On Friday 11 March 2005 06:52 am, David Bandel wrote:
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 20:14:33 -0700, Collins Richey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050309-4689.html
I don't know about you, but I can't even imagine a Republican governor proposing this kind of crap.
So, Collins, how much are you paying for your downloads? I pay $0.00. Multiply that by 5% (0.00 x .05) and I get a whopping $0.00 I owe in tax. Even if you pay a little for a music download, so what? I haven't heard you complain about the tax when you go shopping downtown. No big deal. Governments everywhere need their tax. Ask Bill Gates. M$ taxes you on _every_ system you buy from an OEM like Dell, etc., whether you buy it with M$ installed or not. Complain about that. That at least is illegal (per-CPU licensing agreements).
The bad part of all these internet taxes is the paperwork involved. It would be impossible for most people to comply... the little 'mom & pop' internet sales places, much less having every seller on eBay having to collect the taxes and submit them to various states.
I used to sell a couple of software packages back in the 80's. I was living in MI and was once approached by AZ to collect taxes on the sales I shipped to AZ. (very little) I wrote back and said that there was no way I could afford the time and effort to fill out all the paperwork for that and therefore I would refuse to sell to anyone from AZ in the future.
I never heard back from them... unfortunately I'm sure it didn't send them any message either.
AFAIK, you are not required to collect taxes unless you have a "presence" in the state. That is usually interpreted to mean some sort of "brick and mortar" facility. Once you start collecting taxes for a government entity, you are then subject to periodic audits, not just state, but municipality. To the best of my knowledge, there is no tax package available today that can correctly calculate tax for every address in the country. These suggestions for new taxes are simply unworkable with the present tax situation.
-- Alma _______________________________________________ [email protected] Unsub/Pause/Etc : http://mail.linux-sxs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/general
