Standard law on sales tax, in the states that charge them, is that businesses that have a physical presence in the state, even if the particular sale is fulfilled through an out-of-state facility, are required to collect and remit sales taxes.

On the other hand, if you buy a new fishing [...]]]> A little background first:

Standard law on sales tax, in the states that charge them, is that businesses that have a physical presence in the state, even if the particular sale is fulfilled through an out-of-state facility, are required to collect and remit sales taxes.

On the other hand, if you buy a new fishing rod from Joe’s Bait Shop in another state it’s up to you to follow the law in the state you live in and send in your sales tax equivalent (usually called a use tax). Joe doesn’t have to keep track of and comply with all tax laws in each and every state, county, city or other government jurisdiction that charges them.

California is the 5th or 6th state that has passed a law which basically says that if you have affiliates who live in their state, that is sufficient to be considered a physical presence and the company is therefore liable for charging, tracking and remitting sales taxes.

Amazon has done the same thing in each of the other states that have tried this sort of law. If they have no affiliates in the state the state then has no pretext to require sales tax collection.

It has nothing to do with a “club” or threat being held over the head of California, it’s simply Amazon protecting their business from laws being aimed at them.

Notice that it isn’t aimed at anyone who buys from an out-of-state source in general. Mail order catalogs and most smaller on-line businesses aren’t affected by it at all. It hits ONLY those companies that have an affiliate program. The big boys. Amazon. Overstock. eBay cancelled their affiliate program altogether.

Way to go California. Wipe out one more source of income for your residents. Somehow they still haven’t learned that laws have consequences that they may not want or intend. Now instead of a new source of revenue for the government, existing revenue from income taxes has been lost.

They’ll all be sitting there in Sacramento scratching their heads saying where did that money go? We were supposed to be MAKING (well, really taking) more money and instead have lost it.

One extra note for the many I’ve read saying “Well it’s about time that Amazon started baying more in taxes” or the like. When you go to Sears, is the sales tax part of the basic price? No. It’s added to it, plus a bit of the base price is from having to cover the overhead of having to comply with those laws.

Those taxes wouldn’t have been coming from Amazon, but from every Amazon customer in the state of California. Once again, another little way in which it costs more to live in California.

The really sad thing to me is that I’ve lived in California. It’s a great state with an incredible diversity of places to go and things to do. The only problem I have with it and the only reason I won’t move back there is that it’s run by the government of California.

‘Nuff said

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The first, from H.L. Mencken:

“It seems to be difficult if not impossible for human beings to avoid thinking of government as mystical entity with a nature and a history all its own. [...]]]> Two tantalizing tidbits in today’s mail on the differences (and lack thereof) between governments and criminals I thought were worth passing along.

The first, from H.L. Mencken:

“It seems to be difficult if not impossible for human beings to avoid thinking of government as mystical entity with a nature and a history all its own. It constitutes for them a creature somehow interposed between themselves and the great flow of cosmic events, and they look to it to think for them and to protect them. In democratic countries it is theoretically their agent, but there seems to be a strong tendency to convert the presumably free citizen into its agent, or at all events, its client. This exalted view of its scope, character, powers and autonomy is fundamentally false. A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men…. Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general, have come to a degree of puissance in the world that is unchallenged by that of any other group. Their fiats, however preposterous, are generally obeyed as a matter of duty, they are assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom, and the lives of multitudes are willingly sacrificed in their interest.”

The second, from St. Augustine’s City of God

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”

The difference between governments and a criminal gang is that the government is SUPPOSED to be the protector of the rights of its citizens while the crooks just take what they want, when they want it. More and more lately I see the differences eroding down to rubber stamp elections won by the person who promises more of things he has no right to have or control in the first place. When {fill in the name of your elected officials} robs Peter to give to Paul, he can always count on Paul’s support.

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Report This [...]]]> Quick 10 question quiz from the citizenship test for those becoming a new citizen of the US. How do you do … and no cheating?

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Sneak preview of the sequel

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