Monday, the Senate will vote on a bill that was introduced only last Tuesday. ..curious?

[dixiegrrrrl]

As early as Monday, the Senate will vote on a bill that was introduced only last Tuesday.
The text of this legislation, which would fundamentally change interstate commerce, only became available on the Library of Congress website over the weekend.

For Senators curious about what they're voting on, it is the same flawed proposal that Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.) introduced in February.
It has been repackaged to qualify for a Senate rule that allows Majority Leader Harry Reid to bypass committee debate and bring it straight to the floor.

Mr. Enzi's Marketplace Fairness Act discriminates against Internet-based businesses by imposing burdens that it does not apply to brick-and-mortar companies. For the first time, online merchants would be forced to collect sales taxes for all of America's estimated 9,600 state and local taxing authorities.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324493704578432961601644942.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

[truebluegreen]

1. OK, the Wall Street Journal objects,

which means Big Business (as a whole) objects, but we should object, why? The bill requires sales tax to be collected on interstate sales...how much revenue can be collected for the public coffers from this one bill? Revenue that is currently being "avoided."

[gateley]

3. I heard a figure this morning -- don't recall exactly, but pretty substancial. I THINK they used

"billion"

[hay rick]

2. Who and why according to the article.

The drivers of this rush to tax are Wal-Mart and other big retailers that can more easily absorb the costs of collection than can smaller competitors. Also supporting the bill is Internet giant Amazon, which coincidentally now sells its own tax compliance service to other merchants. Adding to the lobbying muscle are state and local governments. The politicians believe they'll collect tens of billions of dollars in taxes that are already owed by shoppers on remote sales but rarely paid.

So big business and big government are uniting to pursue their mutual interest in sticking it to the little guy. Any Internet seller with more than $1 million in annual sales would be forced to serve all of the nation's tax collectors. It's true that many small brick-and-mortar retailers in states with sales taxes support the Enzi bill. They say they're at a disadvantage as customers examine products in their showrooms and then go home to buy them tax-free. On the other hand, some customers use retail websites for research before buying at a local store.

But even if the goal is to "level the playing field" in favor of Main Street, it won't happen. Mr. Enzi cannot possibly force all the world's Internet businesses to collect local U.S. taxes. So instead of shifting sales from online to bricks-and-mortar, he might succeed in shifting them from U.S. online merchants to foreign ones.

This rush to tax is an attempt to overturn the Supreme Court's 1992 decision in Quill v. North Dakota that forcing businesses to collect and remit taxes to jurisdictions where they have no physical presence was too big a burden. Though that ruling applied to catalogs in the pre-Internet age, it established an important principle of cross-state tax accountability.

Interesting that Amazon expects to profit from this. The Journal, being the Journal, offers their entirely predictable conclusion: "the new revenues will merely fund larger government."

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Bill would discriminate against online shoppers, tho.

Right now, I can go to Fla. a few miles away and buy tax free groceries.
But if I sit at home and order something from Fla. online, I have to pay tax on it????

BS on that.
I will make it a POINT now to go shopping in Pensacola, just as folks in Wash. state go shopping in Oregon or Idaho to avoid extra taxes.
That means my home state, county and city, which charge a total of 9.5% sales tax, loses big time.

[truebluegreen]

5. Your home state, county and city are already losing big time

if people cross state lines or go online to shop. How is this different? And I for one have always considered the out-of-state tax break an unfair advantage to mail order or online stores over brick-and-mortar.

P.S. Idaho has sales tax

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Does Idaho have sales tax on food?

Maybe that is what I am remembering....back when I was a kid and living in E. Washington I remember my folks driving from Clarkston Wa over the bridge( I think I remember a bridge) to Lewiston Idaho to do grocery shopping because there was no tax.

We have a total of 9.5% tax on everything but prescriptions in the town where I live.
And they get away from it because we are 90 miles from any city where the prices are lower.

[HiPointDem]

10. washington doesn't have sales tax on food.

[truebluegreen]

12. Yes, I believe they do...

but I don't live there anymore. I know they still have sales tax in general.

P.S. yes, there is a bridge, over the Snake River, which marks the state boundary.

[kickysnana]

8. Regressive tax, needs to be done away with everywhere.. n/t

[truebluegreen]

13. Actually, I agree.

But if we have it, it ought to be fairly applied.

I would like to see the end of all taxes and policies that pit state against state in competition for jobs, or tax dollars, or whatever. The big corporations play on those differences like a harp, to their own advantage and society's disadvantage.

[onenote]

7. I don't think anyone in the Senate is unaware of what this bill does

I'm pretty certain is pretty much the same bill that Enzi introduced in 2011 and in 2012. He introduced in February with nearly 20 original co-sponsors -- it continued adding co-sponsors and it now has nearly 30 original co-sponsors. The members co-sponsoring this bill saw it before it was introduced and it probably was circulated to an even wider group of Senators since not everyone approached to be a co-sponsor may have agreed to co-sponsor.

[Recursion]

9. It would be a boon for web programmers

Every single online shopping cart system out there would have to be updated.

That said, if we're going to do a consumption tax I'd rather have it be a full-on national VAT, the way the EU does.

[Fumesucker]

11. Any time something gets the ultra-fast-track approach in Congress it's bad for the little guy

They only do that shit for the big power players, anything that helps the average person takes forever and gets whittled down to almost zero, assuming it passes at all.

There's about a 99.99% chance this is bullshit.