Between this and similarly far-reaching laws (e.g., GDPR), it's becoming increasingly burdensome for small players to the point where secondary services like Avalara are effectively required.
Between this and similarly far-reaching laws (e.g., GDPR), it's becoming increasingly burdensome for small players to the point where secondary services like Avalara are effectively required.
Sounds like a good justification for a federal GST instead of the patchwork of (hyper) local sales taxes. I fully understand why that will never happen in the United States (states' rights), and think that it's the tax patchwork that's the problem not the requirement to collect taxes itself.
[0]: https://ballotpedia.org/Los_Angeles_County,_California,_Sale...
And then factor in “Enterprise Zones” where even different portions of cities have different tax rates.
The level of complexity surrounding taxes is amazing
There's no real winning there either. If you bake the threshold into the law, some companies may game the system such that, if the cost of total compliance is x, and we're revenue range of x, give or take, to just take a little less money to stay under the threshold.
Not that I'm suggesting that is something that we should care about, or even consider a majority worry, but hard and fast cliffs lead to gamesmanship, or worse, misaligned incentives (such that it's non-beneficial for those on welfare to work if it puts them over a given benefits threshold.)
On the whole, I agree that selective enforcement is bad, if not wholly terrible, but its absence isn't a panacea either.
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-494_j4el.pdf
Think of, say, a teacher. Suppose a teacher gives a complex assignment, provides contact information and says students can and should ask questions, submit drafts for feedback, etc. And there are two students who take different approaches. Student A simply glances over the assignment sheet, goes off and does what they want, then hands it in on the last day. Student B asks questions early and often to clarify anything they're not sure about, runs a draft or two past the teacher, and makes changes in response to feedback.
Student B is much more likely to get a good grade on the assignment. Student A is much more likely to get a low grade out of the blue for making serious mistakes.
And this isn't selective grading, it's just a reflection of the effort each student put into getting the assignment right. Both students had equal opportunity to put in that effort, but only Student B actually did, and it shouldn't be seen as a problem if Student B's diligence pays off.
https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/53918/determining-wh...
So you're saying that these laws are achieving their intended purpose?
Disclaimer: I work at TaxJar, just curious to hear your feedback. Thanks!
I'd also say I have a bias, as I've also used avalara a couple times before and found it to be quite a bit superior in making it seem quite a bit more effortless -- taxation is so byzantine I don't have any expectation that I could understand it, so I want to trust that the provider i use is very confident they do.
not sure if that helps a lot, but it was also a few months ago ;)