Internet Sales Tax: a proposed solution

image credit: blog.dawog.net

Yesterday Scott French and Elizabeth Slattery at The Daily Signal reported further on the horrible SCOTUS decision to permit sales tax on Internet transactions across state lines. They also suggested a solution. Unfortunately, they identify Congress as the branch of government that can legislate that solution. Here’s the gist of it:

Unfortunately, small businesses will suffer the most from the ruling. [Chief Justice John] Roberts explained:

One vitalizing effect of the Internet has been connecting small, even ‘micro’ businesses to potential buyers across the nation. People starting a business selling their embroidered pillowcases or carved decoys can offer their wares throughout the country—but probably not if they have to figure out the tax due on every sale.

Most small businesses are not equipped to handle being subject to every taxing authority in every location where they have a customer. There are more than 10,000 state and local taxing jurisdictions in the country. And these jurisdictions have different tax rates, rules governing tax exemptions, product category definitions, and standards for determining whether an out-of-state seller is subject to sales tax in the first place.

Roberts pointed to a few examples of how confusing state taxes can be:

New Jersey knitters pay sales tax on yarn purchased for art projects, but not on yarn earmarked for sweaters … Texas taxes sales of plain deodorant at 6.25 percent but imposes no tax on deodorant with antiperspirant … Illinois categorizes Twix and Snickers bars—chocolate-and-caramel confections usually displayed side-by-side in the candy aisle—as food and candy, respectively (Twix have flour; Snickers don’t), and taxes them differently.

Further, the cost of compliance is beyond the means of most small businesses. Implementation and integration of software to calculate taxes in all these jurisdictions alone is estimated to cost up to $250,000.

The good news is that, under its authority to regulate interstate commerce, Congress has the power to fix this problem. Congress is the branch of government best able to consider the competing interests at stake, not unelected federal judges.

Congress should codify the physical presence rule to protect small businesses from being subject to mandates from states where they have no physical connection and whose policymakers face no accountability for the tax and regulatory costs that they impose on out-of-state businesses.

If state borders truly do matter, Congress must limit states’ ability to reach beyond their borders to place regulatory burdens on out-of-state businesses.

Sounds feasible on paper. But perhaps so many small businesses will suspend sales that Congress will have to respond to their constituents – for once. We’ll see. (The full report is here.) 

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Amnesty vote this week

Neil Munro at Breitbart has the update on the delayed vote on amnesty:

House Speaker Paul Ryan cancelled the planned Friday vote on his amnesty bill, and will add some business-first and populist concessions to help win votes prior to a debate and vote next week [week of June 25]

. . .

Democrats are expected to unite against the guest-worker program and E-Verify, in part, because they want the 11 million resident illegals to become citizens and vote Democratic.

If the modified bill is passed by the House, the bipartisan cheap-labor caucus in the Senate is expected to strip out Ryan’s modest reductions in immigration numbers because companies want to maximize the inflow of foreign consumers, workers and renters.

Any amendment adding the E-Verify system also will be opposed by Senate Democrats and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because it would penalize roughly 8 million working illegal-migrants.

We’re looking at yet more wrangling amongst Uniparty members of Congress, both –R and –D, and their loyalties to – not their constituents - but their donor masters.

Cleveland Tea Party’s Ralph King posted this on his FB page:

Patriots - it is time to rise up and be loud!

We need to keep President Trump from making any deals on DACA and the Wall! We need to let him know we elected him to stand strong and we will stand with him on NO Deal for DREAMERs!

Besides the left we also have enemies within that would love President Trump to cave and give out backdoor amnesty for DREAMERs in exchange for Wall funding. We know the left is going to fight against it - but we must not forget forces in the Swamp that want the same thing!

The Open Border, illegal immigrant, low-wage loving GOP donor class, the US Chamber & Koch Brothers (American's for Prosperity) all who control Paul Ryan and the Establishment GOP would love and want amnesty for the DACA DREAMERs. They always have.

Exchanging Amnesty for DACA DREAMERs is a trap and sucker bet. Soon as the DREAMERs are allowed to vote they will vote Democrat across the board and there goes any continued funding for building the wall.

We cannot allow President Trump to be swayed by the Establishment Swampers!

We cannot allow President Trump to be fooled, swayed and/or duped like Ronald Reagan was with the Immigration Reform & Control ACt of 1986 (Simpson - Mazzoli Act)! In short - Reagan compromised on immigration and got screwed. We must learn from history!

We need to let President Trump know NO DACA Deal! Do NOT Trade the Wall funding for DACA Nightmares!

You can call or email the White House:

PHONE NUMBERS

Comments: 202-456-1111

Switchboard: 202-456-1414

White House contact page with email option here. 

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SCOTUS internet sales tax ruling

image credit: usatoday.com

This SCOTUS decision will affect all of us. Sparta Report just announced its decision to close down its little sales center at its blogsite:

effective today, the Sparta Report Shop will no longer be in operation due to the disastrous decision by the Supreme Court’s “republican wing” to allow states to charge out of state businesses with sales tax. We are not interested in complying with 2.5 thousand and more localities and states and keeping track of the various stupidities of the corrupt local political tax wrangling.

Investors Business Daily has more:

Taxes: Whatever you think about the issue of taxing internet sales, the simple fact is that the Supreme Court has just guaranteed that people across the country will now be paying more in state taxes. It's hard for us to see how this is good news.

In its 5-4 decision on South Dakota v. Wayfair, the court overturned two previous rulings that prevented states from taxing sales of out-of-state companies. That meant a catalog company based in Maine didn't have to navigate 45 state sales-tax laws to figure out how much each customer owed, and then remit that money to the right states.

Brick-and-mortar stores have been trying to lift this ban for decades, because, they say, it unfairly tilts the playing field in favor of catalog and online retailers. 

According to the Government Accountability Office, this break cost states up to $13.4 billion in lost revenue last year alone. And, retailers say it cost jobs and hurt local economies.

Not surprisingly, Amazon.com  (AMZN), Shopify (SHOP), Etsy (ETSY), Wayfair (W) and other e-commerce stocks dropped on Thursday.

The Supreme Court ruling was notable not just because it did something it rarely does — namely, overturn previous decisions. (The most recent, Quill v North Dakota, was in 1992.) The court also split in a highly unusual way.

On the majority side were rock-ribbed conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, who sided with Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion. 

But so did stalwart liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Kennedy argued that the explosive growth of online retail rendered the court's previous rulings outdated.

Three of the other liberals on the court, Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, sided with Chief Justice Roberts' dissent. Roberts argued that it should be up to Congress to make a change like this.

Whatever the merits of the decision, the Court's ruling means not only higher taxes for consumers, but higher prices.

.  .

More Taxes To Come?

Worse still, the court may have opened the door to letting states impose other taxes on out-of-state firms.

Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform argues that states could use this ruling to impose corporate taxes and even income taxes across state lines.

"If physical nexus is no longer required for sales taxes ,then it is no longer required for personal or corporate income taxes," he said. "Now, California (or any state or city that loses population through exit) can tax people and businesses who do their best to avoid that state or city."

If you think that's a fanciful prediction, you haven't been paying attention. State governments will take every opportunity they can to raise taxes — especially if their own residents aren't the ones paying them.

In the end, it makes Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts' dissent look all the wiser.

Read the rest of the IBD report here.

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USS Cod Birthday gun salute

Really Short video by Pat J Dooley on YouTube 

USS Cod Submarine : Happy Birthday

Fun announcement at Cleveland.com:

The USS Cod Submarine Memorial on North Marginal Drive will celebrate the sub's 75th birthday with a deck-gun salute and cake in ceremonies Thursday at 2 p.m.

. . .

The Cod, now a National Historic Landmark on Cleveland's waterfront, was launched on June 21, 1943, as part of the Navy's fleet of more than 250 submarines during World War II.

During the war, the submarine made seven patrol runs in the Pacific and sent 35,000 tons of enemy vessels to the bottom.

Its torpedoes sank 10 ships and damaged five others.

A martini glass painted on its conning tower represents the celebration after the Cod rescued the crew of a Dutch submarine that had run aground during the war.

The Cod was decommissioned in 1954 and opened as a floating memorial/museum in 1976.

More of the report here.

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Flag Day: “Remembering Old Glory”

Kimberly Bloom Jackson had some historical and current context for Old Glory at American Thinker:

. . . But how did Flag Day come to be?  Interestingly, in 1885, some 108 years after the Flag Resolution was passed, a 19-year-old Wisconsin schoolteacher named Bernard John Cigrand inspired his students at Stony Hill School to celebrate June 14 as “Flag Birthday.”  According to the Congressional Record, what we call “Flag Day” is believed to have originated with Mr. Cigrand, a teacher who cared enough to instill in his students a great appreciation for the American flag as a symbol of our God-given freedom.

Thanks to Cigrand, children across America have enjoyed Flag Day celebrations ever since.  In fact, in 1894 over 300,000 students turned out to celebrate June 14 with their small flags and patriotic songs throughout many of Chicago’s city parks.  This became a tradition of Chicago public schools.

Times sure have changed, haven’t they?  Today, there never seems to be a shortage of news stories about a school or university mired in an anti-American flag controversy.  In fact, it’s all the rage to call for a ban of the flag in the name of “inclusiveness.”  At the University of California, Irvine, least 60 professors reportedly signed a petition in support of their cultural Marxist protégés who wanted to ban Old Glory because they felt it “contributes to racism and xenophobia.”

Instead of imparting knowledge about America’s extraordinary founding principles that have given rise to the freest and most prosperous nation on earth, these tenured radicals actually think that socially engineered “inclusiveness” and “diversity” are greater virtues than liberty itself.  Well, as Forrest Gump said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

Luckily for us liberty lovers, we know better.  So as we fly our flags this year in celebration of Flag Day, let us not forget to remember the greatness of America’s founding, those who came before us that gave the ultimate sacrifice to defend it, and the historical significance of June 14.

Happy American Flag Day!

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Update: amnesty legislation

From NumbersUSA:

Last night, House GOP Leaders announced that they will hold two immigration votes next week -- one on Rep. Bob Goodlatte's H.R. 4760, the Securing America's Future Act. and the other on a compromise bill still being negotiated.

The details are light. It's possible that the version of the Goodlatte bill that reaches the floor is quite different from the one that NumbersUSA endorsed earlier this year. And we don't know the full details of the compromise bill, but we can say with near certainty that it won't reduce overall immigration numbers or mandate E-Verify.

Please be on the lookout for action alerts early next week as the details become more clear.

It seems that the GOPe Uniparty and RINO Paul Ryan are determined to ram some sort of amnesty bill down our throats. But President Trump has a pen.

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