Pay more for online purchases? Marketplace Fairness Act 2013!

[sellersm]

This sounds like a page from Atlas Shrugged!! http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...line-purchases

In another brilliant move aimed at destroying the few table scraps of economic freedom which remain in the Land of the Free, a bipartisan group of esteemed lawmakers in the United States Congress has introduced the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013.
Remember the golden rule of legislation: the more noble the name of the law sounds, the more disastrous its results. This one is no exception.

Generally speaking in the United States, retailers must collect state and local sales tax at the point of sale. When you walk into a Main Street shop in Anytown, California, you’ll pay the sticker price PLUS hefty city and state sales taxes that can easily be 10% or more.

But if you purchase goods through the mail from a company in, say, Nevada or Oregon, either through the mail or online, no sales tax is charged. This goes back to a 20+ year old US Supreme Court decision which exempted out of state companies from collecting sales tax.

Well, according to the intellectual luminaries in Congress, local retailers are at a disadvantage, effectively having to charge 10%+ more for their products than an out-of-state retailer.

And by God, they’re going to do something about it. After all, it’s just not ‘fair’ that mom and pop retailers on main street have to charge sales tax, while mom and pop retailers on the Internet do not.

The Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013 aims to level the playing field by requiring online retailers to collect some sort of sales tax from their customers. Needless to say, if the bill is passed, it will be the customer who ends up paying the price.

The thinking on this is completely absurd.

One of the primary reasons people shop online is because online retailers have reduced overhead costs, and these cost savings are passed along to consumers in the form of lower prices.

So if the idea is to ensure that brick and mortar retailers don’t suffer any competitive price disadvantage, why not just regulate prices altogether? Or even better, why not just abolish sales taxes altogether?

That’s because this bill has absolutely nothing to do with fairness, and everything to do with the government taking more of your money. This bill constitutes STEP 1 on the road to a national sales tax, which, given the state of national and state balance sheets, is a financial inevitability.

It’s the most insidious form of deceit – creating new taxes masquerading as ‘fairness’. It’s a total fraud, brought to you by the same people who tell us that there is no inflation, and that we must sexually assault airline passengers in order to protect ourselves from men in caves.

Have you hit your breaking point yet?

[KestrelBike]

Gettin there!

[Ingman]

They are fixing the wrong end of the problem. It would also be fair to abolish all sales taxes, and it would do wonders for the economy.

[ChunkyMonkey]

&*(#^$*(&^#$*(^%*($#*&($#(&($&$#)(*^$&!@#$&*%#$()# &)$(*$@)%*$%*#$*)@#&*%)@#$(*@ !!!!!

[Teufelhund]

Ongoing lobby. This isn't the first iteration. This is largely sponsored by your local and favorite Wal-Mart, for the record. That corp has been lobbying hard to apply sales tax to online sales; it's their axe to grind against amazon.com. Because clearly, Wal-Mart is being injured here by "having" to charge that extra 10% for their Chinese Crap that comes in free from tariff... ooops.

Ironically, the same "logic" which supports this bill would also make it reasonable to make big box-store outlets raise their prices to make it "fair" for the mom & pop shops to be able to compete with them.

[HBARleatherneck]

wait until they start doing the stamp tax on emails. they have been trying that for years too.

[lowbeyond]

This is the one where the State says, well you see here out of state company. I know that you get zero services from our State/local government, but you must collect taxes for us because ummm you know, we have more guns then you, and are more willing to use them, and hey that is a nice warehouse you got, shame if something were to happen to it...

[TS12000]

And then you'll need a registration number and tax id to sell your own property via sites like eBay and craigslist, and since cash is the equalizer that helps domestic terrorists sell coffee tables to each other without giving uncle Sam his cut we'll just get rid of that too...federally watched transaction cards for everyone, yay!

Sorry, had to go full tinfoil

[Circuits]

The supreme court decision relieves online, phone and mail-order sellers from having to collect sales tax on goods delivered outside their city/county/state. It does not exempt those sales from sales tax, it exempts the seller from being forced to collect it for a different state/county/city.

The BUYER is legally obligated to remit the proper taxes on such purposes to their city/county/state in the form of a "USE tax" equal in rate to the sales tax rate their local sellers are obliged by the state to collect. The problem is all you tax cheats not paying your use taxes, and the city/county/state having no organized means to enforce the payment of those taxes.

[HBARleatherneck]

. The problem is all you tax cheats not paying your use taxes, and the city/county/state having no organized means to enforce the payment of those taxes.

no the problem is they want to collect money they dont rate. they will just blow it on crap anyway. in no way bettering the populace, just growing the government. starve em out.