Congress continues to tackle the question of whether to keep the Internet a largely tax-free shopping zone or pave the way for states to collect sales taxes on most online purchases.
Published:
30 April 2001 y., Monday
There is little doubt lawmakers will extend a moratorium expiring this October that bars taxes on Internet access and prohibits taxes that single out the Internet. The bigger question: What to do about sales taxes? While laws in 45 states say those taxes are owed, they rarely are collected.
At stake are billions of dollars in revenue for state and local governments as well as tax fairness between traditional brick-and-mortar retailers and their Internet and catalog competitors.
Congress' General Accounting Office has estimated that uncollected sales taxes on Internet purchases could cost the states $12.5 billion in 2003. Remote sellers, meanwhile, say complying with thousands of different taxing jurisdictions would create a costly new burden - and could lead to imposition of more taxes in the future.
The taxes are not collected now mainly because of the Supreme Court, which has ruled that a business must have a physical presence - such as a warehouse, a retail store or an executive office - before a state can require sales tax collections on out-of-state purchases. Few states have tried to force their citizens to pay the tax from remote sales on their own.
In the Senate, negotiators have tentatively agreed on an extension of the moratorium through 2006. The measure would also expand states' sales tax collection authority, but only if at least 25 states simplify their own multiple tax rates. Congress would still have to give final approval to the new system.
Šaltinis:
nandotimes.com
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.
The most popular articles
Software company announced new structure_ of it_s business.
more »
High-profile telecom and networking companies are banding together to crack down on hackers
more »
End-of-show report for CeBIT 2005 (10 to 16 March) in Hannover/Germany
more »
Sony Ericsson announces at CeBIT the Bluetooth Motion Cam ROB-1
more »
German video streaming service company TV1 is launching at CeBit 2005 an online personal video recording service called shift.tv
more »
search.lt presents newest links
more »
China retailers are just starting to adopt electronic point-of-sale terminals, as the number of shipments is expected to surpass those to Germany, Europe's largest POS market, this year
more »
On January 27, 2005 JSC “Skaitmeninio sertifikavimo centras” (Digital Certification Centre) presented an application for IVPC to register a company providing qualified certification services. The director of the company Mudrikas Dadasovas tells about the future plans.
more »
GuruNet's stock fell back to Earth on Tuesday after the company revealed the extent of its tightening relationship with Google
more »
Photos of a "dead" Saddam Hussein are the lure for a new mass-mailing worm, Sophos warned on Thursday
more »
Picking up where it left off in 2004 with its distributed computing plans, IBM introduced a new service to help companies build and deploy service-oriented architectures
more »