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Friday, April 16, 2010

Are Internet Taxes Next?

In this era of high and accelerating government spending, coupled with a poor economy reducing government revenues, elected officials and their appointees are looking for all kinds of ways to get their hands on more resources, i.e., to raise taxes.

E-commerce, including sales of digital goods and services, and Internet access certainly are not excluded from this trolling for tax dollars. Various states also have been reaching beyond their borders to tax purchases made by residents from out-of-state firms under the flimsiest of "nexus" arguments, with assorted states also pushing for uniform sales taxes for online and catalogue purchases via the Streamlined Sales Tax Project. While billed as being fairer and simpler, the Streamlined Sales Tax Project is merely another effort under which government would raise taxes...

Read this entire SBE Council Technology & Entrepreneurs analysis by chief economist Ray Keating here.

1 comment:

Art Stevens said...

Remember that sales taxes are due to the state in which the purchaser lives whether they are collected by the online retailer or not.

If states don't get the streamlined sales tax approved to allow more uniform sales tax collection, they will probably start coming after us individually and charge us with tax cheating. I'd rather just have the online retailer collect the tax than have to hassle with reporting every purchase or hoping the desperate government officials don't start coming after me.