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from the death,-taxes,-and-'this-causes-cancer-in-the-state-of-California' dept.
New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is currently unhampered by the constraints of two party rule, has announced details of the state's new budget plan.
Some highlights include:
- Drivers into busy sections of Manhattan will pay a 'congestion charge'
- Single use plastic bags banned across the state
- Closure of up to three state prisons
- Eliminating cash bail for misdemeanor and nonviolent felony arrests
- A permanent 2% cap on local property taxes
- Increase in Public Education funding by 1bn
- A new 'Mansion Tax' on homes over $25 million
- A new internet sales tax on market providers
The Internet Sales Tax will affect companies that are marketplace providers no matter where they are located that have more than 100 sales and over $300k in total sales in the past year to New Yorkers.
The tax will
require third-party retail sites – like Amazon, eBay and Etsy – to collect and remit sales taxes when a buyer in New York purchases something from a retailer on their site. The measure would make marketplace providers collect New York state sales tax at its normal rate of 4 percent plus local sales tax, which varies based on location – such as 4.5 percent for New York City, or 4 percent for some upstate counties.
Similar measures have been blocked in previous years by groups such as tax-averse Republicans, The New York Conference of Mayors and Municipal Officials (NYCOM) and the New York Association of Towns.
Constraints on internet taxation were clarified in a recent supreme court ruling which determined "that states may collect taxes on internet sales even when the purchases are made from out-of-state retailers" making new taxes like this inevitable.
While New Yorkers will pay additional tax on purchases, adding state and multitudes of different local sales taxes on purchases is going increase costs on these sites, which will be passed on to sellers and inevitably purchasers as well.
Currently 19 states do not collect internet sales taxes, and 5 (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon) do not collect sales tax at all.
State Internet Sales Tax guide here.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @03:28AM (15 children)
It's not that hard. Point of Sale software has supported this for decades. For example, if you buy an item in one tax jurisdiction in NY State, but have it delivered to another, you pay the local sales tax for the delivery destination. It's not rocket science.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 02 2019, @04:23AM (2 children)
Consider for a moment if you would what this means to small shops/sites who do not have anything remotely resembling PoS systems or any form of payment software whatsoever instead of just considering how much money it will get you from the pockets of the big, evil corporations. If, for instance, SoylentNews had to pay sales tax on subscriptions, I would have spent the morning blocking all of NY in our firewalls instead of fishing. We'd have had no choice. We don't collect your address and we're not going to start, so we couldn't legally do business with anyone in NY.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @05:59AM (1 child)
From TFS:
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 02 2019, @12:07PM
Fair nuff on SN. Doing $300K in NY sales is still piddly as hell though. That's gross not net. A mom and pop site that barely keeps the doors open and a roof over the heads of the owners could gross $300K in NY pretty easily and still feel a damned significant bite from having to pay $whoever to keep up with all the local tax rates that can and do change at the drop of a hat. It's damned sure not something they're capable of doing themselves, so you're essentially forcing a second, non-governmental tax on them as well.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday April 02 2019, @09:02AM (10 children)
OK, here's a pad and pencil. I'll be nice and allow you a calculator as well. I call you on the phone from somewhere you have literally never heard of in your life and order $100 worth of goods. Now, all you have to do is find out the tax rates for my state, county, and town, keeping in mind that different types of goods may have a different rate and today may or may not be a tax free day (for a subset of town, county, and state) for other types of goods. Good luck on your mission 006 and 3/4.
This all strikes me as highly questionable since you and your business are located entirely outside of my town, county, and state's legitimate jurisdiction.
Even if your business is a bit larger and you have software that can actually work that out from a database, how frequently do you figure you'll need an update considering that every town, county, and state will consider itself free to change the tax rates and rules at any time but probably will not consider itself responsible for sending out notices of change to businesses across the country?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 02 2019, @12:12PM (8 children)
Yeah, that's been bothering me as well. An Internet business in say, Delaware, can thumb its nose at the EU with impunity more or less but has to put up with NY and CA's every moronic law? What the shit?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday April 02 2019, @07:07PM (5 children)
Once upon a time, the various state and local tax laws placed the onus on the buyer resident in the jurisdiction to report internet and mail order purchases and pay the tax in cases where the seller had no presence in the jurisdiction. That was fair enough, but the rate of reporting was near zero.
Of course, it is reasonable enough to require companies with an actual physical presence in the jurisdiction to abide by the laws of that jurisdiction. But these laws being applied outside of their jurisdiction really needs to go.
At most, it might be reasonable for the Federal government to pass a law with a SINGLE sales tax with a SINGLE set of rules and a SINGLE place to send the money and the states can fight it out among themselves from there.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 02 2019, @11:16PM (1 child)
s/and the states.*/and the states can cry in the corner while congress spends their money./
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday April 03 2019, @12:33AM
That would be between the states and the feds. At least it wouldn't be a violation of jurisdiction affecting businesses across the country.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Wednesday April 03 2019, @03:03PM (2 children)
That is still the case in Virginia - they call it the "Consumer's Use Tax" [virginia.gov].
I don't mind paying it, but I'm not a fan of doing it this way from a constitutional POV. They're asking me to store records and provide them with the evidence they need to fine me if they think I've cheated, with no verifiable data of their own.
Also, the VA tax form (at least in H&R Block Tax Cut) is worded such that they want to know the sum of ALL food- and non-food purchases you've made, NOT just those that did not have Va sales tax charged at the time of sale.
Although it's a burden on the seller, I'd rather all sellers collect and remit the sales tax and be done with the self-incriminating 'Use Tax'.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday April 03 2019, @06:09PM (1 child)
I can see the preference, but why should the state of Virginia have any ability to demand all of that from a potentially small company in California that has a tough enough time knowing and following all of the local laws where it actually is?
If I have to obey Virginia law when I don't even live in Virginia, I'll be demanding my absentee ballot come election time.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday April 04 2019, @11:08AM
I agree with you. Perhaps the right answer would be to only allow the seller's state to collect it's own sales tax on all sales regardless of where they're shipped. That would encourage competition among the states for businesses seeking lower costs of doing business.
Or maybe the states could get together and all charge a uniform 'external shipping' tax that they could reconcile once a year based on destination.
Or maybe drop the idea of squeezing every bit of blood from us turnips altogether. Nah, that'd never happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @05:15AM (1 child)
JSON/XML based standardized taxation tables, starting at the national level, and providing links to every state/province, county, city, and special taxation zone, with lists of all area codes or geographic boundary coordinates (in GPS or another useful format) to help all business software have a standardized method of determining and updating taxes across national and international borders.
Really, unless governments are willing to do this, they are just trying to indirectly stop online sales, which won't work, and will simply inconvenience their constituents even as more business shifts away from local businesses who provide no value over the remotely purchased goods, since they are just buying and marking up those goods anyway, instead of finding a way for local goods and services to trump the cheap and shoddily made foreign goods, or improve local goods to the same cost or quality as foreign goods.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 13 2019, @11:00AM
That's actually a really good idea, if you leave out the XML part. It would need to allow for tax-free period rules and allow for excluding categories of products as well but it'd be an honest to Thor legitimate use of the commerce clause to mandate localities/states contribute their data to it and keep their entries updated if they want to charge sales tax on remote purchases.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Friday April 05 2019, @04:28PM
I've been thinking about this a bit because I know a number of folks who run run brick-n-mortor shops that can't keep up with the tax free internet businesses and I know a number of folks running small internet businesses who would never be able to keep up with all the tax laws the world over (as you describe).
I think it's fair to say that internet goods are not exempt from taxes just because "... with a computer ...". But it's beyond unreasonable as a barrier to entry for a small business to know and follow the tax codes everywhere they ship.
But you know who already has a presence everywhere an internet business ships produces too? The shipping companies. I say make the shipping companies bill and collect the taxes. They could provide a way for the shipping party to look up the tax ahead of time. Small shipping companies presumably only operate in a smaller area wouldn't need to follow taxes in areas they don't handle.
There should be some standards in how taxes are defined and updated and this only supports taxing physical goods. Still, it's less unreasonable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @07:36PM
yeah, and so much more convenient to kill the local government officials who voted for the tax.