tax based on the location of the purchaser.

ebay manages this right now for international shipments. If you use the global shipping program and send out of country, then this service will calculate the correct tax and duty applicable to the shipment and make the appropriate remittance. As an individual vendor, you don't necessarily need to care about the tax unless you hit the taxation thresholds in your home state. It is a little different in Canada & Europe as GST/HST/VAT tends to be managed differently from a raw sales tax and needs to be managed by the vendor. The downside is that this service is very expensive and as a Canadian, I am reluctant to purchase from vendors who use the ebay global shipping program.

If the Supreme Court decision is extended by precedent past ND, I expect that it will become mandatory to use the sanctioned shipping program unless you as a vendor can register for and submit tax for all of the potential 50 states into which you may sell.

The second thread regarding Net Neutrality is different. The internet has developed to a point where it is a basic utility like gas, electricity or the phone. Imagine if AT&T partnered with United Airlines and the consequence was that anytime you called United you got through immediately but calling American Airlines you only connected 50% of the time and the line was full of static and almost unusable. That is what the loss of net neutrality means. It doesn't matter what traffic goes on the phone system as it is neutral... calling Dominos for Pizza, Ford vs. GM for a car service, or United Airlines vs. American Airlines to book a flight... the phone system shows no preference.

In our current world where the utility provider (AT&T) merges with the content provider (Time Warner) you have the potential for preferential treatment for the end to end integrated service and content provider. This will stifle innovation and new suppliers. Amazon, Facebook, Netflix et al. would never have grown to the extent they have without Net Neutrality... and their successors... the ones that are being developed in a basement or garage somewhere today will never be able to usurp the current incumbents without government intervention... remember this is why the government split Standard Oil and AT&T in the past... too much of an end to end monopoly putting competition and a free market place in jeopardy.

In terms closer to folks on this forum... Imagine if you get preferential treatment for ebay on Verizon... If you want to snipe and are on AT&T, it never happens but if you switch to Verizon, then sniping is easy. Doesn't make sense...

This can't actually be serious.

I was ready to let this go until this came about. That had absolutely nothing to d with their success. Amazon got their success form lightening fast "free" shipping for prime and having everything. Netflix made their own good shows and got good quality back. Facebook grew the most before it.

It gets old hearing these scare tactics from people that don't understand business and business practices and trying to credit a short lived experiment with the credit for those companies success just wow

I think we lost topic focus here.