Downloads are now taxed in NJ 4 iTunes

We charge sales tax on any state we are represented in.

So if you buy from us and we have an office in your state, we charge the state salestax. And of course pay that to the state.

Honestly I was totally against this at the start, but I think any online sale should follow the same rule. Except eBay, I think that should follow garage sales rules.

OR

Just charge sales tax for where the 'official' location of the corporation is. That would really make a lot of people happy. No complicated tax rules and...

Oh wait we are dealing with government. It has to get more complex.

 

Problem with ebay charging just where they are headquartered taxes is that most states, its where you recieve the goods that you are taxed on. i know there are a few stores, that if they *deliver* stuff to say our house and its rual, they have to charge us for where we take posession so if in town its 8% and in the country its 7% where the customer actually takes possession of the item is where you are charged taxes, so it would be 7%. This is true for most things. I used to sell tupperware ages ago, and the different towns were different taxes and i had to be aware of that stupid stuff and charge taxes accordingly based on where people live.

honestly i think that what brokentusk said makes perfect sense though, that stores and stuff should be taxing accordingly, but that ebay should be like a garage sale, essentially it is, its just online!! love that analogy!

 

According to IRS laws, garage sales are taxable, as it is indeed an income. Only reason they don't is it would be to hard to police. It is not really any different than tips earned by a waiter/waitress.

The IRS says that ANY income you receive is taxable. The states have actually started doing this when they tax the State Income tax refund you receive.

"You paid to much tax to the State, well, damn you, that refund you get from the taxes you paid, well, we need to tax you on that also."

Basically double taxing, but what are you going to do..tell them "no"?

By IRS laws, if you sell a pair of shoes to a neighbor for 2 dollars, you should report that as earned income, to be taxed at years end.

Mail Order from another state used to be tax free ONLY BECAUSE, the IRS didn't want to persue it, and the State it was coming from could get the tax from the brick and mortar store. With the internet shopping, where it came from became less known, as it may just be a warehouse where no money changed hands. I could order something from a place in one state, and it shipped from a state across the country. Mail Order wasn't like that before.

Could you imagine the difficulty of sending a mail order to a place, then them sending it to another place to fill, who may have a warehouse in another state and would have to send this request via mail?? So most Mail Orders shipped from where you sent the Mail Order.

The Internet changed all that. You have a reseller that fronts for a seller who sends from a distributer. Amazon kinda works that way. There isn't a humongous Amazon warehouse, they are a front for other distributors who have shippers all around.

I used to know a bartender who was Italian (female and extremely hot!!) and still had a green card. She reported all of her wages AND tips. She said she did it because she loved this country, and she was working to become a citizen, and she felt it the right thing to do. Which made her even hotter!!

But the way taxes are going, I'm thinking coin operated toilets in all privately owned homes will be next, along with your sewage bill. And some State dude will have the only key to access this coin box. Or it will be some counter thing that counts the flushes and sends it to some state flush counter operation. Then the saying "If it cost a nickel to take a dump, I couldn't even fart" would actually mean something.

 

Actually Amazon does have warehouses. There is one in Independence Kansas.

That and we actually ship stuff to their warehouses all over the US. Very few places have drop shipments as part of their business plan. At least not successful ones. We have maybe half a dozen that do it through our site. They all pay the same thing anyone else would and then mark it up. They get killed on price.

Heck, we even have people that sell our stuff through eBay. So a $30 lantern on our site gets sold on eBay for $35 and has some $15 shipping and handling charge. And we ship it out.

Also, you don't have to report under $600 (yearly from one source) of income to the IRS. They feel that unless you go over that you are not likely to change your tax bracket and therefore not owe any more taxes.

There was a mighty cheer when I heard this from a tax advisor. And a shameful display when it was confirmed by another.

I won't even say what happened a few years ago when the IRS stopped doing audits on individuals because they didn't have the manpower.

 

How about the IRS stops taxing us and just taxes the states. 50 returns instead of millions.

Then it is up to the states to come up with the money. Whether through income tax, toll roads or whatever.

 

I have lately been thinking that the best way to collect taxes would be to automatically deduct them from electronic transactions. The infrastructure is already in place to do it, it would just require software patches on affected computer systems. The sheer number of transactions that take place means that each one would only need to be taxed at 0.05% (5 cents per hundred dollars) or so in order for the government to collect the same revenue it already does. A family earning an average, middle-class income would pay around $200/year in taxes rather than the thousands of dollars they pay now. The IRS wouldn't have to be nearly as large as it is now, as well, which should save a few million dollars a year.

At first, this doesn't appear to work -- if everyone pays a small fraction of the tax that they used to, how can the same revenue be generated? The reason that this works is that a large majority of electronic transactions take place in the form of stock trades. Introducing a tax is unlikely to affect the market in a meaningful way, however, as the low tax rate is several hundred times smaller than normal daily market fluctuation.

Of course, this would only work at the Federal level. If it was implemented at the State level, the result would be that tax rates would be disproportionately higher in the more rural states with less industry conducting transactions. Imagine how disproportionally low New York State taxes would be, as most electronic transactions take place in New York (living in New York, I would do pretty well, but it wouldn't exactly be an equitable situation ).

 

Russia > U.S.A (atleast for downloading music Legit, Legal, and Cheap, for now..)
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