If you bought a dildo in Denver, the government must legally be told Online retailers in America will soon be required by law to disclose to state governments what purchases their customers – meaning, you – have made. That extraordinary situation is the result of a long-running legal case that the US Supreme Court this week refused to hear. This means a decision by the Tenth Circuit [PDF] …
Remarkably, it was probably easier to sell stuff to people in the 70s than it is now. Ok, so all the consumer has to do is press a few buttons and try not to forget their password. But as a would-be entrepreneur, the moment you go near the internet, you have a world of pain - the list of people you have to get permission from, report to and pay a cut to gets longer and longer and longer.
My next product will be only available to people who send postal orders to my home address, which won't be listed on the internet.
But as a would-be entrepreneur in America, the moment you go near the internet, you have a world of pain - the list of people you have to get permission from, report to and pay a cut to gets longer and longer and longer.
Fixed it for you. To be honest, I no longer think that's a bad thing (the US" bit, I mean) because it appears that avoiding pesky legal constraints to make money is something hammered into them young and I much rather deal with people that have *some* semblance of legal framework imposed upon them. It means you don't have to continuously watch your back as a consumer.
Anyway, it is now abundantly clear that "Land of the free" has about as much meaning as Trump's campaign promises, and soon those two will meet. Uh oh...
You cant even some things through amazon. I bought some 100L pans for brewing here in the UK and found the exact same pans for 1/3rd the price on Amazon.fr. Tried to get some of those - they wont take a UK credit card - unless you VM from somewhere in France. Never got to the bottom of that - all the correspondence was in french and I never learned the bugger.
"tried selling anything 'digital' in Europe lately?"
Have an upvote. Whoever pushed the idea of abolishing the minimum VAT threshold for cross-border VAT is either an imbecile or was unduly influenced by those with a vested interest in killing off competition from upcoming small businesses. I wonder which is more likely?
"It's almost like they only want us to buy through Amazon."
I think some of the regulations have been made with Amazon in mind and were actually trying to restrict them but the result ended up to Amazon's benefit as many other sellers find it difficult to implement. e.g. cross border VAT on digital downloads.
'stereotypical' even, unless we are indeed talking about 1970's Amstrad stereos.
Why not have every single device IoT enabled? That way the incoming Russian US government gets to know everything about everyone, including what setting bored Colorado housewives set their 'personal' devices to for maximum satisfaction. Of course the humiliation in knowing that your bank was DDOS'd by several million dildos would be unbearable for some.
So, a state with Theresa May's intrusiveness without Theresa May? Is that an improvement or not?
When I read the headline for this article this morning, ' A Dildo in Denver' it sounded like a title for a for a Woody Allen movie but would probably have had too much action in it.
Let's say 100 million?
At projected 62.6 billion USD of Colorado State expenditures for 2017, this means you could run the Colorado State for a WHOLE 12 HOURS!
Whoppee-ka-yee!
Interesting, as I recollect from when I lived in Washington state plenty of people would take cars or vans down to Oregon when they were buying fridges, sofas, even cars. Thus they avoided WA sales tax and saved a packet. I don' t recollect there being any attempt at the border to check you weren't bringing a fridge in the boot.
I grew up in Vancouver, WA (Right on the other side of the river from Portland). Too many people were doing that, so you now have to present a state ID card on any purchases over a certain amount, if you don't have an Oregon ID card they'll tack sales tax onto the bill.
Nowadays, having such an ID card is why Washingtonians tolerate anyone from Portland (We apologize to any Portlanders that aren't pretentious hipster cocks, but the fact is that such people are now a minority.)
>Maybe different rates for different products?
Hmmmm, not sure here. Yes, you have different rates for different products. But systems usually track that by entering the tax jurisdiction's own tax codes. i.e. do you really think Colorado's tax system is going to parse products' descriptions?
if descr.match("dildo") then 5.5%
Upvoted you, you're on to something. But if the goal is to collect sales tax, raw descriptions aren't that useful, except to forensically audit evaders. In which case, they could just encrypt them until the tax agency gets an access warrant*. More useful would be a dump of all the descriptions vs the attributed sales tax code and that not even purchaser-specific, but vendor-specific. In order to see if a vendor isn't systematically under-charging tax.
So here they're using a privacy sledgehammer to kill a fly that isn't even in the same room.
* not really a warrant - tax agencies are above needing those, of course - but at least initiates a formal audit
More useful would be a dump of all the descriptions vs the attributed sales tax code and that not even purchaser-specific, but vendor-specific.
That's what we have in NZ with our GST (Government Standardised TheftGoods and Services Tax), which is a flat 15%.
You come to me with $ and you buy product. I tell government that product was sold for $. Nothing about who it went to or anything. If you use a credit or other card, I put the copy away for 7(?) years in case of an audit, otherwise no one knows it was you who brought the product.
There's no need for the tax agents to know who brought what, only who sold what.
How can you believe that? It works in NZ (and everyone else) as long as there is no border crossing. It is a given where the customer is from (local) but if not local then different rules apply. They still do not need to know who the customer is but they do need to know where they come from. ["they" are the various tax officials]
Now you know to value librarians. Many have been jailed (or worse) for refusing to divulge who borrowed which book.
Because USA is the only country in the world stuck in the 18th century - before the invention of VAT.
It will also stay there, because if it switches to VAT there will be a great disturbance in the Accounting, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. With VAT all the parasites living on the medieval tax code will end up without a job. Said parasites have enough lobbying power to ensure VAT never happens in the USA. Truly - best laws money can buy.
Hawaii has a VAT - though they call it a General Excise Tax - and it's an absolute PITA - my mom is a crafter there - makes kid's masks out of marine vinyl and she's expected to tax everything she sells at 4.15% - 4% for the state and she gets to keep the .15% as a 'deputized' tax collector, though as it's a tax applied at every level of sales - from raw materials, supplies to the final cost of wholesale and retail, it's actually significantly higher once it gets to the end consumer.
But hey, they have a great welfare system on the islands.. and milk at well over 6 dollars a gallon.
I'm not going to claim to know anything about Hawaiian tax arrangements, but with the Aus GST and British VAT, if you buy raw materials to turn into a salable product you get to claim back the tax you paid.
So if you buy raw materials worth $1 and 10% of that is tax (so 10c) and you then sell the final product for $10, $1 of that would be tax, and 90c would go to the government since you claim back the 10c from your raw materials.
You might want to suggest your mum goes and talks to a tax accountant if she is not claiming anything back... Sounds like she's doing it wrong...
Sales Tax in the USA works different than the VAT, which certain people and groups have been lobbying for to replace the maze of regulations currently in effect.
Each state has to know what was purchased in order to determine whether it is a taxable sale or not and at what rate according to that states laws. The alternative is that every e-seller has to have a whole new department just to deal with figuring out how to apply each states sales tax statutes.
Before this entire furball gets sorted out don't be surprised if the states where a sale ~originates~ try to get themselves cut in for full sales tax ~as well as~ the state where the recipient lives. All this decision has done is make more work for the courts going forward as the state taxing authorities are now the Camel With His Nose In The Tent.
There's a simple solution to this - aside from that fact that this is interstate commerce and therefore a Federal issue - point out to the NRA that this means the government will have a computer record of all gun sales. Essentially this is illegal, the government is only allowed to keep records of gun purchases on index cards - federal law prohibits computer records of gun sales.
You are of course aware that you can't legally buy a gun on the internet regardless of what the ban everything1 crowd says, right? The sale still has to go through a FFL in your state and you still have to fill out form 4473. That's been true for quite some time since interstate sales were tightly regulated as a result of the JFK assassination.
1 Bloomberg and company have tried to ban everything from guns to large sodas to plastic bags and EPS fast food containers. He'd much rather give folks a list of what they are allowed to do or have.
That may be the "law" but it's more honored in the breach than the observance - it's very easy to get around it - I have a friend with a room full of guns purchased via conversations and meetings in parking lots. Another friend bought an AK-47 in bits and assembled it himself - completely legal, no records anywhere, and no serial number. Another guy I know collects machine guns and has a licence for them.
Posting anonymously because in my state it is an offence to say that someone owns a gun.
it's very easy to get around it - I have a friend with a room full of guns purchased via conversations and meetings in parking lots.
Well, by definition, laws only really apply the the law abiding. Leland Yee wasn't really concerned about whether his buddy "Shrimp Boy" passed a background check either.
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Think you need to cite your source on this. The ATF has a master DB of trace data that other agencies can request research against (see the Tiahrt Amendment). It is only the original record that is required to be destroyed with 24 hours, and that record is almost always electronic.
"Essentially this is illegal, the government is only allowed to keep records of gun purchases on index cards"
I didn't know that, but was thinking along similar lines for retailers as an "act of civil disobedience" whereby they print off an invoice each qualifying sale which must be reported and post it off to the relevant tax authority. Big retailers with the cash available and who REALLY want to make the point could send each one individually. Everyone else can just send a package at the end of each reporting period. I doubt very much that the reporting methods have been fully specified down to the level of "must be filed electronically in this exact format".
In some places, COMMUNITIES can add on a fractional amount for LOCAL sales tax. California, for instance, is a patchwork of varying sales tax rates, from (IIRC) 6 - 10%. Just wait until every community wants to make sure that they get their cut, and every local busybody can see what you're buying!!
Fun times ahead!
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