“Usually we don’t have the data, but in several cases companies have said … we’ll squeal on our customers and you can beat up on them,” Sullivan said. “The people who sold to them have ratted them out.”
Seems like a weird thing for the commissioner of the tax department to say if the tax department is trying to solicit the cooperation of said companies.
That was exactly the first thing I noticed. I think it's incredibly odd, but revealing, that even the tax man knows there's a common feeling of being beat up by taxes.
Then again, I'm not sure if tax commissioner is a position that usually attracts the politically savvy.
If you come to the comments without reading the article, just know that Newegg.com is the last place you want to go the next time you need a part for your PC. They turned over at least 4 years of customer sales data to the State of Connecticut evidently without any real pressure applied by CT, and now CT residents who made purchases on Newegg as far back as 2014 have received a tax bill.
Stupid, yes, unknown, no. Every piece of tax software I've used has asked "Did you make purchases online without paying state sales tax?", and in saying "Yes", will ask you how much you spent. Now, obviously, I don't keep receipts, so I just estimate, but paying an extra $30-50 at tax time just to ensure that it looks good to the IRS, -and- if something like this happens it looks like I paid, is worth the piece of mind.
The IRS doesn’t care about state sales tax. Your state agency is probably called something like the Dept of Revenue. Overpaying taxes “just in case” seems like an odd strategy to me.
It’s hard to believe anyone doesn’t know they are responsible for paying their own sales tax on out of state transactions. It’s on the state tax forms, the tax software asks about it, your tax preparer will ask about it, etc. It was also big news when the states were going up against Amazon for collecting sales tax. Besides that, ignorance of the law is never an excuse for breaking it.
Anyway, NewEgg has to have known that some consumers were purchasing from them to avoid sales tax and that this will lead to reduced sales.
> It’s hard to believe anyone doesn’t know they are responsible for paying their own sales tax on out of state transactions.
I really wish you were being facetious. I get the feeling you'd be very surprised to learn about your fellow citizens and their knowledge of American tax laws.
> Ignorance of the law is never an excuse for breaking it.
I disagree. From the perspective of someone who doesn't know the law, how are they supposed to follow it? Even an intelligent and competent person doesn't know all the laws, especially in America. I would wager that every person in this forum has broken at least one law without knowing it.
I've read on reddit that the letters have gone to people with $2000 or more total over those years, if anyone sees one for less I'd be curious to know how much it was for.
I've bought stuff on Newegg and haven't received a tax letter, but I didn't spend $2000.
>“Newegg Inc. has provided the Department of Revenue Services records of your online purchases during taxable years 2014, 2015 and 2016,” the letter reads. “According to these records, you made purchases from Newegg in at least one of these years but were not charged Connecticut sales tax. Therefore, you owe state use tax on the items you purchased because you did not pay sales tax to a retailer.”
> Yeah...they used to be the good guys fighting against bs patents. Now they are ratting out their customers?
I'm pretty sure the state of Connecticut is to blame here, not NewEgg. It's not NewEgg's job to violate tax laws on its customers' behalf. If Connecticut-based customers dislike the actions of the state (which I hope they do), it's on them to make that known to the state.
The only language that makes NewEgg look like they are proactively giving up this data comes from a spokesperson for Connecticut itself, who has a vested interest in making it look like NewEgg is to blame, not the state.
No this is an issue with Newegg. They had the option to either "Begin collecting sales tax from Connecticut customers going forward and send that money to the state, or turn over the records."
They chose to give their records to the government which causes a major hassle for those users (and increases the likelihood that those records get breached, infringing on users' privacy). They did this at the expense of potentially hurting future Newegg sales because they'll have to honestly show users the tax while they are buying things, rather than having the government hunt down users later on.
The problem is not Newegg. The problem is the system of federal, state and local tax regimes that are in play. Since there is no uniformity at any level across the board, you will have these problems rise up.
Newegg and all companies that exist within the confines of the US national borders have a legal requirement to do certain things. This is no different to what the citizens are legally required to do.
If the state imposes a "use tax" on your purchases then you are required to follow that up. If the legal requirements are that companies are to give the purchase records to the state authorities, then that is what will happen.
Just because you find it objectionable is irrelevant.
However, if you want to start a grass-roots objection to these tax regimes then start with your local, state and federal politicians. Make it plain that they will no longer be getting the popular vote and that their cushy jobs will be taken from them permanently.
But, as you most likely know this will not happen and the situation will not change as the general populous has no interest in the matter.
Why is this moral outrage never directed at people cheating on their taxes? This isn't a mere oversight: there is a specific question about online purchases on the tax form.
If we could stop people from committing crimes and using privacy rights to get away with it, we would actually have a much stronger argument for privacy rights.
The American tax code is more of a crime than a half-competent taxpayer. However I'm sure the state is more interested in serial tax evasion than Joe with a new GPU.
Yeah, if nothing else, it sounds like it could be a bookkeeping hassle for the customer. I've recently seen mention on a local subreddit that people here in Colorado are getting notices from Newegg about this [1].
I got the same letter for about 3k of purchases for an old PC I built almost exclusively from Newegg parts.
The fact is Newegg tried to fight it and got strong armed. No idea why we expect Newegg to fight a legal request from a government agency for rightful tax collection.
We all knew the gig, no tax professional, or even tax software, didn’t ask about purchases subject to the use tax.
People still comment about tax killing good deals, the fact is the tax is always there, whether you report it is sometimes up to you.
I’m probably paying the amount (want to verify the amount doesn’t include one returned item), we always knew this might happen.
My question though is why is it up to customers to report sales tax? I've literally never done this, every retailer I've bought from has included sales tax in the purchase price, collected it, and paid it. Why was Newegg not doing this?
It’s technically not sales tax, but “use tax” in this case.
For years tons of online retailers didn’t charge sales tax with purchases, all of those purchases were subject to use tax. Even Amazon (or was it eBay?) wasn’t charging tax in CT a few years back iirc.
There are lots of various reasonings in why they don’t collect depending on how charitable you are to the retailers, ranging from “We get to advertise cheaper prices” to “We didn’t want to manage taxes in 50 states”
> When the states first enacted their sales taxes, the tax was imposed only on in-state sales. There was no use tax. As businesses began to offer delivery services and customers realized they could avoid sales taxes by ordering products from businesses in a different state, the complimentary use tax was enacted. Currently, every state that imposes a general sales tax also imposes a use tax.
I have a relative who lives in Connecticut and was telling me he got an email from New Egg with three years worth of purchase history on it and a notice saying that they would be sending a copy to the state.
Starting to collect new taxes is one thing but collecting back taxes for three years just doesn't seem right.
This isn't behavior CT invented, though. I live in New Hampshire (that has no sales tax) and would often hear stories of Massachusetts state police camping out at the border doing spot checks to make sure people paid their taxes. No idea if they were "boogey man" stories or real though.
The sales tax system in the US is horribly complex. That's why while companies have popped up to help online retailers navigate it.
If those troopers are the same state police who are primarily charged with traffic enforcement and public safety, using them as revenue agents sure seems like a misuse of public resources.
I wonder if they collect enough tax revenue to cover salary.
I guess it depends on perspective, and how the net is measured.
If net positive _revenue_, and your perspective is stage budget (or you benefit from state funding) its a win.
If the net is a calculation of revenue, public safety, and overall community, maybe not.
Troopers are generally traffic and criminal law enforcement agents - public safety. Tax law enforcement may be the jurisdiction of state police in that region, but its rare to use patrol to enforce those laws. There is typically a division specific to revenue.
Taking focus from patrol away from the enforcement of criminal and traffic laws and pivoting that to securing the state budget would be considered by many to be a misuse.
If troopers are looking for unpaid taxes, who is looking for reckless or drunk drivers? Who is conducting area patrols where visibility is a much a crime deterrent as actual arrests?
What probable cause is used to stop any car at the state border and look at receipts? Traffic violations do not provide for vehicle searches, and IIRC there are no dogs that sniff out undocumented expensed.
Such divisions in jurisdiction are in place so that the "long arm of the law" does not get too long.
> No idea if they were "boogey man" stories or real though.
It may very well be a tall tale designed to scare people into filing their sales tax payments. And/or shopping in state because the net gain for shopping in New Hampshire would be $0.
It's not. But an otherwise law abiding citizen who doesn't realize they are supposed to file will suddenly get a tax bill that could be hundreds of dollars.
The law is very complicated and filing the payment is not straight forward. And while many people I know understand it fully, I don't expect everyone to.
Edit: I see the confusion. When I said "new tax" I meant, taxes on orders that happen after they started aggressively enforcing the rules. I.e. no back dating.
I'm not sure how it works in the US, but here in a situation like this, and assuming it's a significant amount relative your income, you'd ask for a payment plan.
because we are a federation of states, with whats supposed to be a thin layer of federal government intended to only make sure the states play nicely with eachother, provide a post office, and a national defense. Clearly, we've gotten away from these basic services.
"New" Federal taxes in the US - even if they make sense and just replace a different one - are basically a non-starter in the current political climate.
US attitudes and logic about taxes are quite different, particularly in the last 30 years. In my mind, the main difference is the attitude about the role and benefits of govt - see the "you didn't build that" debate, that I believe would viewed as obvious in most European countries and yet was used as fodder for political attacks in the US.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_didn%27t_build_that
The "you didn't build that" debate is an excellent example of why the role of so-called "public goods" should be minimized at all costs. Normally, when someone else has a good or service you'd like to use, you negotiate a price and—assuming you reach a mutually agreeable accommodation—pay them for the privilege at the time of use. That's the end of it; the books remain balanced. Contrast this with the "you didn't build that" argument, which amounts to "we think you once may have benefitted from something we did without consulting you, so you owe us a share of your profits from now until the end of time". As a moral argument (i.e. saying that an individual should contribute back voluntarily) this claim is tenuous at best; as a justification for simply taking a share of the profits (i.e. taxation) it falls completely flat.
Interesting. I see it as a bit orthogonal: Even if you negotiate with private parties, you are still dependent upon the system and should support the system. In many cases this is public goods, but any system (free market, a positive anarchy, socialism) has actions you can take to support or oppose (make harder) the system.
In essence: Unless you're in the woods fashioning your own clothes, tools, shelter, education, communication, transportation, health care, using only natural resources that fully replenish, you're dependent on some system. The level of dependency varies, and the nature and level of support varies, but it is present.
> which amounts to "we think you once may have benefitted from something we did without consulting you, so you owe us a share of your profits from now until the end of time".
A fairly biased-sounding interpretation, particularly the "once may have benefitted". The whole point of the argument is that there are so many assets that are not of your making: Educated workers. Healthy workers. Means of transportation. Educated customers. Healthy customers. Ways to communicate. I can see arguing if these are more/less efficient or reliable via free market vs another system, but to say "once may have benefitted" is pretty disingenuous. Heck, living to be old enough to MAKE the clever decisions, being educated enough at that time (oh, you were home schooled? How did your instructor learn what they learned?) and healthy enough (how do we know what IS healthy? One need only look at certain remedies that are still passed around today to see we can't just count on our own opinions on cause/effect) and had customers likewise, and a common currency, not to mention not having someone with enough friends and weapons take everything away from you - these didn't manifest because someone is just that awesome, they are the result of a system.
Re: Taxation, here's a libertarian-friendly argument: Let's imagine a group of people get together and agree to a set of rules. They agree on consequences for breaking those rules. Now you have a govt and taxation. "But _I_ didn't choose these!" you declare. True. I support that people should be able to revoke their citizenship and leave. "But it's not fair to have these rules forced upon me! I should be able to stay, or..." It totally isn't "fair". Or is it? How do you define "fair"? Regardless, there are number of ways to set your own rules that have been proven to work: negotiate a price in a mutually agreeable accommodation with enough people to enforce the rules you want. We call this government, and one of the rules is taxation. Most agreed-upon sets of rules define additional ways to change the rules, but with or without those changes, all governments are such systems.
I truly do support the idea that people should be able to revoke their citizenship, because being born and early childhood are a place where you have no choices - but you don't get to keep "your" land and "your" property when they ARE the result of the system you are rejecting. An investment manager doesn't get to keep all the profit they generate because THEY increased the value - a 200% return is still 0 if you start with 0. But yeah, if anyone wants to leave that isn't a criminal, I think the system should support it. They are welcome to find some place to live that isn't already under the control of a group of free-thinkers that have leveraged their natural talents to be able to enforce their rules. Good luck to them.
Outside of that, I don't understand the argument that governments are somehow inherently evil when they are the direct result of the very principles that argument is arguing in favor of.
Even if you negotiate with private parties, you are still dependent upon the system and should support the system.
What "system"? You don't need any "system" to negotiate with another private party for mutual benefit. I have something you want, you have something I want, we agree to trade—done. No one else can take any credit for that.
A fairly biased-sounding interpretation, particularly the "once may have benefitted".
I disagree, but it works just as well if you drop the "once may have" part and abbreviate it to "we think you benefitted from something we did without consulting you". Doing something which you think benefits someone else does not entitle you to compensation. Compensation must be negotiated and mutually agreed to in advance. If you don't have an agreement like that in place then you have effectively chosen to grant the other party a gift. You may argue that they should reciprocate (though they can reasonably disagree—what you see as beneficial to them may appear otherwise from their point of view) but you are not entitled to compensation for your unilateral action.
Let's imagine a group of people get together and agree to a set of rules. They agree on consequences for breaking those rules. Now you have a govt and taxation.
No, what you have at this point is a voluntary club with membership dues. You don't have government and taxation until you start enforcing those rules on people who never agreed to them. At that point your club turns into a criminal organization, similar to the Mafia. When your criminal organization grows a PR branch and starts claiming that it's criminal actions are "legitimate" and "for the public good", then you have become a government (but that doesn't mean you're no longer a criminal organization).
"But _I_ didn't choose these!" you declare. True. I support that people should be able to revoke their citizenship and leave.
Why should they leave? They have every right to stay. That citizenship was forced on you without your consent. You never agreed to give anything up as a condition of rejecting it.
you don't get to keep "your" land and "your" property when they ARE the result of the system you are rejecting
Your property rights are your by natural law, created by the mixing of labor and unowned land and subsequently transferred between private individuals by mutual consent, and not the result of any "system". No government has any right to take them away.
I don't understand the argument that governments are somehow inherently evil when they are the direct result of the very principles that argument is arguing in favor of.
Clearly you have no idea what principles those are, or you wouldn't have made that mistake. The one thing all governments have in common is that they employ force against people who never agreed to those rules and did not first use force against them. That is diametrically opposed to the principles that argument is in favor of—in particular the Non-Aggression Principle.
And I believe you're right. And the EU is a "single market", which means someone residing in Germany can buy things in France and don't have to worry about paying import tax (1). Switzerland is famously not part of the EU, so there are limits and taxes (import tax plus VAT of where you are importing the good) when goods cross the Swiss border.
Why isn't CT going after NewEgg for failing to incoporate sales tax into their checkout process? No one expects to be personally responsible for sales tax, considering all of the transactions they're used to have the seller incorporating sales tax into the price paid. Pushing that burden to the consumer and surprising them with a demand for unpaid taxes they didn't know existed is unethical.
>The issue of imposing sales tax on out-of-state purchases ultimately may be settled by the Supreme Court.
>In a 1992 case dealing with a mail-order office supply company, the court ruled that states could not require companies that did not have a physical presence in their state to collect sales tax.
It goes on to say that South Dakota has passed a law saying out of state retailers need to collect state sales tax, but that the supreme court has agreed to hear a challenge to the case.
Right. What I'm arguing is that if they can't make the sellers collect sales tax, then they can't collect sales tax at all. Expecting consumers to keep track of sales tax themselves for every little purchase (often hundreds per year!) is nuts.
NewEgg doesn't have to unless it has nexus (a physical location) in the state. If it does not have nexus it is up to the consumer to pay their own taxes. It has been this way since the mail order days.
If newegg doesn't have any operations in CT, they can't force them to collect & pay. (warehouses, offices, etc. a "nexus"). There is a supreme court case currently to try and eliminate this requirement (stemming from a previous mail order court case).
The tiny little conspiracy theorist in me wonders if these records will be used to establish probable cause to search for people who may be mining Crypto and not reporting the income. Why else, of all places, would they start the fight with Newegg?
Either way, this state is broke and will do anything to dig themselves out of the grave they've dug.
"Newegg and other companies gave up their customer records in response to letters that the state tax department sent last summer to about 150 online retailers that have significant sales to Connecticut residents."
This is incredibly ham-fisted. If you're going to go through the trouble of doing the accounting and submitting the numbers to the state, just collect the sales tax and remit the money.
Doing it this way has no apparent advantage at all and several disadvantages.
It's worse for privacy, because if you remit sales tax then the state knows your total for the state, not who your customers are and how much they spent with you (obviously a problem for specialty retailers).
It's worse for bureaucracy and waste, because instead of automatically paying at the time of purchase, everyone has to fill out separate paperwork and pay separately.
And it's worse for small businesses, who now retroactively have to waste time unscrewing this because Newegg just told the state that they owe a bunch of sales tax they may not actually owe, because the parts they bought were either resold to customers not in Connecticut or resold in Connecticut where the small business itself already collected the sales tax.
Disguising the true cost of a purchase is not something I would file under advantages, and neither will Newegg when their customers stop doing business with them after discovering that they've unnecessarily foisted this accounting burden onto the customer.
It is an advantage since they, and their competitors are not required to collect the sales tax. Therefore if a person is price comparing across two sites, 1 with an extra 6.75% and 1 without, the person is likely to choose the lower price, even if they are required to pay the tax personally down the road.
The market value of putting off paying $18 in sales tax for six months at 2% interest is $0.18. Not a lot of people will be signing up to fill out paperwork for ~$0.18.
Especially when, because it happens at scale, it only means the state has to raise the tax rate by that amount to raise the equivalent revenue to cover the bond interest it has to pay because it didn't get the money sooner.
As far as I know they are not required to provide the state with this information either, which they are incentivized to do even less because customers are very much going to hate it, even more than they would dislike paying the sales tax up front.
The lawyer quoted in the article seems to imply it's an act of good faith providing the records.
"I do think it’s an overreach, but the discussion we have every day with clients is how much risk are you willing to take?” he said. “If you want to tell Connecticut to go pound sand, we can do that. If you want to have a discussion about when to begin collecting tax on your terms, we can do that as well.”
Oklahoma state tax always had a line item for internet purchases, where you either had to tell them a total amount spent, a promise that you spent nothing online, or an agreement to just pay a small percentage of your taxable income. I always thought this was stupid as I buy a bunch of little things online. I always grudgingly paid the percentage but recently the state stopped asking this because something like 90% of people said they don't buy anything online. Amazon does charge OK tax now.
76 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadSeems like a weird thing for the commissioner of the tax department to say if the tax department is trying to solicit the cooperation of said companies.
I imagine this is a case of a tax guy not used to the spotlight, finally getting in the spotlight and not using PC language.
Then again, I'm not sure if tax commissioner is a position that usually attracts the politically savvy.
It’s hard to believe anyone doesn’t know they are responsible for paying their own sales tax on out of state transactions. It’s on the state tax forms, the tax software asks about it, your tax preparer will ask about it, etc. It was also big news when the states were going up against Amazon for collecting sales tax. Besides that, ignorance of the law is never an excuse for breaking it.
Anyway, NewEgg has to have known that some consumers were purchasing from them to avoid sales tax and that this will lead to reduced sales.
I really wish you were being facetious. I get the feeling you'd be very surprised to learn about your fellow citizens and their knowledge of American tax laws.
> Ignorance of the law is never an excuse for breaking it. I disagree. From the perspective of someone who doesn't know the law, how are they supposed to follow it? Even an intelligent and competent person doesn't know all the laws, especially in America. I would wager that every person in this forum has broken at least one law without knowing it.
I've bought stuff on Newegg and haven't received a tax letter, but I didn't spend $2000.
Well, that's the last time I'm using NewEgg.
“Following tax laws”
I'm pretty sure the state of Connecticut is to blame here, not NewEgg. It's not NewEgg's job to violate tax laws on its customers' behalf. If Connecticut-based customers dislike the actions of the state (which I hope they do), it's on them to make that known to the state.
The only language that makes NewEgg look like they are proactively giving up this data comes from a spokesperson for Connecticut itself, who has a vested interest in making it look like NewEgg is to blame, not the state.
They chose to give their records to the government which causes a major hassle for those users (and increases the likelihood that those records get breached, infringing on users' privacy). They did this at the expense of potentially hurting future Newegg sales because they'll have to honestly show users the tax while they are buying things, rather than having the government hunt down users later on.
Newegg and all companies that exist within the confines of the US national borders have a legal requirement to do certain things. This is no different to what the citizens are legally required to do.
If the state imposes a "use tax" on your purchases then you are required to follow that up. If the legal requirements are that companies are to give the purchase records to the state authorities, then that is what will happen.
Just because you find it objectionable is irrelevant.
However, if you want to start a grass-roots objection to these tax regimes then start with your local, state and federal politicians. Make it plain that they will no longer be getting the popular vote and that their cushy jobs will be taken from them permanently.
But, as you most likely know this will not happen and the situation will not change as the general populous has no interest in the matter.
If we could stop people from committing crimes and using privacy rights to get away with it, we would actually have a much stronger argument for privacy rights.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/7w6opn/newegg_use_t...
The fact is Newegg tried to fight it and got strong armed. No idea why we expect Newegg to fight a legal request from a government agency for rightful tax collection.
We all knew the gig, no tax professional, or even tax software, didn’t ask about purchases subject to the use tax.
People still comment about tax killing good deals, the fact is the tax is always there, whether you report it is sometimes up to you.
I’m probably paying the amount (want to verify the amount doesn’t include one returned item), we always knew this might happen.
http://www.ct.gov/drs/cwp/view.asp?A=1510&Q=270228
It’s technically not sales tax, but “use tax” in this case.
For years tons of online retailers didn’t charge sales tax with purchases, all of those purchases were subject to use tax. Even Amazon (or was it eBay?) wasn’t charging tax in CT a few years back iirc.
There are lots of various reasonings in why they don’t collect depending on how charitable you are to the retailers, ranging from “We get to advertise cheaper prices” to “We didn’t want to manage taxes in 50 states”
Starting to collect new taxes is one thing but collecting back taxes for three years just doesn't seem right.
This isn't behavior CT invented, though. I live in New Hampshire (that has no sales tax) and would often hear stories of Massachusetts state police camping out at the border doing spot checks to make sure people paid their taxes. No idea if they were "boogey man" stories or real though.
The sales tax system in the US is horribly complex. That's why while companies have popped up to help online retailers navigate it.
I wonder if they collect enough tax revenue to cover salary.
Is it still misuse if it’s net positive for the state?
If net positive _revenue_, and your perspective is stage budget (or you benefit from state funding) its a win.
If the net is a calculation of revenue, public safety, and overall community, maybe not.
Troopers are generally traffic and criminal law enforcement agents - public safety. Tax law enforcement may be the jurisdiction of state police in that region, but its rare to use patrol to enforce those laws. There is typically a division specific to revenue.
Taking focus from patrol away from the enforcement of criminal and traffic laws and pivoting that to securing the state budget would be considered by many to be a misuse.
If troopers are looking for unpaid taxes, who is looking for reckless or drunk drivers? Who is conducting area patrols where visibility is a much a crime deterrent as actual arrests?
What probable cause is used to stop any car at the state border and look at receipts? Traffic violations do not provide for vehicle searches, and IIRC there are no dogs that sniff out undocumented expensed.
Such divisions in jurisdiction are in place so that the "long arm of the law" does not get too long.
> No idea if they were "boogey man" stories or real though.
It may very well be a tall tale designed to scare people into filing their sales tax payments. And/or shopping in state because the net gain for shopping in New Hampshire would be $0.
The law is very complicated and filing the payment is not straight forward. And while many people I know understand it fully, I don't expect everyone to.
Edit: I see the confusion. When I said "new tax" I meant, taxes on orders that happen after they started aggressively enforcing the rules. I.e. no back dating.
It's very frustrating.
In essence: Unless you're in the woods fashioning your own clothes, tools, shelter, education, communication, transportation, health care, using only natural resources that fully replenish, you're dependent on some system. The level of dependency varies, and the nature and level of support varies, but it is present.
> which amounts to "we think you once may have benefitted from something we did without consulting you, so you owe us a share of your profits from now until the end of time".
A fairly biased-sounding interpretation, particularly the "once may have benefitted". The whole point of the argument is that there are so many assets that are not of your making: Educated workers. Healthy workers. Means of transportation. Educated customers. Healthy customers. Ways to communicate. I can see arguing if these are more/less efficient or reliable via free market vs another system, but to say "once may have benefitted" is pretty disingenuous. Heck, living to be old enough to MAKE the clever decisions, being educated enough at that time (oh, you were home schooled? How did your instructor learn what they learned?) and healthy enough (how do we know what IS healthy? One need only look at certain remedies that are still passed around today to see we can't just count on our own opinions on cause/effect) and had customers likewise, and a common currency, not to mention not having someone with enough friends and weapons take everything away from you - these didn't manifest because someone is just that awesome, they are the result of a system.
Re: Taxation, here's a libertarian-friendly argument: Let's imagine a group of people get together and agree to a set of rules. They agree on consequences for breaking those rules. Now you have a govt and taxation. "But _I_ didn't choose these!" you declare. True. I support that people should be able to revoke their citizenship and leave. "But it's not fair to have these rules forced upon me! I should be able to stay, or..." It totally isn't "fair". Or is it? How do you define "fair"? Regardless, there are number of ways to set your own rules that have been proven to work: negotiate a price in a mutually agreeable accommodation with enough people to enforce the rules you want. We call this government, and one of the rules is taxation. Most agreed-upon sets of rules define additional ways to change the rules, but with or without those changes, all governments are such systems.
I truly do support the idea that people should be able to revoke their citizenship, because being born and early childhood are a place where you have no choices - but you don't get to keep "your" land and "your" property when they ARE the result of the system you are rejecting. An investment manager doesn't get to keep all the profit they generate because THEY increased the value - a 200% return is still 0 if you start with 0. But yeah, if anyone wants to leave that isn't a criminal, I think the system should support it. They are welcome to find some place to live that isn't already under the control of a group of free-thinkers that have leveraged their natural talents to be able to enforce their rules. Good luck to them.
Outside of that, I don't understand the argument that governments are somehow inherently evil when they are the direct result of the very principles that argument is arguing in favor of.
What "system"? You don't need any "system" to negotiate with another private party for mutual benefit. I have something you want, you have something I want, we agree to trade—done. No one else can take any credit for that.
A fairly biased-sounding interpretation, particularly the "once may have benefitted".
I disagree, but it works just as well if you drop the "once may have" part and abbreviate it to "we think you benefitted from something we did without consulting you". Doing something which you think benefits someone else does not entitle you to compensation. Compensation must be negotiated and mutually agreed to in advance. If you don't have an agreement like that in place then you have effectively chosen to grant the other party a gift. You may argue that they should reciprocate (though they can reasonably disagree—what you see as beneficial to them may appear otherwise from their point of view) but you are not entitled to compensation for your unilateral action.
Let's imagine a group of people get together and agree to a set of rules. They agree on consequences for breaking those rules. Now you have a govt and taxation.
No, what you have at this point is a voluntary club with membership dues. You don't have government and taxation until you start enforcing those rules on people who never agreed to them. At that point your club turns into a criminal organization, similar to the Mafia. When your criminal organization grows a PR branch and starts claiming that it's criminal actions are "legitimate" and "for the public good", then you have become a government (but that doesn't mean you're no longer a criminal organization).
"But _I_ didn't choose these!" you declare. True. I support that people should be able to revoke their citizenship and leave.
Why should they leave? They have every right to stay. That citizenship was forced on you without your consent. You never agreed to give anything up as a condition of rejecting it.
you don't get to keep "your" land and "your" property when they ARE the result of the system you are rejecting
Your property rights are your by natural law, created by the mixing of labor and unowned land and subsequently transferred between private individuals by mutual consent, and not the result of any "system". No government has any right to take them away.
I don't understand the argument that governments are somehow inherently evil when they are the direct result of the very principles that argument is arguing in favor of.
Clearly you have no idea what principles those are, or you wouldn't have made that mistake. The one thing all governments have in common is that they employ force against people who never agreed to those rules and did not first use force against them. That is diametrically opposed to the principles that argument is in favor of—in particular the Non-Aggression Principle.
(1) Skimming Wikipedia suggests otherwise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_value_added_tax
Edit: ack! I meant reform, not return!
>The issue of imposing sales tax on out-of-state purchases ultimately may be settled by the Supreme Court.
>In a 1992 case dealing with a mail-order office supply company, the court ruled that states could not require companies that did not have a physical presence in their state to collect sales tax.
It goes on to say that South Dakota has passed a law saying out of state retailers need to collect state sales tax, but that the supreme court has agreed to hear a challenge to the case.
There’s a field right there on your tax forms for it, it’s very clearly explained:
http://www.ct.gov/drs/cwp/view.asp?A=1510&Q=270228
I wonder how many people are going to be caught pants down if they go after more companies...
Current case: https://taxfoundation.org/supreme-court-south-dakota-wayfair...
Either way, this state is broke and will do anything to dig themselves out of the grave they've dug.
"Newegg and other companies gave up their customer records in response to letters that the state tax department sent last summer to about 150 online retailers that have significant sales to Connecticut residents."
Doing it this way has no apparent advantage at all and several disadvantages.
It's worse for privacy, because if you remit sales tax then the state knows your total for the state, not who your customers are and how much they spent with you (obviously a problem for specialty retailers).
It's worse for bureaucracy and waste, because instead of automatically paying at the time of purchase, everyone has to fill out separate paperwork and pay separately.
And it's worse for small businesses, who now retroactively have to waste time unscrewing this because Newegg just told the state that they owe a bunch of sales tax they may not actually owe, because the parts they bought were either resold to customers not in Connecticut or resold in Connecticut where the small business itself already collected the sales tax.
Especially when, because it happens at scale, it only means the state has to raise the tax rate by that amount to raise the equivalent revenue to cover the bond interest it has to pay because it didn't get the money sooner.
"I do think it’s an overreach, but the discussion we have every day with clients is how much risk are you willing to take?” he said. “If you want to tell Connecticut to go pound sand, we can do that. If you want to have a discussion about when to begin collecting tax on your terms, we can do that as well.”