Comments on: Selling stuff online? Here comes the IRS

If the tax agency gets its way, it could start demanding personal info on people who sell via Amazon and eBay.
CNET's tax guide

[Jesus#2]

a holes...

We pay income tax, tax on our property, tax on our gas, tax on our
food... just so the gov can waist it...

I think i'll start digging up that cache of ammo in the back yard...

[armchair99]

Replace Income Tax with Sales Tax

Tax the revenue stream at the point of sale instead of at the paycheck and this whole discussion becomes moot. It would be easier to administrate and enforce a national sales tax than the thousands of pages of our current graduated income tax code, it would also be more fair to the public in its applicablility. Everyone would pay the tax...no more tax loopholes for the ultra-rich.

[OscarWeb]

And that is why it will not happen in the US

No more tax loopholes for the ultra-rich? That is why the national tax plan will not happen anytime soon, if at all, in the US. The ultra-rich (inviduals and corporations) are the ones who run this government.

[kaufmanmoore]

Sales tax is regressive

Sales taxes hurt the poor because a larger percentage of their income goes to consumables.
Let's imagine two frugal traveling salesmen. They each have to buy a new car every four years to (say) keep up appearances, and they need reliable transportation.
(One guy makes 20K, the other 300K)
Run the numbers on a the RATE of total income each pays on on 5% sales tax.

Poor Boy buys a $20,000 car pays $1000 or 5.0% of his income.
Rich Boy buys a $60,000 car pays $3000 or 1.0% of his income.

Also most CEO's money comes from investment income, how would that be taxed?

[batavier]

ASS BACKWARDS!

Sales tas is the single most REGRESSIVE tax there is. (if you don't know what that means look it up.) Therefore, sales tax (or VAT) should be abolished altogether!

There should be only two types of tax:

(1) Income tax that does not let the top 5% who make most of the income in this country weasel out of paying tax. This will only happen when investment income (where most of the "idle rich" (yes there really are such people!) get there income) get taxed at the same rates as income from wages.

(2) Earmark tax:
Taxes earmarked to support only specific public expenses. Like gasoline tax for highway maintenance. Property taxes to maintain Fire and Police departments.

Sales tax is the darling of conservative politicians who don't care whether you can afford to pay the tax or not.

[wdukeman]

Stop this tax now

You must be rich or haven't given it any thought. The sales tax would be a rich man's dream and a poor man's nightmare.

[ferricoxide]

Yeah, This'll Work

I forsee a lot of "new" eBay IDs being created, most with gMail backing addresses and identifying information being bogus: fake SSNs or addresses in foreign countries. You can also count on sites popping up to help this.

Me? If the threshold was $5K and I was selling more than that in a year, I'd have <YearlyIncome>/$5K accounts, each with unique, bogus information. I don't think I'd be the only one.

Oh well, least it doesn't apply to me.

[PCPrivacyTech]

Good point

It will spawn a whole new industry.

[spock_dog]

IRS Taxing

This will cause me to apply a 10-15% sales tax on my internet sales to cover the criminal IRS imposed tax reporting requirement.
Just another way for them to get their hand into my pocket!
-

[comptech2002]

Double Tax

Why double tax things sold online on ebay etc.... Lets say I buy something at a store and I get taxed for it? Then I want to put it on ebay if I didnt like the item or couldnt return it? or if I bought an item anywhere else and it was already taxed once thats just a rip to me to be taxed again.

[PCPrivacyTech]

Better analogy

Yes, you were taxed at the time of purchase with a sales tax. But the real analogy is the double-taxation of INCOME. Example: I purchase a hard drive for $200 with money from my paycheck (money that was after-tax income from the paycheck). Then, I turn around and sell the hard drive on eBay three months later for $100. When I sell a used item (at half the price I paid with after-tax money), why should the same money be taxed again by the feds? It shouldn't. Taxing eBay sales with a federal tax is like charging a federal tax on garage sale income. It's wrong. It's a double-tax on working people who can't afford to shelter their income with fancy investment write-offs for the rich. Now, THERE is where you look to close the "tax gap." The whole "Free and Open Markets" baloney should apply not only to fat cat investors in China and India, but to sellers on eBay in AMERICA.

[ifiredmyboss.com]

Not double tax

The tax isn't on the item itself the tax is on the icome that someone makes on the items sold.

[cookcounty]

We Need a Different Approach

The IRS will never be able to keep people from under reporting or not reporting income. Everyone, however, tends to spend most of their income. If the US went to a national sales tax it would not only eliminate the problem of trying to keep track of all income, but would eliminate all the time and money wasted on tax preparation and reporting, encourage savings, and reduce the size of what I am sure is a huge, bloated, expensive agency.

[dondarko]

well you see...

it's an income source and like everyone else you have to file taxes, even if you work from home on eBay and other auction and marketplace sites. Until we do away with taxes for all these folks will not be able to avoid this, like the rest of us. We all pay taxes, it's a fact of life, get used to it.

[Phillep_H]

Look again

It's only an income source if you sell for more than your expenses. If you are selling used stuff you have no further use for, it is loss reduction.

Different story for those making a profit.

[Smuvjz]

Taxing aution sales

Sounds like double taxation to me. You buy a product ,pay taxes on that product then decide to sell it later, and now IRS wants you to pay taxes on it again. We need a new tax program all together, so why don't they revise what we have now. Let's try to make it so it benefits not only the federal government, but the American citizens as well, instead of the many foreign countries that it has for too many years.

[twotall610]

Flat tax

Flat tax everyone, then federal sales tax. Hold goverment
responsible for spending, balance budget.
It is a shame that federal budget is run by people with no business
sense.

[hassan_bin_sober]

IRS

Govt crap has gone far enough...Time to pick up a gun and take back your country from the tyrants!

[TucsonAlexAZ]

or better yet

Actually take the time to go out and vote these idiots out of office.

[mcclurec]

As a Canadian...

Why should I give the U.S. government my personal information for making an online transaction? The problem with governments is that they forget that the internet goes beyond their national borders.

[Methuss]

Taxing e-commerce is bogus

The problem with this typical knee-jerk idea is that it does not take into account any of the expenses of the sale. If they tax the amount of the sale on an auction site, they are ignoring the initial cost of the product, marketing (listing fees), handling, and postage.

A person may sell a refurbished laptop on e-bay for $900, but it may cost $700 for the laptop, another $30 in listing/closing fees, and $20 to package and ship. The auction site cannot account for those things. So under this proposal they would tax on the sale not the actual profit (income). In the example above they would tax on $900, not on the actual profit of only $150.

[geekpro]

READ MY LIPS..........

Hey Bush,

What happened to the neocon "tax breaks"?

Here's your chance to create "smaller government", let Americans KEEP "their" money, and ditch this idea!

Get er Done!
Cowboy

[`WarpKat]

Previously Owned Goods

...shouldn't be taxed.

Aside from this, an item's tax is based on what state it was sold in, and some states have no tax.

So this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

If I paid for an item and paid its tax based on what the state mandates, guess what? I don't owe anymore tax on it, my dear money-hungry government.

Junior got us into this deficit mess with his war over in the sand. He should've just left well enough alone. Now we've paid more than enough in terms of money and lives.

If my dear money-hungry government needs cash, look to Junior. Get HIS bank account number to withdraw funds from.

That goes without saying if you can - if he hasn't deleted it by accident along with all of a bunch of select emails... ^_^

[Xenu7-214951314497503184010868]

Ignoring Big Corporate Tax Evaders... Again

The amount of tax dollars they can recoup from small businesses and individuals selling products over the Internet is nothing compared to what they could get if they actually enforced tax laws against the large corporations who engage in illegal and offshore practices to avoid paying their taxes. Of course, the latter can afford to hire lobbyists, but you can't. Remember that the next time you go to vote.

[fancieart]

Taxing Ebay

I have an Ebay store and the majority of the things I sell are my own personal items that I have collected over the years. Needless to say I have already paid taxes on these items. Why should I have to pay them again? If the government is going to tax Ebay sales then what's next....flea markets and yard sales?!?! I think the government needs to look to there own pockets instead of ours!

[Endbringer42]

The FairTax is the solution.

The FairTax (http://www.fairtax.org) is the best solution to the taxing problem the US has. A national sales tax would eliminate issues like this. Right now 50% of the country is paying 100% of the taxes. Under the FairTax, there is a Prebate. No one pays any sales tax on items up to the poverty level. After that, you pay taxes. There would be no second-taxing on items from eBay or any auction because the tax only applies to the first time something is sold.

The flat tax wouldn't work because that's what we had in '86 when Reagan got the tax code slimmed down. Look where that got us. Anytime you allow income to be the basis for a policy decision, class warfare is going to be a part of it. Eliminate the income tax and then everyone is treated fair.

[SteveDelBianco]

IRS = Information Reporting System

Kudos to CNET for outing the IRS on their plan to gather data on online sales. It's not about the money, honey.

See my response at http://blog.netchoice.org/2007/04/dont_make_an_on.html

[jkarhu24]

Not exactly.

Um... no. 51% of all government spending is on the military, past and present. The next big chunk goes to social security, and the final chunk to medicare. If anything, religious zealots supporting holy wars and geezers looking for a free ride should be cut. The rest of the government spending is almost negligible, but still incredibly large and important on an absolute scale (billions of dollars out of the trillions of dollar budget). Why should the poor be starving and living in poverty their entire lives, subjected to ****** public schools and either bare bones or non-existent medical care, and then left to feel the brunt of the tax burden supporting the riches political agenda? Fill me in on that one, please.

[Endbringer42]

What?

The poor aren't paying taxes now, so how are they staying in poverty because of the federal tax burden? In reality the rest of us are paying THEM because they receive more services from the government than they pay into it.

[jkarhu24]

Joke

Regulating the internet just might be the biggest joke out there. Small trading sites will pop up like herpes on Paris Hilton's nanner during a feverish outbreak. The new sites strengths: they don't sell out their customers by reporting to the IRS. How do they accomplish this? Easy. They're set up in Brazil, Nigeria, etc.