Right on schedule.
It got overshadowed by recent events both foreign and domestic, but last week Governor Pat Quinn (D, IL) signed legislation declaring that in-state affiliates for online sellers count as ‘a physical presence’ in Illinois, thus theoretically allowing the state to require those online sellers to collect sales tax information. This is usually called the ‘Amazon tax*,’ as it is largely aimed at Amazon.com
Turns out that this was incorrect: as usual in these cases, Amazon.com
Brilliant move there, Governor Quinn.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*Let me repeat what I wrote on the basic controversy, back when it was Colorado that was shooting itself in the fiscal foot:
‘Amazon tax laws,’ for those who are wondering, represent attempts to get around a Supreme Court ruling regarding out-of-state transactions. Residents of states who have a sales tax are theoretically expected to pay sales tax on all transactions, not just ones that take place in-state: however, vendors with out-of-state customers have long taken the position that trying to keep track of every jurisdiction’s sales tax rules is an undue burden upon them. The Supreme Court agreed, ruling that vendors are only required to track and collect sales tax on transactions for states where they had a physical presence. This effectively means that online retailers such as Amazon.com are effectively released from the burden of collecting sales tax information. Various Democratic state legislators – blanching at the very idea of trying to enforce individual residents from reporting their online transactions for taxation purposes – have attempted to make an end run around this ruling by writing legislation declaring in-state affiliates of online retailers as counting in terms of ‘physical location:’ Amazon’s typical response is to immediately cancel all affiliate programs in the targeted state, thus eliminating any need for them to collect sales tax information.
**Full disclosure: I am an Amazon.com
***Listening to IRMA Vice President Rob Karr trying to… ah, ‘scaremonger’ works in this case… Illinois consumers into voluntarily going through all their online purchases for the last six years and calculating their owed sales tax is, by the way, hysterical. But not as funny as listening to Karr pooh-poohing the idea that Illinois’ Amazon tax law was simply too big to fail.
When I was 16, my friend Mark had a “vanity plate” on his GTO. The next year he had a normal license tag. Why? Because the state of Kansas was trying to increase tax revenues, they decided to charge an additional $70. Unfortunately for them, a lot of people were not so vain after all, and decided to drop their custom license tags. The state lost money on this move.
My question: if a couple of apolitical teenagers could figure out this relationship 30 YEARS AGO IN KANSAS, why are liberals still clueless about this?
jetty’s question answers itself. The teenagers in question were apolitical, and thus didn’t have any ideological biases of a political nature to hinder their examination of the issue. If the government was going to charge Mark more for a vanity plate than he wanted to pay, then he wouldn’t pay it — and given the simple assumption that most people make most of their decisions on the basis of such narrowly defined self-interest, the loss of money by the state would seem to be obviously entailed. Liberals, however, are political by definition. And the views of the legislators and talking heads in question on the intersection of 1) taxes, 2) government, and 3) property lead them to be blind to the easy-to-foresee negative consequences of an action that so “obviously” is in their best interest. Because, you know, it falls in line with what they believe. And stuff. Plus, no way Amazon would ever cance–whoops.
File this under Democrats aren’t very bright
“I’ve got a great idea! Let’s cut open the goose and take all the golden eggs!”