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Comment by jamesbritt | Hacker News Reader

Not that I'm a fan of taxes, but if people keep avoiding sales tax how are states to maintain infrastructure and services?

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in theory, your income taxes are supposed to funnel back down to your state (same way state taxes go back to your city). you also pay a lot of money for state income tax, property tax, tax on every gallon of gas you use, heavy taxes on booze and cigarettes, taxes on utilities, taxes on your cell phone and cable bill, excise tax if applicable, tolls, parking and speeding tickets if you get them, and fees for doing just about anything related to the government (including fighting traffic and parking tickets).

i refuse to believe taxing out of state corporations is going to make a big difference. there's already plenty there, it's just used in the least efficient way possible. this whole thing with the affiliate programs is either a really lame money grab or good lobbying by big box stores.

You're not taxing the corporations. You're taxing the people, as they would be if they bought the exact same thing locally.

It doesn't really make sense, though, to charge the same level of tax for a store that has a significantly lower impact on local infrastructure. Amazon doesn't have to build space-wasting parking lots, drive one car per person to the store, etc. The significantly more efficient distribution model should be taxed in consideration of its reduced resource use.

This argument assumes there are no societal benefits from having local infrastructure though, which I wouldn't agree with. Amazon may be more directly resource efficient, but I don't think that argument taken to its logical conclusion would build a community in which I'd want to live.

I don't mean to suggest that there should be no local infrastructure, only that the maintenance costs of any infrastructure that exists would be reduced, allowing a city/county/state to function with reduced tax income. Also, the land that would be used for parking lots could be used for other revenue-generating purposes.

You're advocating that there be no tax on consumer goods from other states. That's fine, but it's a different issue. There is tax on goods from other states, it's just that there's a lot of, ahem, non-compliance.

Your argument also assumes that the business is a net drag on the local environment unless it charges a sales tax. But I strongly doubt that the sales tax revenue a business generates is much more than the other economic benefits it brings (e.g. jobs). This is why so many local governments are willing to provide tax credits to businesses that move or start in their districts.

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