'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
Internet taxes? Not so fast. A bill that would let states collect Internet sales taxes from online retailers and their customers may have sailed through the Senate, but it is expected to face much more resistance from tax-wary Republicans in the House.
Internet taxes? Not so fast. A bill that would allow states to collect Internet sales taxes from online retailers and their customers may have sailed through the Senate, but it is expected to face much more resistance from tax-wary Republicans in the House.
Congressional legislators are pushing — once again — a federal online sales tax. The House brought forth on Thursday the Marketplace Fairness Act, a bill that supposedly reconciles the differences among the three introduced — and that failed — in Congress in 2012.
Online shoppers could end up paying sales tax more often by the end of the year.
This could be the last year that "Cyber Monday" serves, for all intents and purposes, as a tax holiday for binge shoppers across the country.
States are so desperate for cash that they're getting sneaky. Combine the sluggish economy with Obamacare's expensive Medicaid expansion and spiraling public-sector union benefit payments, and the usual tricks just aren't balancing the books anymore.
More than 21 states have simplified how they collect taxes in hopes of recovering an estimated $20 billion in sales taxes that go uncollected by out-of-state online merchants every year. But the nation's governors say they still need help from Congress.
Online retailers are coming under fire from Washington and state governments for not collecting sales tax from customers who purchase goods and services through websites such as Amazon and eBay.
The office nameplates are posted, key committee assignments doled out and the staff members are - more or less - in place. For the history-making class of freshmen who flipped the House from Democratic to Republican control, now comes the hard part: governing in opposition to a president intent on his own re-election.
"The bill does not tell the states they have to do it. It just enables them to do it," said Republican Rep. Steve Womack, in a Politico report. "How many more small brick-and-mortar obituaries do we have to see before we recognize that we have a problem?"
Online sales tax proposal rears head in Congress — for third time →
"You have got to make sure a sale is a sale, whether it takes place downtown or online," Rep. Steve Womack, an Arkansas Republican who is sponsoring the House bill, said in July.
'Cyber Monday' could be the last before collection of sales taxes →
