Internet buyers/sellers beware!!!!

Sticky fingered politicians are itching to get their hands in your wallet again. Just over a decade ago, states were prohibited from imposing sales tax on internet sales/purchases because of undue hardship in maintaining accurate records of tax rates across the country. Continued mismanagement by many states has caused financial "crises" that has prompted another push for taxing internet commerce. Here's a link to a summary put out by ebay regarding this matter. http://www.ebay.com/sellercentral/publicpolicy.html

It's time, once again, to tell the politicians how we feel. Our apathy is their elixir.

I don't want to get too political here, but this affects all of us and it affects our hobby (and for a lot of us, our income). The government has no constitutional right to tax the income of private individuals. Over the last few years, several people who have been fingered by the IRS have took the IRS to court. The IRS has lost EVERY time. U.S. citizens are slowly catching on, and Congress is trying to slip a bill through that will change all of that.

What if everyone just stopped paying income tax? What can they do? Nothing!

I'm no fan of Federal income tax the way it is handled right now, but just need to clarify this particular issue. We're talking sales tax, which is a state by state matter. So far, the Feds have been the ones blocking the state efforts................but that looks like it could change if we don't protest effectively.

Yeah, I know. I needed to get that off my chest.

I was thinking about all of these good ol' Americans who try to do a little extra work on the side to earn a few bucks. If these people start having to collect sales tax, then they start having to report all of their transactions. This could lead to having to be qualified as "self employed", and therefore income tax, etc, etc, etc. I'm not a tax expert, but all of this burns me.

I'm not really opposed to a 'flat tax' being the same for everybody across the board. It'll nab those who never pay but are earning money the gov doesn't know about and lighten up on those of use who pay too much. Not to mention, making it much easier to figure the amounts and less paperwork. The downfall is that it could hurt alot of exemptions and write-offs. I dunno, maybe I'm wrong.

I do not, however, care for the idea of state income taxing. It's bad enough that the Federal Govt dips into your pockets, why does the state need to? The states should be more reliant on retail types of taxes and maybe to a degree, ownership type of taxes to accumulate their spending money.

As far as sales tax goes here, we're at 7.9% and that's a NASTY rate. But the cost of living is a bit higher as with the hourly pay a worker gets so it's not as bad as it seems. I use to live in New Mexico and it was 5.5% and I noticed the difference when i moved back up here. I dunno, is there any worse sales tax rates out there?

here in pa our state income tax is 2.8, sales tax is 6 in most places, 7 in teh big cities. I hear our property tax is high, but never owned property elsewhere to compare. Most of that is for the local schools anyway, so it varies by school district.

The goverenor here got elected on property tax reform - reduce property tax by taxing something else...so this week he offers these options...
-personal income tax from 2.8 to 3.1
-cigarettes an extra 45 cents a pack
-sales tax, up 1% across teh state
-BUT no to lower the property tax at all...that may come later, right now everyone is broke, governmentally speaking.

(duh - tax revenue drops when the economy slows, BUT no one slowed spending ... they cannot see beyond the end of their noses)

I am AGAINST expanding the sales tax nationwide - it would be insane to try and track things (it's tough here with the 1% extra as it goes by COUNTY , but when you buy a car they use your ZIP CODE and some zip codes span the county line....)

I favor a FLAT TAX.

And making money on the side and paying taxes on it, well, claiming it, allows one to get tax deductions - talk to a good accountant and WE ALL will start home businesses for the tax deductions!!!! best way to shield your income FROM taxation!

How'd i get on the soapbox?