Another option is to provide a means for sales to other states to simply be reported by retailers with no obligation to collect and pay taxes themselves. This places the burden where it rightfully belongs, on the purchaser and their own state government. This could be accomplished by a quarterly report to a central database that the state taxing agencies can monitor. This could be a federal database paid for by the states who choose to collect the taxes. This would relieve the federal government of the cost and place those costs where they belong. In the hands of those states who opt in to collect taxes from citizens of their own states.
"Amazon Tax"
The New York Law found a loophole to exploit retailers who had affiliates in the state of New York. Most small operators don't have affiliates, however one of the consequences of this angle is that some of the retailers avoided collecting taxes for New York by terminating all of their NY affiliates. Not only do they then avoid the tax issue, citizens of that state lost any revenue from their affiliate sales and, presumably, paid less income tax to the state as well. Amazon, being the wealthy company they are choose to sue but to also retain their affiliates. If a "nexus" must be defined by affiliates, this type of tax collection risks the loss of income for small individuals who earn extra income by collecting a small commission from individual sales. NY punished it's own citizens as a result.
Centralization:
Any attempt to require small businesses to collect and remit taxes and file forms to collect taxes for another jurisdiction MUST be a centralized system at the federal level with the states paying for it. It is simply not possible to expect a small one or two person home based operation to tackle the task of maintaining records and sending money to 14,000+ separate taxing jurisdictions. There could be only one tax rate paid to a central pool accepted by any state that choose to abide by the "system", otherwise be banned from collecting sales tax from other jurisdictions.
Conclusion:
While I sympathize with the state's need for income, this could become a burden on individual retailers to solve a problem that is not theirs and which could result in the loss of more jobs rather than an increase in state tax revenue. Why should the needs of California and Texas or Nevada place a financial burden on a working citizen of Florida to collect their taxes for them at our own expense? This is shifting a government responsibility out of their taxing jurisdiction to individual citizens of other states.
Questions: http://www.stuffdone.com/contact.php
1 | 2
