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Thread: Supreme Court

  1. #1

    Default Supreme Court

    Justice Stephen Breyer asked: "What does it cost for a mandolin seller who sells mandolins on the internet to sell them in 50 states?"
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    Registered User Kevin Stueve's Avatar
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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    so you suppose he is a Cafe member?
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    Front Porch & Sweet Tea NursingDaBlues's Avatar
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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    To help folks out who may wonder where this quote originated:

    http://www.richmond.com/news/nationa...b9586be81.html

    For retailers who help their bottom line through on-line sales, this should be a closely watched decision.

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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    This will probably be debated by the same group of geniuses who, several years ago, decided that tomato paste on a pizza is a vegetable . . . .

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    Moderator MikeEdgerton's Avatar
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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    Quote Originally Posted by Kevin Stueve View Post
    so you suppose he is a Cafe member?
    I'm reminded of a time when a member of the cafe commented on the stage clothing of a professional player that came online and answered him.

    He may or may not be.
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    Middle-Aged Old-Timer Tobin's Avatar
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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    So was it a rhetorical question, or did someone answer him? The article gave us the question but no answer.
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  10. #7

    Default Re: Supreme Court

    Quote Originally Posted by Tobin View Post
    So was it a rhetorical question, or did someone answer him? The article gave us the question but no answer.
    ...and more importantly, what point was he trying to make? (Correct me if I'm wrong, but the mandolin market seems tiny and atypical).

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    Registered User Kevin Stueve's Avatar
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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    Quote Originally Posted by SteveA View Post
    ...and more importantly, what point was he trying to make? (Correct me if I'm wrong, but the mandolin market seems tiny and atypical).
    Doesn't appear to be a rhetorical question. The point he appears to trying to make is what is the impact on small "mom and pop" online stores if they have to comply with 50 states' tax codes wrt to sales tax. I do find it interesting he picked mandolins as his example.
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    Martin Stillion mrmando's Avatar
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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    Justice Breyer has never bought a mandolin from me, as far as I know. But I would be glad to sell him one if he is interested.

    I collect sales tax and file a state tax return for transactions in my home state. If I had to do that for 50 states it would drive me nuts. If the law is overturned, I would hope that online payment processors like PayPal and Square would build in tools to help their business customers process state & local sales taxes -- or that there would be an exemption for smaller operations like mine.
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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    Quote Originally Posted by mrmando View Post
    ... I would hope that online payment processors like PayPal and Square would build in tools to help their business customers process state & local sales taxes...
    They obviously would have to if they wanted to survive. As I understand it the bigger problem isn't just the 50 states but the city sales taxes that some municipalities collect as well.

    My state has a question on the state tax return where one must state if they purchased anything online and didn't pay the sales tax. It is, of course, strictly followed by the vast majority of tax payers...
    "It's comparable to playing a cheese slicer."
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    Martin Stillion mrmando's Avatar
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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    Right, I think I heard that when you get down to the municipal level there are something like 12,000 different sales taxes nationwide. Obviously Mom and Pop do not have time to keep track of all that.
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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    I understand the desire to try to collect the taxes but it simply isn't practical, as mrmando indicated.
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  17. #13

    Default Re: Supreme Court

    Quote Originally Posted by MikeEdgerton View Post
    They obviously would have to if they wanted to survive. As I understand it the bigger problem isn't just the 50 states but the city sales taxes that some municipalities collect as well.

    My state has a question on the state tax return where one must state if they purchased anything online and didn't pay the sales tax. It is, of course, strictly followed by the vast majority of tax payers...
    Haha. The honor system renders South Dakota v. Wayfair moot.

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    Registered User Randi Gormley's Avatar
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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    And different states tax different things. Not to mention sales-tax-free-weeks, which CT and I think NY and NJ participate in occasionally. Talk about a mare's nest.
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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    We have here in NY an overall state sales tax, and then various counties have differing additional sales taxes. Certain goods are tax exempt (groceries), others have stiff additional state taxes (tobacco products). In the age of computer data, it would be complex but not impossible to develop an overall "tax map" that told what taxes would need to be charged in each jurisdiction,. probably sorted by ZIP code. (However, some ZIP codes may cross county lines.)

    Not sure how many "mom and pops" have significant interstate on-line commerce, but I've gone on several websites that proudly proclaim, "No sales tax." That may change; one of the charges Pres. Trump is levying against Amazon, is that Amazon customers don't pay local sales taxes. And it's probably true that the trend toward on-line sales is cutting into local sales tax revenues, to some extent. However, the vast majority of day-to-day purchases are not on-line, so they involve tax payments; for example, there are state and local taxes on all restaurant meals in NY, so your Big Mac contributes support to your local and state government.
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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    If Justice Breyer does play mandolin, please tell me The Notorious RBG plays banjo, and they jam on their lunch break! She's known to be a huge opera fan.

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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    I'm going to need a good attorney when this Mando-Gate thing blows wide open...
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  22. #18

    Default Re: Supreme Court

    I like to think that Justice Breyer is a Bill Monroe fan.

  23. #19

    Default Re: Supreme Court

    It will not be hard to collect and distribute sales tax. It will be as easy as inputting your zip code and software will calculate and distribute the tax when the payment is made for the item. I bet Amazon already has the capabilities and means to take care of it.
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    Martin Stillion mrmando's Avatar
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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    It won't be hard from the consumer's point of view. But from the retailer's point of view, paying out all of those taxes to the various state governments at the end of the year will be a pain in the tuckus.
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  25. #21

    Default Re: Supreme Court

    On the other side of the honesty coin...

    I once purchased a rare hard-to-find tech part, from a smaller independent out-of-state quasi-fly-by-night business who - oddly - had a mandatory "sales tax" (approximately correct for my region) added to the total bill.

    But I've always wondered whether that business actually turned that "tax" money in to my state, or did the business just keep that money for themselves?

    That would be a clever way for a seller to entice more customers to buy, offering initially lower prices, then tacking on fake "tax" fees, and probably no one would be the wiser.

    In my case for that particular item, the total price was not high enough to discourage me from making the purchase - I would have bought the part anyway even if it'd been priced slightly higher but *without* any sales tax - but I've always wondered if they were running some sort of tax ripoff/scam thing.

    As long as the various states didn't catch a small-potatoes seller in some sort of "tax"-collection scam, the customers would have no way of knowing (or would they?) that they'd paid a fraudulent charge which served no purpose other than to line the seller's pockets and/or reduce the amount of end-of-year paperwork the seller had to file with various states.

    I didn't ask questions or stir up any trouble, I just went with the prescribed routine because I wanted that part and I didn't want to wait years for another one to turn up.

    Preemptive comment: The anticipated suggestion would be to not buy from mom-n-pops or individual sellers that you don't 100-percent trust, or to just "don't worry about a few dollars". Maybe in the long run it doesn't matter anyway, except on principle. The thing about oddball rare items (in my case, I was seeking a particular obsolete part for a long-extinct model of early computing gear) is that they don't come up for sale very often if at all, so you're sort of stuck with trusting the seller or else doing without the item on the hopes that someday another one might become available... most such items have long since been sent to the landfill (in the days before e-cycling).

    So I guess that would be a good reason to buy from eBay (?) instead of independents (?), at least eBay has some standard operating procedures in place?

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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    Quote Originally Posted by JL277z View Post
    On the other side of the honesty coin...

    I once purchased a rare hard-to-find tech part, from a smaller independent out-of-state quasi-fly-by-night business who - oddly - had a mandatory "sales tax" (approximately correct for my region) added to the total bill.

    But I've always wondered whether that business actually turned that "tax" money in to my state, or did the business just keep that money for themselves?
    You make a good point. Who's gonna audit those businesses to be sure they're properly distributing the money?
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    Registered User Michael Neverisky's Avatar
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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    Well, Justice Breyer lives in my home state of New Hampshire which has a very active contradance scene. There are several dances with live stringband music every weekend. Including the dance in Nelson which has been held every week for hundreds (like 250+) years.
    One cannot live in NH very long without hearing and seeing someone playing dance tunes on a fiddle, tenor banjo or... mandolin. Sometimes the bands are volunteer and ad-hoc. I'll keep my eye out for a mandolin player wearing a black robe and report back to the cafe.

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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    Quote Originally Posted by Michael Neverisky View Post
    Well, Justice Breyer lives in my home state of New Hampshire which has a very active contradance scene. There are several dances with live stringband music every weekend. Including the dance in Nelson which has been held every week for hundreds (like 250+) years.
    One cannot live in NH very long without hearing and seeing someone playing dance tunes on a fiddle, tenor banjo or... mandolin. Sometimes the bands are volunteer and ad-hoc. I'll keep my eye out for a mandolin player wearing a black robe and report back to the cafe.
    When he's partying, he wears his red or paisley robe.
    David Hopkins

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    Breedlove Legacy FF mandolin; Breedlove Quartz FF mandolin
    Gibson F-4 mandolin (1916); Blevins f-style Octave mandolin, 2018
    McCormick Oval Sound Hole "Reinhardt" Mandolin
    McCormick Solid Body F-Style Electric Mandolin; Slingerland Songster Guitar (c. 1939)

    The older I get, the less tolerant I am of political correctness, incompetence and stupidity.

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    Full Grown and Cussin' brunello97's Avatar
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    Default Re: Supreme Court

    There already was a pretty good group with the name "The Supremes".

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