As much as I like Amazon and other e-commerce sites, it is unfair to local businesses that they have to collect sales tax, but when it comes to e-commerce sites, it is up to private citizens to report their purchases to the state. Obviously, most people are never going to voluntarily comply with this regulation, so it is appropriate for the federal government to step in and help the states enforce their sales tax laws (if they have them). The alternative is seeing local businesses continue to have an artificial disadvantage.
The easiest way to enforce sales taxes would be for the federal government to establish a small group under the IRS which would be responsible for collecting exact tax information from the states and their municipal governments. Any state or municipal government that fails to keep its rates up to date with the IRS would have no legal right to seek compensation in situations where companies collect too little tax because of inaccurate information, and companies would be able to sue the same governments in federal court if the rates are not updated when they are lowered. The sales tax rates would be posted to the web in an open, XML-based format for e-commerce vendors to periodically retrieve for updates. Finally, state governments would be required to adopt a single, simple, standardized method for filing the state sales taxes every business quarter. Any state that fails on this mark would have no standing in federal court to sue e-commerce companies for non-compliance.
If the states are able to tax these purchases, then they will have an easier time raising tax funds without having to increase income taxes. At the very least, with all of that additional excise tax revenue, it will be easier for liberty-minded people to effectively argue against the income tax.
I'm a fair tax proponent. Thus what you have above would be reasonable and necessary to make such a fair tax workable.
My problem would be that I do not believe that the income tax is going anywhere. Too big a revenue stream that serves the ends of the social engineers too well for it to go away.
PS like your new site wallpaper.
Well, that's always a problem, but even in a state like Massachusetts there is a significant portion of the population that is in favor of getting rid of the state income tax. It would have been easier for them to get their way if they could have gotten a few billion more dollars in revenue from their sales tax.
The solution is never more taxes. If there must be some leveling of the playing field, then it should involve the abolition of sales taxes on brick-and-mortar businesses.
I've made my opinion of the Fair Tax clear in the past, so I won't rehash it again. I will say, though, that we already have a de facto national sales tax - the federal corporate income tax. Businesses pass the costs of this tax on to the consumer, so it is essentially a tax on goods and services sold, just like a sales tax. We just don't call it one.
What Fair Tax people should be proposing is the abolition of the income tax and the raising of the corporate tax. This would achieve their goals without adding any bureaucracy.
What libertarians should be proposing is the abolition of both the income tax and the corporate tax. The U.S. got along quite well without either of these things for many decades; we can do it again.
Which will come about by having an increase in the income tax, which the poor and working class will not pay, and thus will have no reason to care about.
Not going to happen without a credible revenue stream from excise taxes, which the states don't have when people can ignore them by buying online and not reporting the taxes to the state.
Yes, it can, but not without a complimentary tax stream that can be used to show that getting rid of them is feasible. Proposing getting rid of these things without a credible tax revenue stream to replace them is a political non-starter. No one will take it seriously.
Which will come about by having an increase in the income tax, which the poor and working class will not pay, and thus will have no reason to care about.
Well, I was thinking about lowering spending, actually, as being the ideal solution.
Not going to happen
Of course not. I know the difference between what should happen and what will happen.
What should happen is for the states to reduce their spending accordingly.
Yes, it can, but not without a complimentary tax stream that can be used to show that getting rid of them is feasible.
The Constitution allows for tariffs and duties and stuff. Abolition of the income and corporate taxes would not leave the feds with zero revenue.
Of course, a huge reduction in spending would be necessary, too. But if we eliminated all the unnecessary and/or unconstitutional stuff (which is most federal spending), we would have more than enough money.
Proposing getting rid of these things without a credible tax revenue stream to replace them is a political non-starter. No one will take it seriously.
Proposing reducing government at all is a political non-starter. You saw what Ron Paul's own party did to him during the primaries. Advocating more freedom is simply a lost cause. I do it on the internet for the sake of my conscience, not because I expect it to do any good.
I'm not advocating allowing the federal government to levy taxes. I'm advocating a federal statute to help the states to enforce their own tax laws.
Once again, I'm advocating a policy that will help state governments rely on their sales taxes, not income taxes, for the majority of their revenue.