Sales Taxes Bill

[wajake41]

Re: Sales Taxes Bill

Rick mentions Tax Cloud. Free sounds good to me. I understand that e_Business Express offers a Miva interface for it. Does anyone have experience with it's use? Would appreciate any feedback on it.
Thanks, Larry

[wajake41]

Re: Sales Taxes Bill

Hello forum:
I happened to take a look at the Tax Cloud developers guide and read on page 11 that if a site is selling to a state outside their state but not collecting sales tax and if they show sales tax as zero on that sale, the store may be held liable for the non collected sales tax.

This is their document https://taxcloud.net/developerguide.pdf

I had never thought of that but it makes sense.
Is this generally known within the Miva community?
Larry

[wajake41]

Re: Sales Taxes Bill

Hello forum: For a state where I am not charging sales tax, I would like to eliminate the calculation entirely. Looks like I can do that by progmatically removing the CTAX parm from the Action parameter in OSEL's <form for those shipping states that are not WA. Is that correct? Are there any unforseen consequences to doing this?
Thanks, Larry

[wcw]

Re: Sales Taxes Bill

If there are modules triggered with that action they would stop working.

Please start a new thread if it is not on topic.

[kayakbabe]

Re: Sales Taxes Bill

Has anybody heard of how the issue Larry brings up is supposed to be handled? Do we collect the tax and if we don't sell a million, we just get to keep it.

Makes me think a lot of small businesses who are in the gray zone just over 900,000 are gonna "run out" of a lot of inventory near the end of the year. Better do your Christmas shopping early.

There are gonna be a lot of lawyers making money over lawsuits regarding what constitutes an "easy to use software" that states have to provide for free to do their tax calculations (by the terms of the bill in congress).

I can make a sure bet in Vegas... They will penalize you if you go over and did not collect it. (Mucho sarcasm) don't you know you are supposed to know in advance exactly to the dime how much you are going to make? In Advance?

If you make over a certain amount, there are required quarterly estimated tax payments. Lets say your biz fits in that category of tax payer. Yea! You go along merrily paying your estimated quarterly payments. THEN, Say, you get on Oprah or the Tonight show and your sales go really wild in September, in the middle of a quarter. And the fourth quarter is even crazier. Totally unexpected and double Yea!!

Some states make you pay a penalty since by their rules you can only be over by a certain percentage. Since you exceeded that percentage. It doesn't matter if you set aside the difference so you can pay them at the end when your annual tax return is due...they fine your success anyway. Doesn't matter if you created more jobs in the process...doesn't matter if you are honest, reporting it, and paid them.. You still exceeded their idea of reasonable growth and thus have to pay a penalty. You not only have to pay a fine for the quarter(s) you went over, but wait for the year too.. Double fine on the same money. And the kicker is that you followed all their rules, paid them quarterly what they asked by their own calculations, and spoke with them on the phone when the crazy sales started happening, you still have to pay the fine because you were just "too successful".

True story.

Be prepared that you will pay. Get a really good accountant!

[kayakbabe]

Re: Sales Taxes Bill

Everyone of us should be calling their congressman, take him to lunch if you can, tell him about the feasibility of actually implementing this. I'd be happy to pay it ll if they could make it actually doable without eating my lunch financially. Perhaps a simplified tax plan like one state tax rate for out of state businesses.

[nottheusual1]

Re: Sales Taxes Bill

It's based on prior years sales and there will be an authority between the Etailer and the states that will prevent state-specific idiosyncrasies from overflowing into cyberspace.

Right now, everywhere, everyone is making assumptions based on a real limited set of facts - and many lacking even a basic knowledge of what we can know right now.

Like everything, It'll play out somewhere in the middle or billions more dollars will move into the underground economy. Plus, we have no idea what will happen once it gets highly politicized in our House of Representatives - a bunch of axe grinders on the committee first taking a swipe at the Senate bill.

[wcw]

Re: Sales Taxes Bill

They'll have to pass it before we know what's in it. Another experiment gone awry.

[kayakbabe]

Re: Sales Taxes Bill

I was poking around looking at those taxability matrices (link posted earlier in this thread). some states tax shipping and some don't! That is nutty. that needs to be standardized.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: Sales Taxes Bill

yea, but now you are proposing that Federal rules trump State Rules...which aint going to fly with a certain type of...ah...person.

[nottheusual1]

Re: Sales Taxes Bill

"That is nutty."

It is. None of the Southern states are even acting like they want to participate - and neither is CA.

So, we've just seen the tip of the iceberg and it's pretty ugly. I'm sure everyone will be jumping on the wagon once the potential for money flowing is real, but feet have been getting dragged for years now on this. It's a shame because it has always been an inevitability. The severe cuts in federal funding to states was what suddenly made this front burner - most politicians would have preferred this be addressed after they'd retired and/or passed on.

[kayakbabe]

Re: Sales Taxes Bill

Well actually feds trumping states won't fly with me. guess i'm one of those ...ah... people.

But nothing wrong with having published standards. Look at the ages old browser wars and our problems as developers with non compliant browsers. Some of those non compliance issues can be ignored, some of it means the browser won't get used, or it will get dropped by the consumer... and thus the marketplace changes the browsers and they are becoming more compliant (or getting dropped all together). Netscape was the King, then Microsoft, Then Firefox, now it's Chrome and smartphone/tablet browsers... what will be next? Something will that's for sure. But all those browsers are more and more compliance standardized and those compliant browser are what are getting used.

Having a common currency that all states and citizens use facilitates trade. That is a good thing.

This taxation thing needs to be the same if they want compliance. It's got to be stupid easy to implement if people are going to do it. The big guys like walmarts and amazon's have the money to do it.. but the little guys don't and the little guys actually make the majority of the money over the internet. I'm sure this 1 million mark is only a temporary measure. Even if someone has a new online business that isn't making any profit yet, they should be following this issue very closely. It will affect ALL of us eventually.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: Sales Taxes Bill

Well actually feds trumping states won't fly with me. guess i'm one of those ...ah... people.

But nothing wrong with having published standards. Look at the ages old browser wars and our problems as developers with non compliant browsers. Some of those non compliance issues can be ignored, some of it means the browser won't get used, or it will get dropped by the consumer..

Geez...now if you're going to go all "sensible" on us you're just going to have to give up...weiz talking politics here...didn't mention anything about sense.

[nottheusual1]

Re: Sales Taxes Bill

"Well actually feds trumping states won't fly with me."

Exactly what's not going to happen - all the Fed will do is enable the states to collect a tax based upon agreed-to rule sets that software can be used by any retailer to manage. Nobody will make them participate and the language of the existing legislation is explicit in its language about the rights of the states.

States have nothing to lose - it's money they aren't collecting now, and while they could afford to go after the big guys on their own, participation already guarantees they will be paying in, and the money from transaction they never knew about will be a huge bonus.

How many people accurately reported out-of-state purchases on their state income tax last year so they could pay the extra sales taxes? We are asked to do that in Ohio. Self-reporting rate is about zero.