California Taxes the Internet

[Saltbag]

The Daily Caller:

California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill into law Wednesday requiring online businesses to collect state sales tax, calling it “a common sense idea,” but Amazon and other large online retailers said they no longer see the business sense in staying in the Golden State.

Amazon and Overstock.com both announced shortly after the bill was signed that they will be closing all of their affiliate programs in California. Affiliates are small websites and businesses that sell products through sites like Amazon and receive a small commission.


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Ranking a 10 on the zero to ten "Well, duh" scale.

Thank God they got Jerry Brown back to save them. It's "common sense" to tax people more. My next fear, and I knew it would happen one day, is a national imposition of state sales tax on internet purchases. It violates the constitution, but who cares about that outdated document that was written before the economic dynamics the internet was introduced.

Taxing our way into prosperity.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/30/california-enacts-internet-sales-tax-amazon-bolts/#ixzz1QnpVRRJ4

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

Enjoy surfing the web cheaply and easily for that must-have item while you can: The taxman cometh.

California plans to force online retailers to collect sales taxes from consumers in the state, a new rule that drew shouts of outrage from Web-shopping giants like Amazon.com and O.co, also known as Overstock.com.

The law requires these and other online retailers to collect taxes if they have in-state business operations. Both companies operate nationwide sales programs that rely on in-state companies (and even bloggers) to drive their own online business -- boosting online retail profits and leaving government coffers empty, the state argued. The law is intended to bridge that perceived tax gap.

But Amazon was quick to turn the tables. Calling the new law unconstitutional, Amazon sent an email Wednesday to California affiliates immediately severing ties with them -- and putting those businesses in the crosshairs.

"Unfortunately, Governor Brown has signed into law the bill that we emailed you about earlier today. As a result of this, contracts with all California residents participating in the Amazon Associates Program are terminated effective today, June 29, 2011," the company wrote in an email to affiliates obtained by FoxNews.com.

By ending these local affiliate programs, Amazon and Overstock should largely exempt themselves from the law -- meaning California shoppers probably won't see taxes on books and other goods from them. (Amazon operates other businesses in California, however, which may force it to comply.) But other online stores will surely be forced to collect taxes.

"Generally, if sales tax would apply when you buy physical merchandise in California, use tax applies when you make a similar purchase without tax from a business located outside the state," the California Board of Equalization's Web page reads.

The new law is the latest in a string of similar rules: laws have been passed or attempted in at least nine other states including Arkansas, Illinois and Connecticut.

Jonathan E. Johnson III, president of O.co (also known as Overstock.com), told FoxNews.com it made a similar move yesterday, terminating its relationship with hundreds of businesses.

“We think this law is unconstitutional. But rather than fight it in every state, it's just easier to terminate the affiliates and let the businesses migrate elsewhere,” Johnson told FoxNews.com. Calling the legislation "shortsighted," he noted that the biggest affiliates move to other states in response -- it’s the smaller ones that suffer.

"If you're a blogger, living in Orange County, you're not going to move. It's hardest on these people … and in these tough times, every penny counts," Johnson said.
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I wish Amazon would fight this, because I think they'd win. But this decision will at least help keep the law in the public spotlight-not that there are that many businesses in either California or Illinois left to lose...

[NCJim]

Thank God they got Jerry Brown back to save them. It's "common sense" to tax people more. My next fear, and I knew it would happen one day, is a national imposition of state sales tax on internet purchases. It violates the constitution, but who cares about that outdated document that was written before the economic dynamics the internet was introduced.

 

"The Constitution, which at any time exists, 'till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People, is sacredly obligatory upon all." --George Washington, September 19, 1796

 

 

In celebration of the 235th anniversary of the signing of our Declaration of Independence, Time Magazine, the "journal of record" for the Leftist Illiterati (or as they prefer to be known, "the intelligentsia"), published a cover story featuring their errant interpretation of our Constitution. On an image of the shredding of that venerable old document Time posited this question: "Does it still matter?"

 

The short answer is, only if Liberty and the Rule of Law still matter. But Time's managing editor, Richard Stengel, begs to differ, having discarded Rule of Law for the rule of men.

 

In his boorish 5,000-word treatise on the issue, Stengel unwittingly exposes the Left's patently uninformed and self-serving interpretation of our Constitution, and he aptly defines their adherence to a "living constitution." That adulterated version of its original intent is the result of revision by decades of radical judicial diktats, rather than in the manner prescribed by our Constitution's Article V.

 

Stengel opined, "To me the Constitution is a guardrail. It's for when we are going off the road and it gets us back on. It's not a traffic cop that keeps us going down the center." According to Stengel, then, our Constitution just exists to keep us between the ditches and entitles us to swerve all over the road without consequence. Of course, that is hardly what our Founders intended, but Stengel insists that to ask "what did the framers want is kind of a crazy question."

 

Exhibiting a keen sense of the obvious, Stengel observes that times have changed and that our Founders "did not know about" all the advancements of the present era. Thus he concludes our Constitution must be pliable, or, as Thomas Jefferson forewarned in 1819, "a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please."

 

Stengel insists, "The Constitution works so well precisely because it is so opaque, so general, so open to various interpretations," rather than, as "originalists contend ... a clear, fixed meaning."

 

To assert that our Founders intended the Constitution to be "so opaque, so general, so open to various interpretations" is beyond any accurate reading of history. As noted previously, our Founders provided a method to amend our Constitution in Article V. The problem, of course, is that Stengel and his Leftist cadres know their agenda would never pass a Constitutional Convention and, thus, they circumvent Article V by discarding Rule of Law in deference to their own rules.

 

Consequently, we now have a Constitution in exile, one that is little more than a straw man amid increasingly politicized courts that serve the special interests of political constituencies rather than interpreting the document's plain language, as judges are bound by sacred oath to do (Article VI, Section 3).

 

While it is highly tempting, any effort to rebut Stengel's erroneous claims point by point would violate my own rule against swapping spit with a jackass. However, as it is the eve of Independence Day, let us, for the record, revisit Essential Liberty as "endowed by our Creator" according to our Declaration.

 

http://us.mg4.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.rand=3c1fumrknofv5