should the internet be taxed?
Learnmore O asked:
Should All Sales on the Internet Be Taxed?
why or why not?
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Filed Under Other - Computers |
Tagged With Internet Sales
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4 Responses to “should the internet be taxed?”
Learnmore O asked:
Should All Sales on the Internet Be Taxed?
why or why not?
No related posts.
Filed Under Other - Computers |
Tagged With Internet Sales
4 Responses to “should the internet be taxed?”
well, yeah! you are selling and buying just like anywhere else.
No, it’s already expensive enough, and less people would buy them.
In theory, if sales are to be taxed then all sales should be taxed. So, yes, commercial internet sales should be taxed.
They are in the UK… for UK companies. Provided the UK companies are big enough to pay sales tax.
But the problem is… how do you tax a cross border sale on the internet? The way it tends to work is the customs people trap the shipment and tax it… but that is easy to defeat (you say ‘gift’ on the box) and they don;t check every shipment.
Private sales are another thing altogether…you cannot tax private internet sales unless you also tax garage sales and boot sales (Uk thing… is there a US equivalent where people turn up at a location and set up a stall to sell their old stuff?) and bake sales and … and … and so on. And taxing garage sales would be really impossible! Plus consider if your church fete sales were taxed…
How would you propose to do that? Which companies get taxed?, all of them? What services get taxed? What is a service? What products? What is a product? How would you collect taxes from a company in a different legal jurisdiction? What would the tax rate be? Who would decide that?
The internet is a loosely coupled global phenomenon, it is not a U.S. or E.U. enterprise. Taxation of the internet is a step towards impeding the exchange of ideas and thought (read big brother).