Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Random Thoughts

"Go ahead, have a nice Thanksgiving.  Jerk."Every newspaper, every chamber of commerce, and every main street type organization, at some point in time, feels the need to editorialize about how horrible it is that Amazon.com and other online vendors are damaging the business of local retailers.  You see, in case you have spent the last decade under a rock, that there are a couple of clauses in the Constitution that prevent states from making out-of-state sellers collect tax.  Unless they have nexus, of course.  And, since it's just some journalist who has no clue what the real issues are, they usually get it wrong.

By the way, there was a study recently that pretty much said that making Amazon, et al, collect tax probably won't help that much.  

Have you ever noticed that you never see a proposal on a ballot for lowering the tax rate? Once those bastards have your money, they aren't going to give it back.  Just something to keep in mind the next time you vote for a rate increase.  There are no mulligans.  You'll never get it back.

I've noticed that there are a lot of reports of local jurisdictions and states reporting higher sales and use tax collections.  That's good, I suppose.  It either means that business is getting better.  Which would be nice.  Or it might mean that those tax increases are kicking in.  Which isn't so nice.  It all depends on your perspective.

Finally, at this time of year, states are reminding their citizens that they need to pay use tax on their online purchases.  C'mon!  Does anyone really think that's going to happen?

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!  And if you bought your turkey over the internet, make sure you pay your use tax if you're in a state that taxes food. 




The Sales Tax Guy
http://salestaxguy.blogspot.com

Don't forget our upcoming seminars and webinars.
http://www.salestax-usetax.com/
Picture note: the image above is hosted on Flickr. If you'd like to see more, click on the photo. 



Friday, November 09, 2012

Announcing a New Blog - All Sales Tax News - All the Time!!!

Blow! As mentioned last week, the last several months have been ... interesting.  We've had lots of webinars and seminars (thank you) a hospitalization (fear not, all OK), a car stolen (which is a hell of a story if you're interested), a vacation (I have pictures!),and a host of miscellaneous things.  But this blog has not enjoyed my attention.  I've been struggling to provide you with up-to-date content, but still fit the blog into my active lifestyle.  (trust me - it isn't that active).

I've found that there aren't many web sites that compile a large selection of links to sales tax news.  So I started one.  I've been doing it on the sly for a several weeks now and it's pretty much ready to announce.  So, please feel free to visit


This is, as near as I can tell, one of the only places on the web (that'll change) that will give you all of the sales and use news that's fit to blog, in one spot.  We pull from various online news publications, tax news services, Twitter, various SUT blogs as well as state sites.  This should give you a diverse range of daily information.  

This blog won't go away, but I'm not going to even attempt to maintain the pace that I had envisioned.  You should expect to see a couple of articles a month.  But you'll see the Sales Tax News blog updated daily (but not on weekends).

So I hope you enjoy it.  Thanks for sticking with us.




The Sales Tax Guy
http://salestaxguy.blogspot.com

Don't forget our upcoming seminars and webinars.
http://www.salestax-usetax.com/
Picture note: the image above is hosted on Flickr. If you'd like to see more, click on the photo.