California wants to end Cupertino's tax deal with Apple

Technically correct, but in practice if you bought something online from out of state it was subject to your state's use tax, which had the same rate as your state's sales tax.

But your state could not make the seller collect the use tax for the state so instead consumers were required to report those purchases to their state and pay the tax.

Almost no consumer did that, except for items that had to be registered like cars where the state would not allow registration if the use tax was not paid, and so the use tax was widely openly evaded.

For online purchases where the buyer and seller were in the same state the state did have the power to make the seller collect sales tax and I believe most states did.

It was pretty common though for the tax to be the sales tax at the seller's location, not the buyer's location. And not just in the US--prior to 2015 a seller in an EU country selling online to a buyer in another EU country collected their own country's VAT not the buyer's country's VAT.

A few years ago the Supreme Court in the US decided that states could make online sellers in other states collect for them. I believe it is technically use tax that is collected in this case, not sales tax, but since the rates are the same and most consumers weren't even aware of use taxes, so everybody just calls it sales tax.

And yet even Amazon complied and now computes tax based on where the buyer is.

As does B&H.

Years ago (approaching, if not a decade ago).

If you're going to have sales taxes (or consumption taxes in general) at all, it makes no sense for them not to apply to online purchases. That situation was only in place for a brief time because of a weird interpretation of Constitutional law which would never have been made had internet commerce existed at the scale it does now. This isn't "the terrifying creeping overreach of government", this is "sales taxes working how they're obviously supposed to."

This is about the state / local split. Right now California receives 6.25% and Cupertino receives 1%, regardless of where a California buyer lives, the processing location, or the point of purchase.

Stupid question, but why should a state get sales tax for something bought online?

I guess the idea of sales tax is that the sales was facilitated by the state through things like roads and infrastructure. But is it true for online sales? It's certainly less true than something I buy downtown main Street. So what gives?

only sedated and braindead frogs stay in the slowly boiling pot, check the source for that idiom

Maybe its time to make a charter real quick to keep future revenue. I wonder what the process is.

The state legislature is gradually remembering their powers, which include simply dissolving general law cities with a majority vote. But mostly the state is just suing them and using funding powers to coerce them.

taxes aren’t about fairness they’re about one form of revenue for the state that the state is in competition for amongst other states and has to earn

there are other forms of revenue

there is the option of balancing a budget

and its absurd to have an argument based on everyone getting hosed equally, without considering why theyre getting hosed at all, especially when most of the arguments apply equally to a 1% tax as they do to a 70% progressive tax.

state entities can enter into contracts, but I’d be interested in seeing what a patch to that capability would look like

BS.

Either contribute to the discussion or don’t speak. HN isn’t the place to recite riddles from your high horse.

Aliexpress is not a cali company importing... Its a small foreign merchant in an opaque country exporting into Calif. All Calif sees is a parcel delivered. I don't see how Calif has any jurisdictional powers to assert audits on a small chinese merchant in china.

I don't understand the endless repeating of this phrase. The taxes to spend comes from private individuals and corporations. There are no "social" sources of money.