Living in one of the greatest TAX HELLS…WISCONSIN, we pay an almost 7 % State Tax PLUS a sales tax of 5.6% in Milwaukee County….and the liberals want to squeeze even more out of us for their hare brained special interests. I guess it will end eventually when they run out of other peoples money.

One of the gimmicks to make us consume more and look at prices more positive mooded is the value added sales tax. In Europe sales taxes must be included into the shelf price. It’s European law. Any retailer not confirming with that standard is liable to be charged with fraud. Europe does not want the fooling arround and the confusing of the customers. They want transparency and sticking to promises. If the store tells you your shoes cost 55$ at the shelf, then thats what the damn shoes will cost you. Not one cent more.

In my opinion sales tax could be increased slightly but should be added into the final price displayed at the shelf and it should also be unified for all 50 states. 12% for all 50 states. No income tax increases and no business tax increases. Increasing sales tax is good because if people want to consume more and use resources more, pollute our planet more, they should also pay more for those downsides of consumption. Thats the minimal ethical, moral and enviormental standard that we could set ourselves in regards to our relentless consumption.

Including the increased sales tax into the price, should be the minimum moral and ethical standard of the government, retailers and manufacturers in regards to transparency, honesty and ease of shopping for the consumer.

As long as the current practices are kept up by the retailers and the government, it’s summerizes to no more than a fraudulent act against us consumers. That’s all I have to say to this issue.

Have a good day everyone. Take care.

I much prefer paying the price on the tag. But there is no incentive for the stores because it would take extra book keeping and their stores that charged the price on the tag would lose business to the stores that added tax after the fact – because the prices would appear lower.

Not to mention it replaces the terrible income tax system and repeals the 14th amendment of the United States.

It’s called the FairTax.

More info at http://www.fairtax.org – check it out!

While I rather not have any cost, there are some things that I just need to pay. I don’t however want to pay for taxes and then see it wasted on things like bailouts and unreasonably high salaries for some union workers (like the $100k mailman in California that I heard about a few months ago)

-Mike

About figuring sales tax in your head – figure 10% and then subtract a quarter of the 10%…. and add that figure to the price. Or just round it down – figure 10% and add a little less…

One thing I like about sales tax is that it is a “voluntary” tax… you only pay it if you buy the item… don’t buy the item, don’t pay it. Frugal people would pay very little sales tax. As opposed to the income tax which is not ‘voluntary’ in my book – if I earn the money, it’s taxed. The only way around it is to earn less and pay less tax. I would GLADLY pay sales tax IF and only if my state would do away with this state income tax…. I’d come out SOOOOO far ahead! dream on

The law could be as simply as taxes will be reported based on where it’s shipped. Then the online retailer can just deduct the taxes off the amount that they are getting from their customer. You may think that’s not fair but businesses have sophisticated enough tools to balance the price based on all the different sales taxes.

I don’t want sales taxes to be added “in addition” to the advertised price. I have no problem, and probably prefer, for it to show up in the bill but taxes should be a subset (sort of like the example that the author gave in gas).

From an online perspective, calculating online sales can actually be somewhat tricky because the laws are still somewhat vague and implementation is somewhat subjective.

The laws state (vary by state/counties/district) that an Internet seller does not have to collect sales tax unless it has “tax nexus” or a substantial presence with the buyer’s state. As you might imagine, whether a seller has nexus is not always an easy determination (and NY has a new law that would expand what constitutes nexus — although the law is now being challenged by Amazon.com). In addition, even if a seller has tax nexus, it only has to collect sales tax if it is the type of transaction that is subject to sales tax in the applicable state. Information services are taxed in some states (like NY and NJ) but not others.

And, I can tell you from my auditing experience, there are a lot of companies that do it the wrong way. So, be careful out there.