A ray of sunshine in a cloud filled blogosphere.....

One of the current hot (pun intended) topics on the blog, HOTAIR, is the subject of the States (or Feds) passing laws requiring Internet sales companies without an instate footprint to collect sales taxes for the several states.

I won't repeat all of the pros and cons - by now y'all have made up your mind --- What I'd like to offer here is one of the finest 'comments' I've seen posted in a long time on a blog. It is straightforward, no obscenities, no bashing or hair pulling. It was posted by 'MTF' at 6:48 this April 30th morning..

"As a business owner with customers in 28 states I complain all the time about sales taxes. But not about states need for revenue, which I recognize is legitimate, even dire in some cases. But sales tax is terrible.

Commenters here are right to point out that state governments need to get spending under control, but no one would dispute that (with a few big exceptions, like deferred compensation arrangements for future healthcare and retirement), most state spending is at least pretty visible to the voters. Federal spending is different, and more like a runaway train thirty seconds from plunging off a mountain bridge and into calamity, but that’s not the issue here.

But states do not “collect” sales taxes, I do. I am enslaved to the states in which we sell as a conscripted tax collector. I receive no pay for this. Instead, about every five years (more often for unscrupulous and desperate states like New York- the worst of the worst, Illinois and California, state “auditors” (really third party, contracted bounty hunters) show up at my door, demanding a cubicle, electricity, phone, light, coffee and whatever conversational gossip they can muster, and examine our record of galley-slaving on their state’s behalf.

Then they “propose” small adjustments, ie, voluntary additional payments, usually based on fantastical readings of the tax code for that particular state, and leave. To protest their fictions, we have to pay the tax and appeal to have it returned to us. Of course, the underlying transactions are long in the past, so we can’t go back and ask the customer to pay their taxes, we have to pay it ourselves. In Illinois four years ago we had to pay about $26,000 of tax, then appeal, and after winning we were told the state didn’t have the money to pay us back and we “could just deduct it from future payments to be made”. Well, ok, if you say so mister slave master.

So, screw the scummy sales tax. Collect it yourselves states. If you screw up, leave small business out of it! I’m all for Amazon here in this instance, and local state companies should aspire to join them."

MTF on April 30, 2012 at 6:48 AM

Well stated, MTF! And for those of you who missed the link to this article up above - click here. In the long run this policy will (or will not) effect us all.