Amazon is holding states over a barrel, asking them for sales tax exemptions in return for building and staffing distribution hubs in their locales. South Carolina recently voted against an exemption, and Amazon is leaving. I get that, but why is this a Tea Party issue?
Most Midlands lawmakers supported the exemption, but opposition fanned by a coalition of small merchants, national retailers and Tea Party activists proved insurmountable […]
Is it localism and solidarity with the small merchants, or are they on the side of the national retailers? Did they pick this issue because Amazon is run by Yankees? Or do they just attach themselves anywhere they think a little noisemaking will get them some attention?
satby
I thought the T(axed)E(nough) A(lready)party was against taxes for big corporations. Wait, maybe Amazon was going to offer a decent wage to the local
workersserfs.jwb
I’m too lazy to look it up, but what do Amazon’s political donations look like? Have the company and executives been properly supportive of the Gooper faith?
rea
You surely aren’t expecting to find rhyme or reason in the positions taken by the teaparty, are you?
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
I don’t know why the Tea Party was opposed to the Amazon deal, but this is one case where I think they’re right. God, that hurt to type.
Cat Lady
Fucking teatard brains – how do they work?
Mister Papercut
I expect, though, that the loss of the potential 1200 jerbs will most assuredly be The Kenyan’s fault.
terraformer
Because:
1) Amazon initially hosted Wikileaks on its servers.
2) They sell Arugula.
Capri
Here in Indiana, the tea party came out against eliminating the county commissioner system. All that would do would be to stream line government, eliminate a lot of patronage jobs and save the tax payer money.
The reason? It would concentrate “too much power” in the hands of local mayors.
stuckinred
Good comment on the article:
soonergrunt
@jwb: A while back, when Buy Blue was still active, Amazon.com, and Jeff Bezos in particular, was listed as a huge GOP contributor. Barnes and Noble was listed as primarily giving money to progressive causes and candidates.
ploeg
For local issues, Tea Party = local talk radio = whatever solipsism the local business community wants to spread.
Jude
You folks just don’t understand South Carolina. I’m not an expert, but I did live there for a while.
They HATE out-of-state everything. Hate all of it–with the notable exceptions of Wal-Mart and military bases. South Carolina is a strange, strange place–you pretty much have to check logic at the border.
Mike
Probably because the state would be “picking winners and losers”, instead of the natural “free market” deciding or what not… Who knows with those people. They’re crazy!
brettvk
Amazon is an intertubes thing, thus obviously run by and for the DFHs. If you were over 70, you’d know this.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Something is going on here. I don’t know if Freedomworks and Fox News and TEA party groups are realizing that focusing on Union workers and Teachers is bad for business, but they’ve finally decided that corporate tax evasion is something that they need to be watching. For Example:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705371528/Tea-party-PETA-protest-General-Electric-at-annual-meeting.html
PurpleGirl
Do I have this correct: Amazon made a deal with SC to build a distribution center and in return they would get tax breaks (state taxes on equipment bought/used, property taxes on the land and building, incentive tax breaks for the jobs created, etc.).
The deal broke down because Amazon also wanted a waiver of their duty to collect sales taxes: Were those sales taxes on sales to SC citizens or all sales taxes on books and items shipped through that warehouse?
ploeg
There also could be something going on under the covers (for an example, see The Texas Meanace).
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Ack, blockqote and edit-fail. All of those paragraphs after the blockquote should be blockquoted as well.
Lydgate
@Mister Papercut:
Puhleez, it is not right when any company holds state governments hostage with the promise of some jobs.
My guess is that the tea party is doing the bidding of large national retailers. I doubt it has anything to do with antipathy towards (imagined) progressive politics of Amazon.
To me there is no rhyme or reason to the way that some retailers and etailers get a pass from progressives and some don’t. Ikea anyone?
jibeaux
I can’t really speak to that, but in NC we have a conservative former Supreme Court justice, a respectable guy but not someone I would find a lot of ideological common ground with, who has in his retirement formed a think tank dedicated to mounting constitutional and public-opinion challenges to the idea that we have to bribe every business that ever opens up shop here, which is widely accepted by pretty much every politician we’ve ever had. Hell, we recently bribed Red Hat not to leave. To which I say, more power to him.
rageahol
sales taxes are regressive. they’re standing up for their right to saddle the middle and lower classes with a disproportionate share of the tax burden.
makes perfect sense to me.
danimal
@ploeg: Bing, bing, bing. We have a winner! All politics is local.
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac: Simpler explanation: Immelt is Obama’s economic advisor, therefore he is an accomplice to the Kenyanesian Soshalist Nazi Maoist threat to our liberties.
Waldo
Makes sense to me.
Amazon sells books. Books are for intellectuals. Ergo: Amazon is arming the enemy.
jonas
Amazon sells books, which, as we all know, once the coloreds and women-folk get a hold of them, it’s all over. So for the South Carolina Tea Party, kicking out Amazon makes a lot of sense.
cmorenc
YES the TeaPartiers are mostly crazy about most things.
NEVERTHELESS this same issue of the state offering huge special incentives to corporations (not Amazon in our case, but most recently, Dell instead) has sparked controversy in North Carolina as well, and the opposition has come from a remarkably diverse set of folks from across the political spectrum. This a (very) unusual instance where the Tea Party-type thinking actually strikes a chord across the political spectrum: all too often, states do NOT recover adequate economic benefits commensurate with what was given up, and it unfairly disadvantages other competitive businesses who lack the clout to get such incentives. Take Dell, for example, which (with substantial state incentives and tax breaks) set up a production facility in Greensboro, NC, only to abandon the facility and exit the state after only three or four years, before any economic break-even point wrt the state of N.C.
The Amazon facility also creates similar issues with respect to local merchants that giving special incentives to a Wal-Mart coming to a town would, another issue those of us more leftward along the political spectrum can understand, though true with TeaTards there is the difference that Amazon isn’t a “southern” company, whereas Wal-Mart sort of is.
This proves that even the Tea Party types can every once in a great while indulge in sound, practical thinking and come out on the same, better side of an issue that most progressives will, even though the Tea Party types are perniciously deluded and dead wrong 95% of the time about nearly everything else.
El Cid
Your big box stores get localities (counties, cities) to allow them to keep the local sales taxes or else they move across the county / city line.
So if a state has a 4% sales tax, they pay that, while you pay 6 or 7% at the register.
Which doesn’t help small businesses who aren’t subsidized by a guaranteed 2 or 3% extra profit unknown to consumers.
Dan
They did it because the South Carolina economy is strong and the unemployment rate is really low.
Lydgate
@stuckinred:
Thanks for the link. I read the article– it appears they were asking for more then just the sales tax exemption: Other critics called the exemption too much on top of a free site, property tax breaks on equipment, state job tax credits and abolition of longtime Sunday morning sales restrictions in Lexington County to facilitate Amazon’s round-the-clock opposition.
I happen to think it is time for state governments to make a concerted effort to stop these sort of development efforts so I’m glad that SC did this tea party or no tea party.
Yes, sales taxes are regressive, but they do fund needed services. And,it is not like all (or even most) Amazon purchases are for necessities. Robert Frank actually makes a pretty good case for a progressive consumption tax.
How is this lost revenue replaced? I would say increased property taxes, decreased services, and higher state and local fees.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’m going with extreme heat and/or inbreeding.
NonyNony
@PurpleGirl:
Amazon is notorious about this. The relevant Supreme Court decision back in the 90s said that catalog merchants don’t have to collect sales taxes on goods sold out of state PROVIDED they don’t have a “presence” in the state where the purchase is made. This was before the big internet boom, back in the days where most of these orders were via mail or over the phone.
Amazon has built this into their strategy to keep prices down and undercut other company’s prices. But it gets foiled when they want to open a distribution center – even a warehouse is enough to give them a “presence” in a state and allow the state to require that they collect sales tax in that state. So Amazon extorts the state governments – “we’ll bring in a warehouse and provide a couple hundred jobs but ONLY if you exempt us from having to collect sales tax on purchases made in your state”. And in general the state legislatures cave in and do it.
As to why the Tea Party would rally round this – the Tea Party is united on some things but where you have two corporations at logger-heads you’ve got a problem. Wal*Mart gets undercut by Amazon’s tactics – Wal*Mart has to collect sales tax everywhere because they have an obvious presence in states and since their strategy requires that they have brick-and-mortar stores they don’t have the ability to extort those kinds of changes from the state legislatures. So they want to stop Amazon from this kind of extortion.
It really is an unfair business practice, and the Federal government could put a stop to it with a simple law change. But they won’t because ZOMG TAXES!!!!!
jlow
This would actually be one case where they have something in common with the original tea party (Boston not Mad Hatter). Pissed off that a giant outside corporation doesn’t have to pay the same taxes that local merchants do.
Tyro
as much as I believe the right wing base is wrong about most everything, in this situation, they’re right. This deal as already a bunch of corporate tax giveaways, and Amazon kept demanding more and more, so I respect the government telling them to shove it. For years, governments have been trying to “create jobs” by simply figuring that if they gave enough handouts to potential corporate entities, jobs would appear. Instead, each state simply engaged in a race to the bottom in desperation while corporations played one state off against the other.
Downpuppy
@PurpleGirl: To collect sales tax on mail order sales into a state, the company has to have a presence in the state. If Amazon builds a facility in SC, then SC can collect tax on all Amazon sales into South Carolina. With no presence, they can tell a state to piss up a rope.
Of course, if you buy from out of state and don’t pay sales tax, you’re supposed to report it to your home state & pay Use Tax. Quit giggling.
Yeah, what Nony said.
cmorenc
@Waldo: @Waldo:
@jonas:
WADR, comments like these are just as much the sort of mindlessly prejudicial, ignorantly stereotypical comments which we see from far too many Tea Partiers. Since South Carolinians are all a bunch of dumbass wingnuts, EVERY position they take on any issue must be rooted in dumbass prejudice and stupidity, and nothing they believe can possibly be rooted whatsoever in sound practical understanding of any issue whatever on any subject. Yours is the sort of disrespectful attitude the Tea Partiers reflect back at us in the progressive community, and frankly, don’t sound any better once you’re outside the cozy, comfortable circles of assuredly like-minded folks.
BattleCobra90000
Soon after moving to NC, I learned that being from Seattle doesn’t make you a Yankee, but rather some distant “other.” As far as South Carolinians are concerned, Amazon might as well be run by Frenchmen.
liberal
@soonergrunt:
Don’t know about his relationship to the GOP, but IIRC he’s a “libertarian.” (Which of course isn’t inconsistent with his giving dollars to the GOP.)
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Villago Delenda Est
Sales taxes are total bullshit, anyways. In a consumer driven economy the last thing you want to do is inhibit consumption. You might want to inhibit consumption for other reasons (say, conserving fuel for important stuff like bombing brown people) but you don’t want to slow down dollar acceleration…and that’s what sales taxes do.
However, sales taxes are relatively easy to levy and collect, and are highly regressive, so the parasite overclass loves them.
PurpleGirl
@NonyNony:
Downpuppy too:
Thank you. That’s what I thought the deal was. NYS added a line to its state return requiring you to estimate (or keep track of) the amount of catalog/internet purchases and the sales tax not already paid.
I’m against the usual tax deals companies (any company) makes to site a building of any sort in a set location. The supposed economic benefits rarely materialize and the locality loses so much. NYC gave breaks to an insurance company to move jobs to a Queens Plaza building. It’s not a great location — right by a bridge, no good local shopping or places to eat. The employees were very unhappy and after 3 years (maybe sooner) the insurance company was moving half the staff back to Manhattan. I think the City was trying to get back the incentives they’d given the company to begin with.
me
@NonyNony: I help with a small web sales business and if we had to account for out of state sales taxes we would have to quit. There are so many different sales tax regions, look at Colorado it’s a nightmare, that we’d have to contract with an outside company to handle it and that would add another drain to an already small bottom line.
sublime33
The Tea Partiers are actually right about this one. I never understood why small business is probably the most reliable Republican voting base, yet for years governments have handed out incentives that help their larger competitors through tax incentives. It is tough enough to run a small business and compete with the big boys due to their purchasing power, but when they get tax holidays and sales tax exemptions, it tips the scales even more against small business.
“Move On” Democrats like me have one thing in common with FOX News conservatives. We all agree that ordinary citizens are getting short changed. The raging debate is who is the beneficiary.
Citizen_X
WTF is wrong with you people? The Tea Partiers are absolutely right here: this is corporate welfare that hurts local businesses, and denies the state its tax base. Yes, I believe sales tax is relatively regressive, but it’s a reality throughout the
countryworld, and it ought to be applied fairly.Jesus. Can’t people recognize allies when they drop into our laps?
RSA
I volunteer to move to South Carolina and work there, under the condition that the legislature grant me a state income tax exemption. As an individual, I should have just as many opportunities to work a deal with the state government as a large corporation–wait, you mean I don’t?
Omnes Omnibus
This is a blind squirrel situation. The Tea-people got something right.
Mo's Bike Shop
Amazon, Lesbian, what’s the difference?
Oh and Amazon sells books. Or at least they used to.
Has anyone checked which Big Box is funding the TeaBaggers involved?
Chad N Freude
@El Cid: If this is true, how is it not fraud?
Re Amazon: Their concern is that their enormous sales numbers would majorly decline if their customers had to pay the same sales tax they (the customers) pay at their local stores. Locals would then have the advantage of customers not having to wait for UPS to make the delivery. My personal opinion is that on-line retailers should have to pay local sales taxes applicable at the customer’s address. I have read that Amazon et al have said that having to deal with so many different tax rates in different locales would be much too burdensome for their computers — you know, the ones with the green eyeshades and quill pen printers.
For the record, when I file my CA income tax every year, I report approximately what I spent on untaxed on-line purchases and pay the corresponding sales tax. (There’s a provision for this on the state tax form.) I would like to see the whole problem go away with a national interstate commerce “fee” on otherwise untaxed purchases to be distributed to the states that so desperately need it. I know, nevah gonna happen, but as a communitarian DFH, I think it’s the right thing to do.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chad N Freude:
Well, you know, that Bob Cratchit guy in the back room would be asking for more coal to keep the temperature above freezing so he could scratch out the ledgers at Amazon, and this makes Jeff Bezos cry.
The paying for more coal thing.
guy
@Citizen_X: Agreed. Amazon also recently backed out of building a distribution center in Illinois because the Democratic governor refused to give them a tax break. His position, quite rightly, was that the state of Illinois is in desperate economic straits and can hardly go around not collecting tax revenue.
If the Tea Party fools managed to find a nut like the proverbial blind squirrel, then hey, that’s an ally!
Chad N Freude
@Villago Delenda Est:
And don’t forget the protect the planet from climate change resulting from burning coal thing.
Ash Can
Count me among those who are on board with the teabaggers on this one. And that’s something I didn’t think I would ever type. Ever. But it’s true.
NonyNony
@me:
Yeah I know it’s a nightmare.
OTOH – Amazon can afford it and should be implementing it but instead they spend money to lobby around it. And extort states into giving them special exemptions.
And Amazon is using it as another tool to hurt local businesses. They already are huge enough to get big discounts when they buy in bulk and this is just one more competitive advantage that they get.
It really isn’t fair that web-based businesses get this kind of advantage over the locals. Back in the 90s I was against taxing on the Internet because it needed the boost to grow the market. These days, though, the internet market is fine. Hell in some ways its healthier than the local brick-and-mortar – so that advantage isn’t needed anymore.
That said – there should be a better solution so the “mom & pop” internet stores don’t go under either. I wish we had a sane taxation system in this country instead of the patchwork of stupid that we get that allows companies like Amazon to extort states the way they do.
Chad N Freude
Did I mention that Borders, due to its bankruptcy due to its inability to compete with Amazon, has closed every store on the West Side of LA? You know, the area where UCLA and Santa Monica College are located and a lot of book buyers live.
ETA: Yes, I know that they partnered with Amazon for online sales, but Amazon sucked most of the profit out of Borders’s sales.
Mandramas
one more of the fantastical free market solutions. And Darkness and Decay and the libertarians held illimitable dominion over all
Lydgate
@cmorenc:
No kidding. Do we really need to play up to the worst fears of the right wing commentariat?
Skyborne
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac:
I bet that’s just because GE owns MSNBC.
catclub
@Villago Delenda Est: Also, if you order wine from a two person distributor in upstate NY and ask to have it sent to the wrong county in Mississippi
_somehow_ they know they cannot ship it to you. But Amazon cannot figure out state sales taxes. Pity.
Xenos
When I was a resident of Massachusetts I often ordered online from pcconnection.com, an early online retailer with a raccoon trademark mascot some here may remember. It collected Mass. sales taxes on my purchases, which seemed perfectly fair to me whether they had facilities on Mass or just NH. I just assumed it was a business that assessed them on everybody, as a way of being ready ahead of time before it became a universal obligation. I remember that being the conventional wisdom back when we could not imagine W. winning a second term in office.
Maybe I was just a sucker to pay a tax I did not have to. But the customer service at that business was (and probably still is) good enough to be worth the extra 5%.
adolphus
I agree with everyone who says the teabaggers are, a reported, on the right side of this. (I just threw up in my mouth a little)
Now if we can just get cities to stop bending over for millionaire sports team owners.
kindness
Online purchases should face sales tax. Calculating the purchasers local sales tax is a no brainer for the computers that take the orders.
I guess that makes me a heathen, but that is what I think.
jwb
@soonergrunt: Interesting. Well, I got nothing then. Except Amazon is getting creamed in Texas as well.
Lydgate
@Villago Delenda Est: I don’t think sales taxes are quite as regressive as you are painting them. After all, you pay a hell of a lot more sales tax on a Mercedes SEL than you do on a Ford Focus.
And, if you’re going to use your sales tax inhibits consumption argument, what is to prevent someone on the other side pulling out the old canard that higher income taxes retard job growth (or sap productivity).
Joel
@jwb: Don’t know about Amazon, but Bezos is definitely a gooper.
If states are going to have sales taxes at all – and I hate sales taxes on principle – everything should be subject to them, including food, gas, everything. No exceptions.
grandpajohn
@Lydgate: As a resident of SC, Thanks for taking the time to read the article, too bad more of the respondents felt it easier to simply hit the snark button instead of doing what we constantly flame the wingnuts for doing
Paul in KY
I think they think ‘Amazon’ is run by huge, butch lesbians.
grandpajohn
@RSA: exactly it is about big business abuse of power.
Omnes Omnibus
@Paul in KY: It is too early in the morning to be drinking the cleaning products.
Pee Cee
@Lydgate:
Sales taxes on cars (at least in SC) don’t work that way.
You might pay more in property taxes later for the Mercedes, but you won’t pay any more in sales tax.
300baud
@Chad N Freude:
Are you sure about that? In their shoes I’d be much more worried about price comparisons with other online retailers. If there were a national requirement that all retailers collect sales tax, I don’t think it’d be a big problem for them.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: A little toulene in the coffee really expands your outlook.
Oh, gotta go, my boss the big purple lizard wants to see me in his office…
grandpajohn
@cmorenc: From A SC resident thank you for the reasoned intelligent response. I would remind posters her that ! gasp! something over 40 % of us vote democratic Which means while it is fun to poke the rednecks you are also mocking a hell of a lot of people who are currently on your side. Maybe with a return to Dean’s 50 state strategy that 40% could eventually become 50+%
Michael57
1) Only about 22% of Amazon’s revenues come from sales of books & CDs. They also sell big screen TVs, Glock ammo, and dildos.
2) Since its inception, Amazon’s business model has been based on tax avoidance.
3) It’s not only warehouses but also their affiliate program that gives Amazon a “nexus” in each state. To my mind, the Internet itself gives Amazon a nexus in each state, but case law hasn’t caught up with that idea.
4) If your state has a sales tax of 6%, that means that current laws give Amazon a 6% advantage over your local retailer. Guess which one supports local causes, pays property taxes, buys supplies locally, etc. This is fair?
The tea party blindly found an acorn on this one. Amazon’s business model is based on tax avoidance. States are starving. Shame on Amazon. Buy local.
Damien
Ok, so can someone explain to me, since it comes up in all of these discussions about Amazon and taxes, why we’re all discussing the difficulty of figuring out the tax rate of the consumer? Last I checked I pay tax to the district where the store’s located, not my house. Why would this be any different just because it’s over the internet?
Sloegin
@Lydgate: Sales taxes are insanely regressive for precisely this point: Poor people spend all their income.
Rich people spend only a small part of their income, saving and investing the rest.
In my state (Washington) a heavy sales-tax, user-fee, no income-tax state, the calculation is roughly people at the $20k per year level pay about 17% of their income in state taxes, folks above $250k per year pay about 3% of theirs.
Michael57
@NonyNony: Legislation under consideration has a carve-out for businesses under a certain volume. Ebay sellers and start-ups and other little guys would be exempt.
Lydgate
@grandpajohn: No shit. I sure hate when progressives ape the actions of teatards.
I’m sure there is some astro turfing going on here, but I still think on the balance it is a good thing to reject these anti competitive extortionist schemes. I’m more than willing to align myself with a like minded teabagger on an issue of such importance.
Lydgate
@Michael57:
Thanks especially for statement no.1. That needed to be stated.
Chad N Freude
@300baud: I’m not sure about anything. They already face pricing competition from on-line competitors. Last year I bought an air purifier from Costco because the one I wanted was considerably cheaper than it was on Amazon. (I don’t recall whether Costco charged sales tax — Costco.com is a separate operation from the brick/mortar stores — but the total I paid was less than it would have been from Amazon.
Omnes Omnibus
@Michael57:From a practical standpoint, I would be okay with exempting the first, let’s say, $10,000 in sales in a state from sales tax for any online business. This would allow small businesses to function but would prevent Amazon and others from crushing local businesses. I chose the dollar amount at random, so if you think that amount is silly, that’s cool.
Paul in KY
@grandpajohn: If the shoe fits, wear it grandpa. If it doesn’t, it wasn’t meant for you :-)
grandpajohn
@Lydgate: Not in SC. our legislature in their infinite wisdom and due to the fact that most of them drive luxury cars sat the maximum on cars at $300 dollars
I do a lot of ordering on line both business and personal. What I find is that in most states they are required to collect sales tax if you also live within the state
another also. here in SC it was not just Tea party. many small businesses
and other retailers also banded together to oppose this. Amazon kept moving the goalposts
Michael57
@Omnes Omnibus: The American Booksellers Association is actively working with the retail community to come up with a fair exemption level state by state. No one wants to put an unfair burden on small businesses–that’s actually what the conversation is all about to begin with.
Omnes Omnibus
@Michael57: At least, it is what the conversation should be about.
j low
This thread has done a great job of separating the wheat (critical though anyone?) from the chaff (Lookitabagger!).
grandpajohn
@Paul in KY: Then don’t paint everyone with the same paintbrush, people who ain’t batshit crazy like to be aknowledged sometimes also. maybe old canards like,” you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar still exist because there is truth to them.
j low
@Damien: You think there is no difference between the internet economy and brick and mortar? This same bullshit in corporate accountability is why every corporation that want’s to fuck you is incorporated in Deleware. You really want to make a limbo game out of lowering the bar just so you can save 25 cents on your next doohickey you bought without ever leaving your Lazeeboy?
Percysowner
I have a really neat piece of technology called a computer. It is very rare only a few hundred million people use them. When I ran a business I had a thing called a “program” called QuickBooks. Whenever I did payroll it magically calculated all the taxes that I had to withhold from my employees. It even went out and updated the amounts if tax rates changed.
I realize that Amazon is just a poor struggling company with barely any sales, but I’m certain that they could find one of these new fangled computer thingies and buy some kind of program that would tell them the taxes to be charged if they were shipping to a certain zip code. It would find city, state and county taxes and add it on.
Oh well, I obviously am just a techo nerd who doesn’t understand the complexities of figuring out what taxes would be owed in every locality.
Paul in KY
@grandpajohn: We’re not talking about you, you old fart. We’re talking about your asshole neighbors in SC. We just didn’t include an explicit ‘except for the good 40% of South Carolinians who vote Democratic & are not crazy’. Start mentally reading that quote whenever we slag on SC.
If you are taking this personally….then maybe we are talking about you ;-)
j low
@grandpajohn: He’s working with a fence painter’s brush. I wouldn’t look for too much discernment there.
catclub
@adolphus: “Now if we can just get cities to stop bending over for millionaire sports team owners.”
Seattle ( home of Amazon) did stop. But only stopped the basketball franchise after there was no money left from the baseball and football stadium sellouts.
But they are learning!
Lydgate
@Sloegin</a
Yes, but don't the working poor spend a higher proportion of their total income on food and housing? Is food not sales tax exempt in Washington? I really am asking because I don't know. That would be a travesty if it were. Housing is taxed too, of course, through property taxes (which go up when other revenue streams such as sales tax are curtailed)
There are ways to make sales taxes less regressive. Europe seems to be doing OK with a VAT. We could also work to make sure that the distribution of the tax receipts is more progressive.
For more on a progressive consumption tax check out Robert Frank's Falling Behind
maus
Absolutely defending strip-mall chains and the big shitty franchises. Why else would they encourage anyone pay taxes?
dj spellchecka
mcclatchy ran a piece the other day showing that the sc southern baptists had come out in opposition…claiming, falsely, that amazon sold porn as well as objecting to the waving of local blue laws so the warehouse could run on sunday
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/22/112627/south-carolina-baptists-oppose.html
kc
@Paul in KY:
You live in Kentucky? Dude, shut the fuck up.
This is one case where the teabaggers are on the right side of an issue – although I think most of them are taking this stance just because they think they’re sticking it to the RINOs who made the deal w/Amazon.
Waldo
@cmorenc:
Eh, for the record, I was responding to the question in the OP — Why is this a Tea Party issue? — not taking a shot at people in SC. Still, I was only half kidding. Is there really any doubt that anti-intellectualism is a key component of the Tea Party movement?
Paul in KY
@j low: Ah, you’re on to me :-)
grandpajohn
@Paul in KY: Why the fuck do you expect me to mentally excuse the all bullshit when some asshole starts screaming about my state as a whole or all the people within it instead of pointing out that there are people in those states who work their asses off for the same causes that they espouse,So just because I am in the minority party here I should just shut up and ignore the ignorant assholes slandering me and say” Oh they don’t mean it”. why don’t all brown and black people just turn the other cheek and shut up when racist assholes start spouting racist shit, because they know that the shoe don’t fit them, .
maybe someday you will also be an old fart who finally wises up to the reality of how life works and how to best win friends and influence people to vote for your candidates, or you may just turn into a senile old fart yelling at all the kids on your lawn. Choice is yours. My opinion is that we are in a battle we can’t afford to lose and we need all the allies and help we can get
Admiral_Komack
@Jude:
You are correct, sir.
tkogrumpy
@Tyro: this!
Bob L
@dj spellchecka: Makes sense, Amazons is Outsiders and worse, they sell the pron the conservatives buy.
Gustopher
Amazon runs Target.com — they have solved all the technical problems of collecting sales taxes for every jurisdiction.
If it is so hard to keep this information up to date as people claim (it isn’t for a company of a decent size, but let’s pretend), Amazon can offer tax calculation, reporting and disbursement as a service to others, for a fee of course.
It might be worth crafting an exemption for small companies, but there is no reason to be letting the medium and large companies avoid collecting sales taxes.
tkogrumpy
@grandpajohn: this yankee will enlist in your army.
uptown
Maybe SC is still trying to figure out how to pay those hundreds of millions in subsidies they paid to get Boeing to put a plant there.
vanya
Odd, Jeff Jacoby, the Boston Globe’s resident right-wing hack, just wrote an op-ed piece on how the state has no business taxing the fine folks at Amazon, impeding progress, hurting our sacred right as American citizens to consume as much crap as possible, blah blah blah. Either Jeff or the SC Tea Party didn’t get the memo. I suspect the SC Tea Party simply has trouble reading memos in general.
And btw, Amazon is no longer primarily a book seller and hasn’t been for years. Today it’s really an on-line department store that sells everything from dresses to electronics to outdoor furniture. The book seller image is useful though because it seems to create blinders that fit nicely over progressive eyes – progressives seem to think that no one who sells books can be all that bad…
Michael57
@vanya: Say what you will about tea partiers, but on the Amazon issue they are correct, and traditional rightwing hacks like Jacoby are wrong. …Taibbi points out that tea partiers have legitimate beefs, they are just blaming the wrong people, for a variety of reasons.
vanya
@dj spellchecka: Amazon does sell porn, certainly porn as a Southern Baptist would define it. EG – “Neale Sourna’s C*ntSinger: Cunnilingus: How to Give Head (Oral Sex and Eating Pussy), for Giving Women Orgasms of C*ntlicious Joy!”, I suspect that would count as porn. Of course they also sell “Cunnilingus 101 for Christians: Pleasing your wife through the beautiful act of oral sex”, so maybe that’s OK? Amazon also sells sex toys and porn DVDs (through 3rd party distributors). Like I said, it’s not really a book store at all these days.
vanya
@Michael57: I agree with you that the Tea Partiers are right in this instance. Jacoby is far more venal and craven than your average TPer. I’ve worked for retailers, and I’ve seen the damage they suffer while Amazon is essentially being subsidized. It’s ridiculous.
Lydgate
@grandpajohn It is exasperating, isn’t it? I live in a state that elected a dick governor and I read things such as “serves the rubes right for electing him”. Sigh. He won by a whopping 2% margin of victory.
And I also get tired of the attacks on teabaggers because they may be old and/or low wage workers? So? We are all going to be old some day. And yeah, if you’re a low wage earner you’re acting against your interest in supporting the movement, but for chrissakes so is someone making 75K a year. That cohort has a higher proportion of Republican voters than does the low wage earner cohort (OK, OK, I don’t have any facts and figures right now).
Mostly I wonder why progressives wish to stoop to the level of the teatards. I mean, do we really need to add to the elitist stereotype?
benintn
I think Tea Party tends to support consumption-based taxes in order to keep property and income taxes lower. It could also be some moral objection to Amazon’s book selection. And the fact that they hire black people.
Sloegin
@Lydgate: Most unprepared foods are not taxed in this state; Everyone gets hit with property taxes, rich and poor, owners and renters alike. The percentages I posted earlier (prior to an income tax vote that got horribly shot down) included those as factors.
Granted, Washington State is a big fat outlier on any table that looks at regressive state tax structures…
Paul in KY
@kc: I have my own experience here in KY with those who are just as bad as any in SC (IMO).
Doesn’t stop me from giving my opinion on teh internets.
Paul in KY
@grandpajohn: Because (at least in my case) we are not talking about your state as a whole, we’re only talking about the inbred crackers who inhabit your state (and mine).
If you don’t fit the template we are talking about, then we’re not talking about you. I don’t see why that’s so hard to grasp.
dj spellchecka
@vanya:
“Amazon also sells sex toys and porn DVDs (through 3rd party distributors)”
quite….the article mentioned that fact with Amazon telling the locals that the 3rd party stuff wouldn’t be going thru the local distribution center, fwiw…
cheers
dj
grandpajohn
@Paul in KY: Simple, the point is that many of the commentators are making no distinction in their snark and not giving the 40% credit for not being loons. When I read posts that say throw the whole south out of the union, how does that encourage the 40% to look favorably toward working with the disparaging assholes. when I read posts that insinuate that all southerners are racist how does that encourage me to want to associate with my detractors. Is Trump a southerner? is is Pat Buchanon? are Ohio,Wisconsin, and Michigan southern states? In this current thread, it appears to me that many agree that Amazon is the faulty party and that the tea party was not the only opponents to this attempt by Amazon to steal themselves some corporate loot
Deans 50 state strategy was shown to work, so why have we now abandoned it?
sublime33
“are Ohio,Wisconsin, and Michigan southern states?”
There is a lot of Alabama in all three states, where NASCAR is king and college football is far more popular than the NFL.
Paul in KY
@grandpajohn: I think you’re being too sensitive. I don’t have time to write long & involved comments with all sorts of caveats. I assume that when someone is slagging on the inbred, stupid fucks in KY that vote for fascist weasels that they are mentally excluding the 43% or so of good Kentuckians who don’t vote for them. Why can’t you do that?
BTW, Dean’s 50 state strategy (which is a good one) was never going to turn SC (or KY) blue, it is to make the Repubs have to expend some money in those states.