No one should be surprised by the fact there’s been more legislation introduced to force online merchants to collect sales tax. People in Washington need money so they can waste more time debating the next debt ceiling increase when that comes back around. They need to live comfortably and we all know where the money comes from—anyone who has had the common sense to start an online job. What’s the name of those fish that swim on the underside of the shark and only hitch along for the ride? Anyway, I’m just outside of Toronto and the government here has been squeezing hard for a while now. Welcome to the club.The Main Street Fairness Act (MSFA) would change the existing law that only
required merchants to pay taxes when they had a physical state presence. BTW, don’t you just love the title of that piece of legislation? Drips with the kind of Orwellian double speak we’ve come to expect from our jackal politicians on both sides of the border. Under this new totalitarian piece of tripe, even affiliates would need to pay sales tax. Notice how none of the politicians involved talk about personally taking cuts in their pay to help rebuild the tax coffers?
Politicians are the same dolts that keep arguing the merits or horrors involved with Internet online gambling as well. Currently, that industry is illegal in the United States even though it’s worth billions and the same bills keep getting introduced and defeated like the current one back on the fryer in New Jersey.
It’s not a question of paying taxes. I pay mine and keep detailed records of all my transactions as I’m sure most of my colleagues on the Internet do. There’s just something wrong about working in the modern day equivalent of the gold rush and having old school politicians and government agencies come to us with their hands out so they can propagate their cushy government lifestyles and clunky dying ways.
Most of us came to work online from other places because we knew the world had changed and was continuing to change. It sucks to hear instances where people who are clinging to old school government troughs are telling us we need to pay our fair share. We do. Maybe it’s time they learned to pare down and stand up on their own two feet. The gravy train has long been over.