Should Online Stores Charge Sales Tax?

Yet some many already do, and I don't believe it will get better...

More whining about taxes. Marvelous.

They should be free of all Taxes. WE pay enough in taxes. Stop the greedy tax push on everything we do.

We get taxed for everything!

yes

I get enough of that from physical stores, I don't need it online, too.

Nope, thats one of the reasons I buy on line.

From my perspective if government charged only sales taxes and estate taxes, we'd save trillions of dollars in bureaucratic paperwork, legal and accounting fees.

Have you ever checked what we are taxed on? They don't care about paperwork, I retired from the Government after 30 years of shuffling paperwork. When computerization came in we thought great less paper, but no with Government it created more data input and more spreadsheets and reports.

So wouldn't eliminating income tax all together reduce paperwork, etc. Your point seems to support my notion.

What I am saying is it isn't going to happen, Each entity of the Federal Government is entrenched and won't give up anything even if it makes sense. The directors of those entities will always protect their nest egg even if they work backwards and get little accomplished. Look I got chewed out one year for saving my entity 2 million dollars. They were so mad I came close to getting canned. What I learned after that is spend every damn budget dollar you get so you can ask for more the next year.

I understand what you're saying. I read Von Mises's "Bureaucracy" years ago. But if there is no work, the entire department is dissolved.

Want to bet? It is generally consolidated into another department or renamed something else. A bureaucracy does not go away that easy.

People pay enough taxes already. More greed is not what the world needs.

No way in hell shipping and handling is bad enough you go on a Ebay and you think an item is really cheap the you look at shipping and handling and it's like 4 times the cost of the item!

Well I believe in replacing our current tax code with a fair consumption tax... so yes.

Okay, I wish I could re do my answer. I agree. If you want a tax cut, take a spending cut.

No,what are they going to do? Tax us to death!

At some point on line merchants and their customers need fire protection and police protection and all those other wonderful services sales taxes provide so why should they have a free ride financed by brick and mortar stores?

There is plently of money coming in to pay for all of that, if they weren't blowing it on welfare bums.

Local sales taxes do not support welfare ops - they support public safety primarily along with libraries, parks, etc....

counties and municipalities do get quite a bit of money from the state government, who, in turn get money for roads, fire and police from the feds. Here in Oklahoma, they only money counties get for road construction and maintainance is from fuel tax. with the poor economy, people are buying less fuel and roads are looking pretty shabby. What I'm saying is, if all money, fed, state, county, and city, were spent more wisely with REAL charity in mind, not "lets get them addicted so they will belong to us" politics, there would be plenty of money for public services.

There are some parts of what you say I agree with - mostly I don't have problems with HOW much we spend on social welfare but rather HOW we spend it - with no good specific plan to move people OUT of welfare. (Better a massive infrastructure stimulus putting people to work rebuilding our infrastructure than the welfare bill.) All that notwithstanding I think all Americans need to look at and understand the budget and realize that the budget will not be corrected on welfare or foreign aid or a dozen other 'easy' targets. To make REAL mileage in controlling the deficit (and SSI) there are some unpopular REAL choices to make that include REVENUE (Start with the $250K + proposal but we'll have to go further), defense budgets and SSI eligibility (age and means), and all sorts of other things that Simpson-Bowles identified.

I'm not completely against my taxes going up, but ONLY if they are managing the money they are currently getting more responcibly, which they're not in the slightest. We have to pay our debt off and we all have to pitch in, including those under $250,000. But I'll be darned to heck if I'll support an tax increase of any kind as long as they are wasting money the way they are. Look at it like a necrotic wound. You have to go in with a scalpal and cut away the dead rotten flesh until you get pink, clean bloody flesh. If they'll cut out the crap, I'll let them raise my taxes for the SOUL PURPOSE OF PAYING DOWN THE NATIONAL DEBT. Not to finance their socialist welfare programs.

Your hitting this from a medical perspective so the Hippocratic oath comes to mind for treatment - First, do no harm. Corollary - is the cure worse than the disease? Draconian amputations of the arm because of an infected finger-nail are silly and that's what I see in many of these Tea Party proposals to 'cut of welfare', etc... You will indeed eliminate welfare costs but you'll now have an amputee.

Don't do away with welfare, just make sure that people who recieve it, really need it. I watched a guy buy a bunch of fried food, soda pop, and a cigar at a conveniance store today, and paid for all of it with a food stamp card. That's wasteful. They money he spent on the junk could have fed a family for about a meal and a half if spent wisely. Did I mention that he drove away in a newer model care that he left running while in the store? Food stamp costs alone could be cut in half or better if recipients were limited to purchasing particular foods that are healthier and less processed, though this would require that someone actually cook. Want to talk military cuts, ok, I have no doubt that there are billions of dollars of necrotic flesh that can be debreeded from the military. Wasteful spending, not equipment and safety cuts. When people like myself talk about stream lining our government, liberals assume that we want to completely eliminate welfare or PELL grants, or what have you. Not at all, just make sure that people who recieve it really need it and have a plan for them to get off of it. Obama just the other day eliminated the work requirement for welfare. Why? Why not require people to actively look for a job? Makes no sense at all! Is he affraid people might find a job and no longer need the government tit?

Well he can't pay for the Cigar with food stamps or there's a convenience store in trouble....prepared ready to eat food should also not work but clever small stores have been known to code those so they do...and can ask for forgiveness when it's discovered... Each time someone has TRIED to further limit what's avail on food stamps both the right and the left seem to unite against such a onerous invasion of individual liberties but I'd have no problem eliminating lots of food classes HOWEVER you now have more enforcement and oversight regulations and you get into cost of enforcement balanced against amount of abuse. Also remember that the food industry/agricultural lobby also has kind of a love of this program to. In any case you actually sound like that rare bird these days, a moderate conservative. The Tea Party conservatives I speak to want to perform surgery with a chain saw and that's not going to heal anybody. Curiously on the 'welfare to work' issue - it was a number of governors (R and D) who were adamant about being given a chance to avoid the paperwork if they came up with a state level plan and now Republicans (yes - State's Rights Republicans) at the Federal level are going nutso on the waiver being offered....

regulation of the use of food stamps would be easy. real easy. Many large farm supply chains, such as tractor supple company, have software that determines if certain items are eligable to be bought tax free by people who carry a farm tax exemption card, such as the one I have as a part time farmer. You get a list of the items that can and can't be purchased tax free. The same software can be used to prevent people from buying soda and frozen pizzas with food stamps. Individual liberties? Beggers can't be choosers, right? That's exactly what welfare recipients are, beggers. When you and I were younger, accepting welfare was one of the most shameful things a person could do and was an absolute last resort. No longer. Many believe that they are owed this or that. I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job of teaching my daughters that the world or the people in it owe you absolutely nothing.

Now of course you'll turn the whole country Democratic if you control obesity and diabetes because , if you don't know, the CDC did a study a few years back where statistically speaking one could predict political redness or blueness by diabetes and obesity and only 2 states bucked the trend - Texas and Michigan. (I DO think there's NO cause and effect here but it is interesting!)

The cause is that most red states are southern, where fried food is more prevelant due to a long history of increased poverty where the primary staple is corn and pork where both are typically prepared with rendered pork fat (lard) due to all three being more affordable to attain. Which these dietary habits have become ingrained in the culture. Believe me, I know, I had blackeyed peas and corn bread for supper. the corn bread was cooked in a cast iron skillet greesed with bacon drippings. :) Were getting away from that very slowly and getting into grilling more. Still not big on steamed and boiled. We leave that to the yankees. :)

Hmmmmm - So out here in Seattle where 50% of our intake comes from Starbucks we can look forward to caffeine induced heart arrhythmia as our cultural identity in the future...

probably. I know i hear of plenty of those little scrawny bicycle shorts wearing guys droping like flies of heart attacks after riding their mountain bikes 20 miles. :)

Wimps - only 20 miles! We do the STP... (Seattle to Portland - big event here!)

Wow, I bet you've got a real narrow butt and pencil legs. :) I was working in colorado once and was lugging up loveland pass in a diesel truck. I passed a bunch of bicyclists just as my truck belched out a big glob of exhaust, covering them all in black sut. :)

It seems most people are not aware of the use tax on their tax returns. As far as I know most states have a "use tax" this is for out of state purchases that you did not pay sales tax on (originally from catalog sales). One if buying over the internet and not paying any sales tax should be reporting it and paying sales tax on their state return.

It is just unenforceable. Well now the states are asking the companies to report those sales.

And of course many states are like Washington where there is no state income tax and one would have to proactively accumulate your sales tax owed and forward on. Mark that as unlikely!

Sadly yes.

Florida and Texas are two other without an income tax.

Since on-line sales are starting to comprise a major part of the retail market states and local governments are losing a lot of income. Why are city governments going bankrupt? Guess why.

Two cities in California went Bankrupt recently from OVER SPENDING If they cannot budget lay them off and send them home