Tax and the Internet

What’s the Issue: The money hungry states are lobbying, along with Amazon and the NRF (National Retail Federation)and Walmart to impose taxes on all internet sales. (Since they failed in the ligitations, they now jumped on the tax everyone bandwagon.) The proposal is known as The Marketplace Fairness Act. I am not against taxing sales on the internet in principal. What I am against is the number of sales tax authorities, reporting and the amount of time, labor and energy it would take to report in the thousands of sales tax districts in the US.  So while today we report in our individual state, now we would have to report in 50 states, 15,000 districts. And not every state is up-to-date with online software. It appears to me that some of the lobby is supported as well by businesses trying to captialize on this requirement. It’s every accountant’s dream, software that we all must use and for which they get paid to “oversee”. So they’ll charge all us small merchants to “sort” it out for us and the cost get added to the cost of doing business.
Why Do You Care: Ultimately, you the consumer will pay even more as this “service” becomes part of our operating budget expenses.  What’s Fair?  The only thing that makes sense from a small business prospective is a National Sales Tax.  One rate, wherever business is conducted online. Even so, if you expect that if left to the individual states, that still means we must submit 50 sales tax reports, payments at least 4 times each year. What does it mean for Wholesale Customers? Immediately, every wholesale customer will have to be re-evaluated to make sure your Resale Certificate (or whatever they call it in your state) is valid and that we have it documented.  What can you do?  If you have an opinion on this, there is another Lobby group (of course) which is supported by ebay which is attempting to put some sanity into the process. You can check them out at their website: WerHereConclusion: The tax will pass eventually as the states are looking at these “lost taxes” like sugar plums on a Christmas Tree.  The question is can our elected representatives in government produce a rational national sales tax that is not overly burdensome on small businesses.

Author: VenetianBeadShop

What began as a fascination with the glass of Murano has become a way of life. Our webstore has all you will need to make jewelry, quality findings, stringing materials, Swarovski Crystals and a lot more, but our main focus is the Venetian Glass Bead. We have been an integral part in promoting Venetian glass beads throughout the world as well as helping to breathe new life into traditional Venetian techniques. A few years ago, we introduced our line of Venetian Dichroics to the US through as a result of years of efforts with our beadmakers in Murano. We continue to bring new and innovative ideas to this age old industry. Most recently, we developed the Furnace Glass along with our partner furnace in Venice. It's a blend of old glass making techniques to work with new fashion ideas. We remain a family owned business located in Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, CA, USA where we have been importing Venetian Glass and Murano Glass commercially since 1993. Our wholesale showroom has the largest collection of Venetian Beads on display anywhere. View all posts by VenetianBeadShop