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What would be needed... now there's a loaded question | 100 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
The States Want A Website to Be Sufficient Presence for Taxes
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 16 2012 @ 12:34 PM EDT

It would be up to the taxing authority to ensure the data is current and accurate

What happens when the taxing authority gives the wrong data out?

Tax districts do not follow zip codes --- 5 digit, 9 digit, 13 digit, or 18 (19?) digit ones. Tax districts follow their own lines, which may, but don't have to follow property lines.

I've been to a divebar where the bathroom is in Georgia, and the barback, and beer is in North Carolina. There is a line painted on the floor, with a table to put your beverage on, for when you go to the bathroom. Taking the beer into Georgia is a violation of Georgia law, that is occasionally enforced.

At least that bar owner has a bright line to follow. What about the guy whose property is claimed to be in two different, neighboring school tax districts? Or the guy whose property is the boundary of two fire districts. (His house burns down, because the property is not in the fire district that was originally dispatched.)

For even more discussion, how does one treat residents of Point Roberts, Washington? (The most secure gated community in the world. The HOAs don't even have to pay for that security.) Most residents work in Vancouver BC.

and the responsibility of the merchant to actually consult the clearinghouse

Even with the tax tables and other things that State Revenue provides to merchants, errors are made. Sometimes it is because the merchant didn't look up the appropriate code, but more commonly it is because State Revenue put the wrong rate into the table.

Case in point, a company I used to purchase things from, consistently charged the wrong sales tax to people in a town in Central Washington. They knew it was wrong. The customer knew it was wrong. State Revenue knew it was wrong. The issue was that nobody knew what the correct sales tax was! The various tax districts overlapped boundaries, skipped properties, and meandered around so much, that even when all of the maps were overlaid upon each other, the result was "a confusing mess" for both the county and state tax authorities. It was all perfectly clear to the tax districts, who went to court suing each other, and the state tax authority, to get the sales tax that was collected by the wrong tax district.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

What would be needed... now there's a loaded question
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 16 2012 @ 02:45 PM EDT

A loaded question in the sense there's likely a ton of answers.

Personally, I think the best thing needed is criminal time served for business management that ends up authorizing the behaviors that are in breach of Laws.

Start regularly sending management to prison for things where a non-business person would go to prison and I think the attitude of a lot of companies would change - if not, they'd be replaced in time - with regards the attitude:

    I have a responsibility to the stockholders, and nothing will prevent me from looking for new ways to generate profit, not even various Laws!
Of course they never add that part of ignoring other Laws. But that's clear in the actual actions that are regularly commited. Example:
    Everyone is doing pretexting... I don't understand what's wrong!
Identity Fraud should be quite obvious to anyone the moment they find out that pretexting is having someone pretend to be Person X while calling up a telephone company in order to acquire Person X's phone records.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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