Chances are, you might be paying Verizon to read this. Or Comcast. Or some other internet provider. But you’re not paying Uncle Sam. And you’re probably not paying your state or municipality. By law, federal, state, and local governments may not tax internet access. The Internet Tax Freedom Act (downloads as a pdf), is part…
“Why are you so quiet?” I’m never accused of being quiet. But this time, I have been quiet and I guess a bit of an explanation is in order. What everyone is talking about – and I have not been talking about – over the past couple of weeks is the so-called Marketplace Fairness Act,…
Submitted by STEN R. WILSON Everyone seems to think that online sales tax collection is about large online companies, like Amazon, trying to crush small online businesses. My experience as a small business owner has been exactly the opposite. State efforts at online sales tax collection have made it much, much easier to run my…
Talk about down to the wire… The Amazon deal is so fresh (it was passed after 10pm last night) that you can’t find much in the way of confirmation yet on the web. In fact, the California legislature has the bill, AB 155, listed as “in assembly” since the vote taken on yesterday is still…
What if the head of Coca-Cola suggested a tax on sugary sodas to combat increasing instances of obesity? Or if the big three automakers heralded an increase in the gas tax as a way of repairing our highways? It would leave a lot of us scratching our heads. That’s why many IT folks were left…
Many online retailers received a shock last month when they received official notice from the State of New York that they must register and begin collecting sales tax. Until this month, companies that didn’t have a store or “physical presence” in New York were not required to collect the sales tax. This idea of taxation…
This week, I happened to notice a series of ads running in my local paper (The Philadelphia Inquirer) for Derrie-Air airlines. There were two features that distinguished Derrie-Air from, say, USAirways and United. One was the method of determining fare: The magic comes from our one of a kind “Sliding Scale”—the more you weigh, the…