I used that term in a Twitter post yesterday. It reflected the common theme of most sales tax news articles that I see these days. I shall summarize, so you can see how truly universal the problems are.1. Everybody is targeting Amazon. com for some of their states' budget woes. Out-of-state sales is an issue, but it isn't just Amazon.com. There are a LOT of internet retailers who don't charge tax. But Amazon is big and "corporate" so they are the easy scapegoat. Some are even demanding that the greedy corporations voluntarily collect and remit taxes to the local states.
2. Sales tax revenues keep falling. Business is slow. There are limited options to closing the gap.
3. Journalists and politicians keep talking about closing the "loopholes," particularly "corporate" loopholes. Yet, amazingly, others want more exemptions. Hmmm. Discussed for the past two days.
4. Do we raise rates? Some want to do this. But others want to cut costs and services, or do something else to close budget gaps - like raising income or property taxes.
There you have it. 90% of the sales tax news fits into those categories. Depressing, isn't it?
Tomorrow I'll actually talk about tax policies. Yep, got the article written and everything!
The Sales Tax Guy
http://salestaxguy.blogspot.com
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