I dont know if this is extremely relevant, but my state is back to attempting stupid laws again. If this goes unchallenged, other states could start charging sales tax from out of state internet purchases.
A new South Dakota law may end up determining whether most U.S. residents are required to pay sales taxes on their Internet purchases.
The South Dakota law, passed by the Legislature there in March, requires many out-of-state online and catalog retailers to collect the state's sales tax from customers. The law is shaping up to be a legal test case challenging a 25-year-old U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibits states from levying sales taxes on remote purchases.
Unless courts overturn the South Dakota law, it will embolden other states to pass similar Internet sales tax rules, critics said. The law could "set the course for enormous tax and administrative burdens on businesses across the country," Steve DelBianco, executive director of e-commerce trade group NetChoice, said in a statement.
Even before the law went into effect Sunday, it prompted two lawsuits. Last Thursday, the state sued four online sellers, including Newegg and Overstock.com, in an effort to force them to register with the state and collect its sales tax. The law requires out-of-state retailers to collect sales tax if they have more than $100,000 in sales, or 200 remote transactions, in South Dakota each year.
Well in my opinion they should do something to make local stores more appealing, rather than handicap online revenue. I am still not going to buy anything local other than groceries, because 9 times out of 10, If I try to find something local, It takes hours or days to find a store that has what Im looking for, and even then I find out after the fact that I could have gotten the same thing on amazon for half the price and less time wasted hunting for the right store.
I mean I would be more ok with it if say, I bought something from a seller in arizona, a 4% tax was collected, and paid to arizona, as the product is made and sold there. Paying sales tax to a state where nothing related to the purchase happens, aside from getting shipped there, makes no sense to me.
Smaller stores just cant compete at the prices of Amazon or othet big box retailers. Their scale is just so much bigger. There is nothing the state could do that wouldnt be seen as excessive meddling
You answer your own question, Online has the variety and convenience, local never will have that and as such will never compete. So this is how it is. There is no real making it more appealing to shop local, this is just basic economics.
EDIT: The alternative is to have the production capabilities to make everything currently available worldwide in every individual state and country in the world, which is clearly not feasible.
Tax everywhere in the world* is paid on where the item was bought, not made. If so China would literally have all of the wolds money as it would be continually consuming tax on every item made and even though it is not the supplier of everything the volume is such that it would end up the wealthiest nation on earth and tehn just leverage that to get the last of the remaining money.
*I may be very wrong on this, but the vast majority.
If they're gonna do this, at least make the prices of the products tax-inclusive. A large reason people hate sales taxes is because they see a price and click buy, expecting to pay what they see on the tag, but then get slapped with x% of the price added on. Even if it's only a few cents for a given purchase, that still really pisses people off. Makes you feel as if you've been suckered. One of the reasons I love New Hampshire.
Of course, this means that prices for products online are going to change from state to state, but that's normal for goods and services anyway.
Yeah I never understood this about America, the countries I have been to and live in are all up front pricing. The only time this is not the case is buying online where it is not in my country and my currency, then it gets calculated and collected on delivery. The exception to this is that it is a base of 150 before import taxes are added and only to things not paid for in euro, other wise what you see is what you pay and tax if applicable is collected on delivery.
Well I know in Canada it's law that you cannot display a price with taxes, unless you're a governmental organization (and some other exceptions also). I think the rationale behind it is to hinder tax evasion by having a clearly written tax amount, and because of the fact there is the taxes on the federal and provincial levels which make things complicated.
Eventually I thought all internet purchases from online store fronts would be taxed. I have no problem with it as in this world the government needs more money to pay for programs and such. However it would also be nice for them to also tax the 1% properly in regards to income. Lastly .... I will say what I often say and that is "Die commerce die." Yes we can have a world without it.
I'm waiting for sales tax to apply to online purchases in my state to happen. I honestly wouldn't particularly care overall since our sales tax is reasonable (5.5%) and it gives more reason to purchase locally. And if enough demand is moved local that just means more jobs.
Although I doubt the latter would actually happen once our robot overlords take over.
