A 'Netflix Tax'? Yes, and It's Already a Thing in Some States (usatoday.com) 135
An anonymous reader shares a report: Your monthly bill for Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and other streaming entertainment services could go up soon as states such as Illinois try to find ways to offset declining sales taxes and other revenue shortfalls. Chicago, Pennsylvania and Florida have already passed a so-called Netflix tax, and cities such as Pasadena, Calif. have broached the issue. These taxes can translate to additional fees of less than $1 each month to consumers. But over the months -- and tacked onto multiple streaming subscriptions -- they might add up to $50 or more each year. Netflix, consumer tax groups and tech trade organizations have voiced their opposition to such taxes, warning they can be unfair and deter innovation. Some opponents have initiated legal challenges, and at least one state has shelved plans after a court decision. But state and local governments aren't likely to halt fresh efforts as falling pay-TV subscriptions and video rentals mean there's less opportunity to tax cable bills or charge sales tax at the cash register.
govenrment loves telecom (Score:5, Interesting)
Taxes and fees are crazy high on phone (land is really crazy with the subscriber fee). The local city utility loves to tack on weird stuff onto the electric/water/trash/sewer bills. They just figure people will not notice. Netflix is a service almost like telco, so really I'm surprised it took them this long.
Internet Recovery Fee (Score:4, Informative)
This is my favorite Item on my DSL (Century Link) phone bill. What the heck is that. It's not a govt tax. $5 goes to Century link. So why isn't it part of the advertised price. If it's a gov't allowance they must earmark to pay for expansion then why hasn't my DSL service improved in 20 years?
I also wonder why companies that do sell what they sell at the advertised price (like T-mobile does) don't make a bigger deal of their honesty (at least honesty about the cost) because customer's hate these creeping fees
How does the city know I use Netflix (Score:2)
Netflix isn't tied to a location so how can the City know? Couldn't I just tell netflix I live in some state without taxes?
Re: How does the city know I use Netflix (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Hotels are not in the business of speaking. At what point does a tax rate become a violation of the First Amendment?
Re: (Score:2)
However, States can gain access to your credit card and your bank statements
How? Without a warrant or subpoena? I seriously want to know. Asking for a friend...
Re: (Score:2)
Our phone bill at work is $35/mo for a POTS line with unlimited long distance however the actual bill is $58.76/mo after all the other taxes and fees.
$23.76 in tax/fees
Over 40% of the bill.
That's a 67.88% tax rate!
Try Voip (Score:2)
That's why I switched to Voip for my land line. Of course VOIP is more fragile that POTS but since I have a cell phone too I'm all ready robust on the coms department. By the way I use OOMA for my voip and am very satisfied with it for years. Pay once to get the box, then it's about $5 a month to pay for E911 and the local telecom fees. You can pay ooma more if you need extra services so it's full featured if you need that or bare bones if you don't.
This is what happens when you can't raise taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
The Working Class are the only ones with any money that don't have multi-billion dollar media empires and lobbying arms sticking up for them. The used to, we called those 'Unions' an shut them down because they got a little corrupt and so instead of fixing them we threw baby out with bathwater.
Re: (Score:2)
The government still needs money to run. And despite what the rich's media outlets tell you there's no magic 'government waste' to cut that makes the need for taxes go away.
That is where you are wrong.
Have a look at an earlier comment I made [slashdot.org] in this discussion.
Basically, sales tax revenues in Illinois are up 10% over four years. Gas taxes are also up. Granted, income taxes are down. That said, gas taxes go for roads and transportation, so they actually have more funding for that now that tax revenues have gone up. I am sure that income tax revenues being down have some impact, but all those specific taxes being up should mean that those specific things for which the taxes
Re: (Score:2)
You are fooling yourself if you think taxes collected go to the thing they are "earmarked" for. People have died because the tax on phone lines that was supposed to go to 911 installations was instead used for police benefits like dry cleaning and other garbage (NYC). Once the government has the money, it's reallocated and slush-funded all over the place, NOT where it should be at all. How much money from state lotteries has gone to the schools it was intended for? Precious little I'm afraid.
Re: (Score:2)
How much money from state lotteries has gone to the schools it was intended for? Precious little I'm afraid.
Hence my comment about there being a serious problem with fiscal policy. You were more direct than I was.
I remember when Florida instituted its state lottery. There were big promises of more funding for education. What actually happened was that the state legislature basically reduced the general fund budgetary obligation for education funding by whatever amount the state lottery kicked in. In that way, the state lottery became the exact same sort of slush fund you describe, while still technically conf
Re: (Score:2)
Well the deal with the lotteries was they figured out how much they expected the lotteries would bring in and took that much out of their allocated funding then when the lotto didn't bring in as much as expected the schools ended up with even less.
Reminds me of the amazon tax that just went into effect here recently the state said it wasn't going to help their budget as they had already allocated the money they thought they would get from amazon in the budget before it passed.
It's a nice shell game they cla
Re: (Score:2)
You are fooling yourself if you think taxes collected go to the thing they are "earmarked" for. People have died because the tax on phone lines that was supposed to go to 911 installations was instead used for police benefits like dry cleaning and other garbage (NYC). Once the government has the money, it's reallocated and slush-funded all over the place, NOT where it should be at all.
It's a two-step process. First, because expense X is receiving money from a dedicated tax/fee, the legislature diverts money that had been coming out of the general fund for that expense, because it's being paid for by the special tax. Never mind that the special tax was needed because the share of the general fund that it had been getting wasn't enough for the expenditures that needed to be made -- now there's the special tax, and if it's not enough, the legislature can just point at the taxpayers and decl
Re: (Score:2)
Then cut non-waste, or tax the holy hellier out of people. But quit borrowing.
Given we live in better times than ever before, government should be becoming smaller, not larger. We have no war or large infrastructure projects we can legitimately borrow for (where future generations, who will also benefit, can pay for it.)
This is just the immorality of the current generation refusing to carry its own weight. In the back rooms, they discuss how much they can get away with for borrowing, to lavish to buy vot
Re: (Score:2)
Or, alternatively, this is what happens when you destroy the job market like Obama did for the last 8 years with massive new regulation and Obamacare while simultaneously trying to buy votes by eliminating the work requirement for welfare recipients and massively expanding entitlement programs... The rich already pay 80% of all tax in the US http://www.newsmax.com/Finance... [newsmax.com] while the "poor" 45% Democrat voting block who thinks the rich don't pay enough pay ZERO taxes but enjoy all the general benefits as
Re:This is what happens when you can't raise taxes (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, alternatively, this is what happens when you destroy the job market...
A) If environmental regulation is slowly becoming onerous then it's a sign you are doing something very wrong and should change. Frankly, companies that pollute the environment should be 100% financially responsible for cleaning it up.
B) The renewable energy market has created 10x the number of jobs that it's "destroyed".
C) Coal jobs are being lost natural gas, nothing else.
The rich already pay 80% of all tax in the US
$100K/yr isn't what it used to be, so not a qualifier for being "rich". How much are the people that make $1M/yr paying? Also, instead of just the income tax, let's include ALL taxes. For some reason taxation is highly regressive which means the people with the least end up paying the largest percentage. Let's turn that around.
while the "poor" 45% Democrat voting block who thinks the rich don't pay enough pay ZERO taxes
The poor pay zero taxes because their pay hasn't increased for the last 40 years while the value of their income has decreased for the last 40 years which has caused them to fall below the poverty line. Yes, for some reason, you can have a full time job and still be impoverished because assholes aren't paying you what you are really worth.
but enjoy all the general benefits as well as free healthcare, free housing, free food, free phones...
Literally none of those things are free. I would also point out that Republicans voters are the ones who benefit the most from the ACA which is why despite having majority control of The Senate, The House and the presidency, Republican politicians were incapable and unwilling to reduce the coverage by the ACA.
That said, the federal government as well as most states mentioned don't have an income problem, they have a spending problem.
Yeah, who needs the police, firefighters, hospitals, schools or any of that shit, right? How about we cut subsides to all energy companies and farmers? Then lets go further and tax companies/farmers the exact amount of money that it costs to clean up their pollution. The free market would absolutely eviscerate the market of polluters as it exists today and solar would be the preferred energy source and beef would be 25x the cost of chicken.
I'm all for the free market as long as they are taxed based on the amount of damage they do to the planet.
End farm subsidies NOW (Score:2)
One of the most remarkable features is the way that agriculture has remained the recipient of vast government expenditure over the years. In the US this has been achieved by farm state congress creatures allying with inner city representatives to vote for each others' subsidies. In Europe the EU started as a way of getting Germany to pay the French peasantry a living wage.
The way to spot the impact of farm subsidy is to consider the market value of farm land. To the degree that it has a substantial value, t
Re: (Score:2)
Frankly, companies that pollute the environment should be 100% financially responsible for cleaning it up.
They are quite adept at having the responsibility stop at a shell company holding no money. Bankruptcy law gets in they way after that.
Re: (Score:2)
You need some citations that contain actual statistics for your "facts". The green jobs lie was just that, a lie. Coal jobs were lost because Obama essentially banned coal fired power plants via regulations making them cost negative to operate. Not even gassfied coal plants could operate at a profit.
No one is complaining about clean air and clean water, but when you start treating a key atmospheric component that is essentially plant food (CO2) as a pollutant without real science (screaming and stomping y
Re: (Score:2)
You need some citations that contain actual statistics for your "facts". The green jobs lie was just that, a lie. Coal jobs were lost because Obama essentially banned coal fired power plants via regulations making them cost negative to operate. Not even gassfied coal plants could operate at a profit.
Well let's see, the price of natural gas plummetted in 2008 [eia.gov] which is a direct result of Bush's 2005 energy policy [wikipedia.org] which exempted natural gas from just about all regulation. However, feel free to point out which executive order he made [archives.gov] to make this happen before he came into office.
CO2 is produced by every living organism, and plants need it to live.
Interesting fact, plants absorb and expel it. Until recently, animal life has been living in the margins of what could be absorbed.
It has historically been at higher levels pre industrial revolution, http://drtimball.com/2012/pre- [drtimball.com]... [drtimball.com] it already blocks all the IR bands at 100%, and adding more will not change that (don't try to feed me that speculative BS about upper vs lower atmospheric diffraction, that is pure speculative BS with zero science to back it up), but somehow we are teetering on the apocalypse, never mind the science and historical evidence.
Adding more will make it more difficult to extract CO2 from the atmosphere which is something that
Re: (Score:2)
The low cost of natural gas didn't help coal, but that was hardly the root cause for it's demise. https://longviewpower.com/news... [longviewpower.com]
I am not even going to get into discussing CO2 with you. You clearly know the AGW arguments but have no background in hard science and thus no filter to determine valid science vs. pull it out their ass speculation/junk science. You are worried that we are turning into Venus huh? You do know that Venus receives more intense solar radiation than earth, plus Venus atmosphere i
Re: (Score:2)
The low cost of natural gas didn't help coal, but that was hardly the root cause for it's demise.
No, the root causes are that it's inefficient, becoming increasingly automated and displaced by other energy sources. Obama didn't do this [gregor.us] but he did help this. [forbes.com]
You are worried that we are turning into Venus huh? You do know that Venus receives more intense solar radiation than earth, plus Venus atmosphere is 97% plus CO2 (970,000 PPM), whereas on earth we are at 400PPM (or 0.04%).
I guess you don't know about feedback loops, eh? The Venus state is just the end result of the totality of many feedback loops.
No, plants and animals both respriate and produce CO2
Riiight. Let's put you in a room full of CO2 to test that theory.
Regarding the ACA, if the Democrats wanted to make health care better, they should have gotten involved instead of sitting on their hands and trying to obstruct.
LOL! Right... so how does that work when all the work is being done in secret at Republican luncheons that Democrats were prohibited from attending? Also,
Re: This is what happens when you can't raise taxe (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty sure there are records of Trump paying millions in taxes. You need to cite something with actual facts before you try to pull that BS.
People on welfare and below the poverty line can have a net effective income in benefits of up to $45,000/year and pay zero taxes:
No income tax: Welfare and income below ~$40k(?) is not taxed, nor do they have to pay SSI/SDI
No property tax: Those who receive subsidized government housing pay no property tax
No Sales tax: Those on food stamps don't pay sales tax on food
Re: (Score:2)
> destroy the job market like Obama did
Yeah. That darn Obama and his sub-5% unemployment rate. Damn him for the job market that has recruiters messaging me daily based on a LinkedIn profile I haven't updated since I changed jobs 9 months ago. That's sooo annoying, you know? And it's just bloody AWFUL that said job change was the fastest and easiest in my life. I was really looking forward to a few months of dealing with recruiters and interviewers. And that $7500 referral bonus I picked up from brin
Re: (Score:2)
Check either the labor participation rate or the U-6 number. At this point in time you just look foolish trying to say Obama had 5% unemployment. That the media were his accomplices in lying about the unemployment rate is no excuse after 8 years... If unemployment were really that low, wages would not have dropped by something like $4500 per year on average during Obama's tenure. A tight labor market causes wages to go up, not down.
Re: (Score:2)
My stepson, dutifully programmed by his teachers, came home quoting the "real unemployment rate" under W. Bush. He stopped doing that under Obama.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
states need to find new sources of revenue.
Wrong, states merely need to tax the people that are doing the damage. For example, large trucks do 10000x the damage to the road as a normal car so why don't we tax them based on how much damage they do? Whenever a company releases pollution into the environment, they should be charged the amount that it costs to clean that up. This would upend the power structure of lots of states which is why they don't want to do that because then where will they get their campaign funding from?
What we need to do is
Re: (Score:2)
-
Connecticut ran into the same problem and tried to tax its way out of it. It had the opposite effect because some big corporations(GE and Aetna) and wealthy residents moved to better managed states, which caused a reduction in revenue. Now Hartford is teetering on bankruptcy.
The bottom line is you can't tax
Re: (Score:2)
You young'in', go back to history class before you spout such non-sense.
There is MASSIVE waste in government, we used to be able to go to the moon on the equivalent value (adjusted for inflation) of the current NASA budget and today even though the cost of rockets and engineering has gone down significantly, they can barely keep the lights on for a few weather satellites and a portion of the n-th iteration of a space station (the US used to have their own).
The US and many governments around the world used t
Re: (Score:1)
If I moved to where my job is I'd need a 500% raise to afford a mortgage or the rent.
Re:This is what happens when you can't raise taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
If I moved to where my job is I'd need a 500% raise to afford a mortgage or the rent.
The government is screwing you in multiple ways. Scarcity of housing is just one of the ways.
Whats your reaction? Who are you blaming? What do you intend to do about it?
Personally I vote. Every election. The one federal election every 4 years is the least of my concerns.
What discussions have you had with the most local politicians? Do you even know who your town council is? Do you even know what they do?
Re: (Score:1)
My default vote: vote against the incumbent. If no incumbent, vote for the one with the lesser amount of political experience.
Re: (Score:2)
Uninformed decisions, however, arent correlated with fixing any specific problems.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, my defaults are informed by the reality of capture of extant politicians by the overall political system. The perqs and benefits of being an elected official are self-reinforcing, and are especially rewarding to those who enhance Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy. [jerrypournelle.com].
As a backup, I also consider the advice of the late Robert A. Heinlein, speaking as his character 'Lazarus Long'. . .
If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote fo
Re: This is what happens when you can't raise taxe (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If he doesn't live where he works, he probably can't vote on local issues that effect housing there.
Oh well then! Nothing can be done!
/snark
Do you know who your local town council is, and what they do?
There is a reason that the east coast doesnt generally have this issue. We have the notion that when its our problem that WE need to do something about it, rather than that SOMEONE needs to do something about it.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: This is what happens when you can't raise taxe (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Reading about the FSP I was surprised to hear that you got 14 members elected to New Hampshire's House of Representatives. I was pretty impressed, until I read that it has 400 members... holy crap. California has 80, by comparison. It's about 1 for every 3000 people, if the national Congress had that level of representation, there would be (Wikipedia did the calculation, not me) 99,000 members of Congress. I doubt even the Galactic Senate was that big.
Maybe you could start there to trim the fat, you know, i
Re: (Score:1)
If I moved to where my job is I'd need a 500% raise to afford a mortgage or the rent.
The high property values are a result of government imposed artificial scarcity. Relatively rich landowners are using the government to enforce high rents and property prices on people that are much less wealthy. Instead of taxing the rich more, maybe we should just reduce their unfair subsidies.
How Zoning Laws Exacerbate Inequality [theatlantic.com]
Zoning as opportunity hoarding [brookings.edu]
How Anti-Growth Sentiment Thwarts Equality [nytimes.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I remember Amtrak reps coming to my school and telling us how great the CA HSR project would be, to talk to our parents about it, etc. It was under the guise of a railroad safety assembly.
This was decades before the 2008 vote, before CHSRA was even formed. I enjoyed voting no on it as I recalled the stupid assembly with an over-excited lady in a cartoonish train conductor costume asking kids where they'd like to go on a train.
Of course, CA being CA, my vote didn't mean shit next to the masses of fools who
This is /. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
Probably not enough. Consider property taxes where I live run about 2.5% They also tax biz property. Same rate.
Re: (Score:2)
a wealth tax levied against an individual or company's total net worth.
Yes! A tax on being frugal and saving your money for your retirement! Fuck anyone who puts 10% of their income away to provide for themselves when they get old. If they're rich enough to be able to do that, then they deserve to have it all drained away from them by endless taxes on the same money over and over again.
Re: (Score:2)
And then don't forget once you are retired when you have a much lower income but might have higher assets such as a house and that retirement fund that generates the income. So this wealth tax eats away at the savings the person has spent a lifetime making.
Property taxes are regressive enough but let's extend that to cover everything a person has. Absolutely brilliant! /sarcasm
Re: (Score:2)
Government services do need to be paid for
Try telling the UBI idiots that. They think money grows on trees and that the government has all it needs and can just literally give it away.
I think the contention is that government is wasteful and needs to be spending less money and focusing it more on useful services.
People are sick of paying for boondoggles like CA HSR. Many people are sick of paying for failing public schools, for road maintenance that never happens, for welfare and healthcare for irresponsible people, etc. It's not that these people think services don't have a cost, it's that they think the costs are out of line and the services rendered are not worth what the taxpayer i
Next up: dick tax! (Score:1)
The only thing that the I.R.S. has not taxed is the penis. This is due to the fact that 40% of the time it's hanging around unemployed, 20% of the time it's pissed off, 30% of the time it's hard up, 10% of the time it's in the hole.
On top of all this, it has two dependents, and they're both nuts.
Accordingly, starting January 1, 1999, penises will be taxed according to size !
To determine the category, please consult the chart below and confirm this
information on page 2, Section 7, Line 3, of the standard 104
Re: (Score:2)
Conservatives and their "innovation" arguments (Score:1)
taxes do not deter innovation, just like patents do not encourage innovation.
Yes, Netflix, a service, should be taxed as any other service in the states it serves were these types of services would be taxes anyway. If I rented a movie from Blockbuster in Washington, I paid tax back in the day. Why shouldn't I be paying tax on steaming Netflix today? If I had Comcast, I'd be paying taxes there and I pay taxes for my internet connection.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I'm already taxed for the infrastructure to get me to BlockBuster. Does that mean the product shouldn't be taxed?
Netflix is providing a service, it should be taxed in the states that have a sales tax. End of story. I'll pay this in Washington state without complaint. In Oregon, fuck no, this should never be taxed since they don't have a sales tax.
The tax on the ISP connection is pennies compared to the money I spend on other services over the internet. Should the ISP taxes be jacked up astronomically?
Re: (Score:2)
Except that there has to be a legal basis for claiming to have taxing authority. If memory serves, the US Constitution directly forbids states from levying taxes on goods that simply pass through the state. I think a very good case can be made for a claim that packets of digital data are no different from a transportation and legal standpoint than cases of lettuce.
It is also well settled law that a state (or any other government agency) cannot claim jurisdiction over something that happened outside of its p
Re: (Score:2)
Really? None of that in oklahoma yet. The ADSL2+ line is $45.00/mo
Actual bill after taxes/fees $45.00/mo
Maybe someday they will talk the isp's into selling connections actually worth taxing (hahahaha thats funny).
IIUC the reason it currently isn't taxed is an attempt to get them to actually deploy effing broadband.
Re: (Score:1)
Maybe there should be a pistachio almond icecream tax?
Or a left handed tax?
Or a couldn't make it to see the eclipse, but I need the government's filthy fingers in my back pocket tax?
Where do you draw the line?
Sales Tax is Tax, anything else is penalty (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Courts tend to reject these laws when the state is trying to claim jurisdiction over entities that are not physically present in the state. IOW, a state can tax the streaming of movies and they can tax streaming a movie differently than they tax a movie theater because, while the content may be the same, the service is different. What they cannot do the streaming of movies over Netflix at a different rate than streaming Amazon Prime. Another thing that they cannot do is require the streaming company to coll
Re: (Score:2)
The other way to do it would be to close loopholes that let multi-billion dollar corporations pay less tax than I do. We, the people, via taxes, effectively subsidize the entities that are trying their damnedest to fuck us over as much as possible as long as it's profitable.
What I'd like to see is a study on how well a corporation like Google would fair if it was headquartered in Somalia. And then take that data and figure out what percentage of their profit is due to the infrastructure that the taxpayers
Parasites (Score:2)
Government and their tax schemes are kind of like parasites; only instead of trying to exploit a biological niche, they find any economic activity they can -- and try to extract something from it.
Income tax, fine .... (it's a tax, no matter how you slice it) .... the list goes on pretty much endlessly.
Property tax, fine
Sales tax fine (though it's good to live in Oregon sometimes!)
Auto Registration
Only slightly surprised IRS goons don't show up and shut down lemonade stands because johnny jr didn't up.
Taxes
Re: (Score:2)
Income from a lemonade stand is already taxable. Check www.irs.gov.
Also, you are required to get a city permit (let's just call that a flat tax) in many places: http://www.nydailynews.com/lif... [nydailynews.com]
Taxes are literally everywhere. It's just the amount and to whom that changes.
Re: (Score:2)
Reading that made me throw up a little in my mouth.
Re: (Score:2)
Fun! For a lemonade stand here you would need a "Transient Merchant and/or Itinerant Vendor License" which is $600/yr
It is only available by the year.
Hope you are planning on selling a lot of lemonade.
There shouldn't be a special tax (Score:2)
But Netflix should pay/charge all taxes such as GST, PST/HST in Canada just like cable companies, groceries stores and every body else.
Re: (Score:2)
Why should Netflix pay a tax like your cable company. The cable company is collecting taxes from you and remitting them to your government because it has a physical presence and the service they are offering is the transportation of digital data packets. Likewise with your grocery store for food or your car mechanic for car repairs. If they were to tax Netflix and Amazon for the content they send to you (more correctly, tax you and require Netflix and Amazon to collect it from you and remit it on your behal
Re: (Score:2)
because it has a physical presence
Having a physical presence for the purposes of charging a sales tax is an artificial legal distinction. The sales tax is not paid by the corporation, it is paid by you, and YOU have a physical presence. The sales tax goes to provide services to YOU.
The "physical presence" makes a great deal of sense when it comes to income and corporate taxes, but not so much sales taxes.
If they were to tax Netflix and Amazon for the content they send to you
They aren't taxing Netflix for the content they send you, they would be taxing you on the sale of the service. It's easy to identify the
Re: (Score:2)
The physical presence thing makes a great deal of sense when deciding legal jurisdiction. Should states like Texas and Florida get to hold people accountable for murders committed in California and Illinois? The former states have harsher punishments than the latter states so why do we let a little thing like physical location get in the way of justice?
Likewise, if I mail something to a customer in California from my home in Wisconsin, under what legal theory does California get to claim the jurisdiction ne
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, we all agree on that. Your state of residence has legal jurisdiction over you to compel you to pay the tax. It does not have legal jurisdiction over a corporation with no physical presence in that state to compel them to collect the tax from you and remit it to the state. This is not a "loophole". This is what prevents Utah and Wyoming from issuing warrants for the arrest of anybody consuming marijuana within the boundaries of Colorado. It really is not a difficult concept to understand.
Re: (Score:2)
Because it's a tax loophole that should be closed, because it isn't fair. The tax code was created long before the Internet. Back then, it was not possible to "sell" a product or service from abroad without passing through customs.
How can a local company compete against Netflix if it has to collect 15% tax when Netflix doesn't?
Also, it gives 0 incensitive to Netflix to open a physical presence in Canada, since the second they do that, they'd have to collect taxes. Unless they use another loophole through a
Re: (Score:2)
Well, Canada has the option of completely regulating all internet traffic entering Canada, don't they. They have complete authority to require that all traffic be decrypted and inspected before being passed to the end user just as they do with physical goods. What they do not have is any authority to compel a corporation not located within their physical boundaries to collect taxes on their behalf and remit them. It is not a "loophole" that needs closing anymore than the "loophole" that prevents the United
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't have to be Netflix that collect the taxes. It could also be the credit card companies. It's still a loophole if Netflix can compete against a Canadian company by offering the same product cheaper only because one has to charge taxes and the other one doesn't.
then we must also allow the states of Utah and Wyoming to issue arrest warrants for the owners of marijuana resellers in Colorado
No, we must not. You are making a straw man. Marijuana resellers in Colorado are not selling anything in Utah and Wyoming. Netflix is selling stuff in Canada.
than the "loophole" that prevents the United States from requiring Canadian residents who are not US citizens from paying US income taxes
Another straw man argument. Canadians working permanently in the states must pay tax
Sales tax revenues are actually going up (Score:4, Informative)
Your monthly bill for Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and other streaming entertainment services could go up soon as states such as Illinois try to find ways to offset declining sales taxes and other revenue shortfalls.
Illinois sales tax revenues (2016 is the last table available) [state.il.us] are actually rising:
In fact, sales tax revenues are up around 10% over 4 years. If you look at the table, excise taxes are flat and gas taxes are up. Income, gaming, and other taxes are down. Income tax being down is a no brainer with the economy how it is.
If sales tax revenues go up 10% over 4 years (in a state with one of the highest sales tax rates in the nation) and they are looking for more ways to tax, then there is a serious problem with fiscal policy. Even if you factor in the decline in income, gaming, and other taxes the total decline is 10%. If a 10% decline over fours years wreaks that much havoc, then, well, there is a serious problem with fiscal policy.
Re: (Score:2)
Well yes, there is a major problem with fiscal policy (and corruption) in Illinois. Lots of which come from lifetime pension deals for the government employees (sometimes multiple lifetime pension deals to the same individual, even if they only worked a single day!).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:whats the reason for this tax? (Score:4, Informative)
Not QUITE corruption (Score:2)
The major problem for Illinois - and one that is causing many jurisdictions grief - is the pension promises made to public sector employees that are actually or effectively unfunded, and thus will come to eat ever more of general tax revenue in coming years. These promises allowed politicians of earlier eras to square the circle of giving public sector employees pay rises - at least in their understanding - whilst not adding to the tax burden of the people who would reelect these politicians. Now that issue
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, they can pass laws stating that the act of viewing a streamed movie is taxable consumption but they cannot require the streaming service to collect the tax nor remit the tax unless the streaming company has a physical presence in the state anymore than they can require Amazon, Newegg, Cabelas, or any other catalog/online retailer to collect and remit sales tax if those companies have no physical location in the state. States have known this for a long time and ask you to pay the "use tax" on those cata
Re: (Score:2)
already been that way (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Better to tax goods AND services (Score:2)
There is no reason to tax them differently, so Texas' policy sounds like a good idea. Actually given the concern about CO2 etc, there may be a case for taxing some services less, but that's a second level argument!
So Basically You are Saying... (Score:1)
Message From God ! (Score:2)
Big Brother (Score:2)
Americans don't know how lucky they are (Score:3)
The Value Added Tax system in the EU means that ALL items - except a small list of essentials set by individual countries, e,g, food and books in the UK, are taxed at about 20%. So that will be hitting all new services from very early in development. We can debate whether this is a good thing or not - but it does avoid the silly levels of complexity that the variable rates found in the US produce.