Crush Liberalism

Liberalism: Why think when you can “feel”?

NY’s economic illiteracy results in lawsuit, departing business

This is what happens when liberals try to collect dimes at the expense of dollars:

Unwilling to collect the Empire State’s new “Amazon Tax,” Patrick Byrne and Overstock.com have jettisoned their New York-based affiliate marketers.

Late last month, New York Governor David Patterson rubber stamped a $122bn state budget that attempts to collect an additional $50m in sales taxes from various online retailers. People call it the Amazon Tax, but it affects more than just Amazon.

Under the new law – which takes effect on June 1 – any e-tailer with New York-based affiliate marketers is considered to have a “physical presence” in the state, and that means they’re required to collect sales tax on all goods shipped to a New York address.

Thanks to a pre-Internet-revolution Supreme Court case involving a mail order catalog business, physical presence is the litmus test for sales tax collection. If an e-tailer doesn’t have physical operations in a state, then customers must declare purchases on their own – which few end up doing.

Amazon has since sued New York over the Amazon Tax, calling it unconstitutional. But while the case is pending, the company intends to obey the New York government. “Nothing is changing with regard to Amazon’s relationships with Affiliates in New York state,” Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith told us. “And we expect to begin collecting sales tax (as the new legislation requires) no later than June 1, 2008.”

Overstock has taken a different tack. As first reported by Shawn Collins and his Affiliate Marketing Blog, the Utah-based e-tailer will cut its New York affiliates loose on Tuesday, May 20.
…
You’ll notice that Byrne sees no difference between collecting sales tax and raising prices. “When you collect sales tax, goods get more expensive, and people buy less,” he continued. “A tax is just a government’s price on a service. When you raise your price on something, people consume less of it. And New York is raising the price on the service it provides as a state, and we’re exercising our right to buy less of that service.” …

Here in FL, the Democrat-controlled legislature passed a “tax reform” package in the 1980′s that taxed, among other things, entry fees to B.A.S.S. professional fishing tournaments.  At that time, entry fees were roughly $1,000 (give or take a couple of hundred).  B.A.S.S. held many tournaments in FL, most notably the Florida Invitational on Lake Okeechobee, and the state made a lot of money from the resulting taxes on hotels, restaurants, gas purchases, etc.  Everyone was happy: fisherman, business owners, cities, and the state.

But B.A.S.S. warned FL that its participation would decline in the Sunshine State if the state passed the sales tax on entry fees.  The Dems ignored the warning, passed the tax hikes…and B.A.S.S. scaled back its presence in the best bass fishing state in the country.  Only after the GOP-controlled legislature jettisoned the tax in the 1990′s did B.A.S.S. return full-force to FL.

The lesson?  Raising taxes depresses economic activity on the productive.

Advertisement

June 3, 2008 - Posted by | economic ignorance, taxes

4 Comments »

  1. It’s a question I ask liberals all the time to which I never get an answer:

    “When, in our nation’s history, has a tax increase ever helped the economy?”

    Perhaps your new resident troll will enlighten us?

    Comment by TheBad | June 3, 2008

  2. and as if on cue, he speaks…

    world war 2 comes to mind. we enter the war, raise taxes, spend the tax money paying american companies to make the military hardware so we can fight the nazis, the subsequent war economy launches our country into the greatest economic boom of it’s history.

    internet taxes on the other hand, are just stupid. if you’re a small internet company, and your state imposes an intenet tax, you move to another state and continue your national or international business as usual. a federal tax would work, but the fed doesn’t do sales tax.

    I just wish somebody (don’t care which party, they’d be my hero) would crack down on the companies that hide their money in the Kaymans. it makes me sick. then the government wouldn’t need to scrape and scrounge to make their budget numbers.

    Comment by andrew | June 4, 2008

  3. Do my eyes deceive me, or is barking moonbat andrew actually touting WWII?

    Andrew, why are you liberals always so bunged up over companies making money? Capitalism is a GOOD thing! It’s what makes this country great and prosperous. I just don’t get what liberals have against prosperity. Open your eyes and look around the world andrew….socialism doesn’t work.
    If the government wants to balance the budget, they need to do away with entitlements and pork spending! Raising taxes is NOT the answer.

    Comment by Kanaka Girl | June 4, 2008

  4. And, as if on cue, he’s wrong…

    “the subsequent war economy launches our country into the greatest economic boom of it’s (sic) history”

    Wrongo. It should be noted that WWII is the only answer I have ever gotten from liberals when I ask this question and no matter how many times it is given to me, it’s just as wrong as the first time.

    Here is a little heavy reading for you. Try not to hurt yourself. Highlights:

    “the passage in 1940 of two tax laws that increased individual and corporate taxes, which were followed by another tax hike in 1941. By the end of the war the nature of the income tax had been fundamentally altered.”

    “Fundamentally altered” means that it had become completely different than before. Got it?

    “Reductions in exemption levels” …

    In other words, tax increase.

    … “meant that taxpayers with taxable incomes of only $500 faced a bottom tax rate of 23 percent, while taxpayers with incomes over $1 million faced a top rate of 94 percent.”

    Got that, troll? The people (other than the government) who were creating jobs were being taxed at a rate of 94%. That’s bad.

    “Even with an economy stimulated by war-time production, federal taxes as a share of GDP grew from 7.6 percent in 1941 to 20.4 percent in 1945.”

    In other words, the American taxpayers were being unnecessarily flogged by a democrat. Production – not taxation – stimulates an economy, you dolt. Here’s one you need to pay really close attention to:

    “another aspect about the income tax that changed was the increase in the number of income taxpayers from 4 million in 1939 to 43 million in 1945.”

    Six years, 39 million new taxpayers.

    “Tax cuts following the war reduced the Federal tax burden”

    I would hope you get the picture, but I’m sure you don’t. The “boom” to which you refer occurred after the reduction of the Federal tax burden. To suggest that raising taxes during WWII helped the economy is either disingenuous or just plain ignorant. I’m confident of the latter in your case.

    Comment by TheBad | June 4, 2008


Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

« Previous | Next »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 25 other followers