Much needed internet tax bill will protect mom-and-pop stores

Kicking the can: Include more old members in House selection

The annual cycle of College House selection is nearing completion. New House members have received their acceptances, and most Houses have invited over and gotten to know those who will replace them. House elections will take place soon, and the leadership structure of next year’s Houses will begin to take shape. When housing closes on May 20, old House members will be unceremoniously swept aside, leaving no legacy other than a picture on a wall.
Like any group of people, students in College Houses want to build and propagate a culture. Those who live in each House create a culture every year, drawing affiliates and others who are similarly inclined. During the application process, first years (and occasional upperclassmen) apply to the house(s) to whose culture they are most attracted. Of course affiliation has something to do with it, but the different cultures that Houses have seems to be a big indicator of where people apply.
Last year, Quinby House had a wonderful group of people with a lackluster reputation. As a result, it saw a low application rate. This year, Quinby’s reputation was far more positive—and it enjoyed more than a 100 percent increase in applications. The correlation seems fairly obvious.But the perpetuation of a valued culture does not necessarily occur. In fact, the Office of Residential Life seems to want to minimize the creation of a culture within the Houses in the name of the Houses being open and accessible to all. The overall feel of a House is often a result of ResLife’s good intentions. Both times I have observed the process, I have heard stories of people placed in houses where they do not belong. People apply to a House based on the culture it is perceived to have, and each House identity is distinct. In some cases, students do not feel they fit in in the House thanks to the tinkering ResLife has done, or they are put in an altogether different House, where they find they don’t mesh perfectly with the House’s dynamic.

Kicking the can: Endless summer of congressional distractions

As our school year begins, the ephemeral distraction of summer begins to fade from the minds of Bowdoin students. Now we settle in for four months of work and play, problem sets and papers, midterms and a bit of Epicuria. We’ve had our summers, whether we spent them in a cutting-edge diabetes lab at Harvard, teaching English to disadvantaged children, competing in a Robocup tournament in the Netherlands, or researching crop insurance policy in Idaho.
Now, we reconvene in Brunswick knowing that the distraction must end, as we return to our real work—becoming educated and investing in our futures.
Unfortunately, there seems to be no end in sight for the many distractions that plagued our nation’s leaders over the last three months.

Kicking the can

Much needed internet tax bill will protect mom-and-pop stores

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

May 2, 2013

At long last, the Senate has begun to show a sliver of sense on certain taxation issues. A comprehensive online sales tax scheme, known as the Marketplace Fairness Act, has passed a series of test votes in the Senate with as many as 75 in favor—including many Republicans who signed Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge. The legislation, which gives states a mechanism for collecting sales taxes on online purchases, is expected to pass the Senate with overwhelming approval on May 6. Perhaps the only negative aspect of this news is that it took so long to arrive.
Critics of the bill come from two ends. There are the rabid anti-taxers such as Norquist, who believe that any tax increase is a bad tax increase. To be clear, the claim that this is an expansion of the sales tax is debatable at best and a lie at worst.

Taxpayers are already required to report their online purchases and pay the corresponding sales tax. Clearly, no one does it; currently there’s no enforcement mechanism, and not even the most faithful taxpayer saves receipts from a year of online purchases in order to pay a little bit more when tax day rolls around. All the bill does is give states the authority to collect a sales tax from online purchases made by its citizens. It also requires states to provide free software to businesses that automatically calculates and collects sales tax.

It is also seen as a cash grab by poor state governments—which it is. Many of those lobbying for the bill represent state and local governments. They need revenue, and tax-free online sales cut down on revenue that they should lawfully receive. By giving states the power to enforce sales taxes on online purchases, revenues will increase without putting much more burden on the consumer and without any de jure increase in taxes.

Other criticisms come from e-commerce businesses who don’t want to see the real prices of their goods increase. This is understandable. For years, one edge that such businesses have had is that their customers do not have to pay sales tax, and with the passage of this bill, they will lose that advantage in most states. The chief executives of companies such as eBay have engaged in grassroots lobbying efforts, encouraging their customers to sign petitions opposing the legislation. With that competitive advantage gone, they foresee that their profits will decline.

But such competitive advantages are inherently unfair. Consumers, if given the choice, choose the less expensive of two equal goods. Consumers buying a product online pay less than they would if they bought it at a brick-and-mortar store with an identical sticker price, thanks to a completely artificial tax advantage. To keep the real, post-tax price the same, brick-and-mortar stores have to accept lower profit margins. Many small businesses cannot afford to do that. Plus, more affluent consumers are more likely to make purchases online than others.

The client base of most internet companies does not need special sales tax breaks. As the name of the bill suggests (not that we should ever judge a bill by its cover), the bill will serve to keep the market fair for all businesses.

The bill is not without its problems, unfortunately. It exempts businesses with under $1 million in online revenue from collecting sales taxes, leaving the biggest inequality in place. Comparable small businesses still have to pay the tax, so they are still at a competitive disadvantage. Given the current unwillingness to change tax policy in any way that could hurt small businesses or the middle class, it is almost unthinkable that this wrong will be righted in the foreseeable future. That the legislation does not include all e-commerce is unfair to small businesses nationwide.

The refusal until this point to enforce sales taxes online is a travesty, symptomatic of an impractical hatred of taxation. Hoping that this is a turning point is probably futile, given the relative insignificance of the whole thing.

After all, it’s not actually a tax increase. As Austin Scott, a conservative Republican from Georgia, said, “We have to collect the taxes that are due.” But maybe it will stick in the minds of legislators on both sides of the aisle that increased revenue is not always a bad thing. We cannot balance the budget simply by slashing government programs, just as we cannot solve our issues by simply taxing more. Rather, we need a combination of the two.

While the bill is all but guaranteed to pass in the Senate, its fate is less certain in the House, where it is predicted to pass by a smaller margin. Here’s hoping that it does, thereby giving states the power they need to collect taxes that are already owed to them. And maybe, just maybe, our legislators’ fear of taxation will be replaced by a robust and comprehensive sense of fiscal responsibility.

Comments are permanently closed.