Archive for the ‘Rant’ Category

The Marketplace Fairness Act

Monday, August 27th, 2012

There is nothing FAIR about this proposed new tax law, it will kill thousands of small businesses and make it easier for businesses like Amazon, Walmart, Sears, Home Depot and Target to take more of your dollars while taking them from small business.

The Marketplace Fairness Act – Redefining “Fairness” to Favor Large Retailers
….All states have use tax laws, and it is their burden to enforce them.
Not all states, however, have adequate mechanisms in place for collection of the tax from individuals.
This lack of infrastructure is not the fault of the out of state retailers; it’s the fault of the bureaucracy.
They’ve had sixty years to correct it yet they’ve done nothing. If the best you can do is add a line to the individual
income tax return, you aren’t really trying.

==
Online Sales Tax Is a Money Grab by Politicians
…To understand why this is a radical step, imagine if you took a trip to Las Vegas and played blackjack,
but then got arrested when you returned home because your state doesn’t allow gambling.

==
Internet taxation without representation
…Another curious facet of the MFA is that it carves out a sizable exception for smaller companies, specifically those which have less than
$500,000 per year in gross receipts in online sales.  That rather defeats the “fairness” argument – why should a traditional retailer with
$500,000 in annual sales pay tax, while the online retailer with comparable sales does not?  It’s also a tacit admission that the Internet
sales tax reporting requirements would be ridiculously complicated.  One reason online giant Amazon.com has been playing ball with state tax
authorities recently is that they’re big enough to handle tax remission to fifty different states, with fifty different sets of tax law,
but they know full well that some of their smaller competitors don’t have the resources to deal with such a regulatory burden.
(This is why the largest corporations will sometimes embrace taxes and rules that would, on the surface, appear to hurt them.
The pain is quite bearable if the big company knows its competitors will be hurt more.)

==
Think Tanks, Taxpayer Advocates, Journalists Expose Marketplace Fairness Act’s Flaws

===
For online sales taxes, just follow the money
…To capture 93% of uncollected taxes (the green section of the chart), Congress need only require the top 500 sellers to collect for remote states.
That would set the small business exception at $15 million in annual sales – a number that is one hundred times larger than Amazon’s $150,000

===
Stop the Online Sales Tax - Marketplace Fairness Act

…this bill represents yet more crony capitalism, as this is strongly supported by Amazon.com, who will gain greatly from the competition that will be forced out of business due to this disgusting legislation.

Sign the Petition Against
The Marketplace Fairness Act