[jonathanmoore]

Thankfully with Shopify it is extremely easy and straightforward to manage for my wife's small online store. Their platform does a great job properly charging taxes by state, county and city in certain situations. Then using an inexpensive plan from https://www.taxjar.com/ the entire filing and paying process is 100% automated.

In 10 minutes I was able to file and pay all the sales taxes to several state, dozens of California counties and a handful of cities that charge additional taxes on top.

[vxNsr]

This assumes these mom and pop shops have heard of these services. Personally I was helping someone get their little internet store off the ground and it was a huge hassle even with woocommerce.

[gowld]

If they accept credit cards online, their credit card solution ought to include tax management feature.

Usually, small shops can ignore stuff like this until they get a bill from an authority, or get big enough for it to matter. As long as they save money for estimated tax liability (approximately equal to their local tax rate), they are fine.

[sequoia]

And what would it look like if Mom & Pop were starting an ice-cream shop instead of an online storefront? Would they _not_ have to pay tax then?

I get that being subject to regulation or taxation is more burdensome than not being subject to it, of course that's the case. But it does not follow that requiring sellers to pay sales tax is unduly burdensome.

If the underlying complication of tax is the problem, fix that.

[williamscales]

> And what would it look like if Mom & Pop were starting an ice-cream shop instead of an online storefront? Would they _not_ have to pay tax then?

They would only have to pay sales tax in one tax jurisdiction, the one in which they are physically based and in which they can vote to change those taxes.

> But it does not follow that requiring sellers to pay sales tax is unduly burdensome.

What follows is requiring sellers to track and remit sales tax in some 10,000 jurisdictions is burdensome.

[rossdavidh]

With a brick-and-mortar storefront, they have to figure out one jurisdiction's salestax (rate and what is taxable), their own. That is quite literally orders of magnitude simpler than this.

[sequoia]

Also orders of magnitude fewer customers you're targeting, probably at least 350 million fewer.

[jhayward]

How do you handle knowing what items are taxable vs non-taxable for each item and taxing district? How do you handle customers who are tax-exempt? How do you handle tax holidays and reduced tax on school items in August?

[omni]

How much do you end up having to pay for TaxJar? It looked to me like the monthly plan was cheap but you'd get totally hosed if you tried to use them to auto-file all the taxes. Are you filing yourself?

[Retric]

So you assume. As a small business you are unlikely to be audited, but that software could easily be wrong creating a huge minefield and potential liability.

[esturk]

So that would be the software companies' liability. And such business practice can differentiate good ones from the bad ones. I'm seeing a new business market here even.

[Retric]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

There is zero economic gain from more complex tax rules. Further, the software does not absolve you of liability. At best they may agree to cover it, but that's unlikely and they can also go broke if they get it wrong.

[Spooky23]

States want to collect taxes. Now that they have a consistent policy position, you may see interstate agreements to harmonize collection.

There is already a precedent with DMV data sharing agreements, and some states will collect sales taxes for others as well.

[delinka]

"...and some states will collect sales taxes for others as well."

I'm having a hard time coming up with an example where this makes any sense. Can you elaborate?

[Spooky23]

Sure. New York and New Jersey collect sales taxes for each other as an example.

http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxation/pdf/pubs/sales/prio...

It’s a big deal for cars — without this people in NYC metro would have a hard time otherwise.

[gamblor956]

Actually, current sales tax software provided by South Dakota and other states does absolve a merchant for liability if used to calculate sales tax due.

[DoctorOetker]

I agree with this approach!

Actually, the federal government should oblige each member state to provide the algorithm, and sign it cryptographically and have it expire every X fixed time interval, and have signed algorithms for the current and next time interval, so that software can automatically fetch and stay up to date.

Then the "business opportunity" of navigating FUD evaporates. Currently any such enterprise charging for such a service can spend a fraction of their budget lobbying against harmonization...

Since it would be an obligation of the states to the federal government, these algorithms (provided by each member state) should be hosted on a fixed federal government site.

Time to start a petition?

[westurner]

This would reduce costs of tax collection for all parties.

What is the most convenient format for this layered geographic data? Are the tax district boundary polygons already otherwise available as open data? What do localities call these? Sales tax tables, sales tax database, machine-readable flat files in an open format with a common schema?

How much tax revenue should it cost to provide such a service on a national level?

States, Counties, Cities, 'Tax Zones'(?) could be required to host tax.state.us.gov or similar with something like Project Open Data JSONLD /data.json that could be aggregated and shared by a server with a URL registry, a task queue service, and a CDN service.

While the Bitcoin tax payments bill passed the Senate and House in Arizona, it was vetoed in May 2018. Seminole County in Florida now allows tax payment with crytocurrencies such as Bitcoin:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-seminole-county-florida-to...

> According to a press release, the county will begin accepting Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) to pay for services, including property taxes, driver license and ID card fees, as well as tags and titles. The Seminole County Tax Collector will reportedly employ blockchain payments company BitPay, which will allow the county to receive settlement the next business day directly to its bank account in US dollars.

This could also help reduce the costs of tax collection and possibly increase the likelihood of compliance with the forthcoming tax bills!

[moomin]

There’s zero national economic gain from _any_ variation in law from state to state, but either you’re in favour of state’s rights or you’re not.

[dsfyu404ed]

>here’s zero national economic gain from _any_ variation in law from state to state

Yes there is. States compete with each other and this prevents any one of them from having laws that are much crappier and more oppressive than average because when that happens businesses and people leave.

[beojan]

So competition might prevent one of many downsides to different states having different laws? I don't see why this means there's any benefit to that situation over just having one set of laws?

[moomin]

You’ve just described variation as a way of mitigating the effects of variation.

There’s a case to be made for variation, but that ain’t it.

[rconti]

Wrong. You'd move to New Hampshire if this was true.

[walshemj]

There's a lot of similar problems with having sets of 52 plus federal employment laws.

Its not surprising that one US right wing think tank thought the UK with its "socialist" NHS and higher income tax was a freer place to business.

[raverbashing]

There is economic gain for those collecting it. Of course, how much you can squeeze people and businesses is an everlasting question.

[madeofpalk]

Complex tax does not mean greater tax.

[waffle_ss]

Nonsense. Your accountant isn't even liable if you're audited by the IRS. They're not gonna give a crap you used some rando SaaS

[DoctorOetker]

Which is why the sales tax calculation algorithm should published and cryptographically signed by each state:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17367669

[monetus]

I wonder if a single member of congress knows what the words 'cryptographically signed' means...

[hcknwscommenter]

I think you are conflating several different types of liability here.

If: i)your accountant messes up due to negligence or worse, ii) you get audited, and iii) it turns out you owe far more than you thought, then you are liable to the Govt for the extra amount owed. The accountant may be liable to you for professional negligence, damages etc. Your damages against the accountant are not the extra amount owed (because it is what you should have paid in the first place), but losses caused by the mistake. In the above scenario, the Gov't may assess a "penalty" and/or "fee" for late payment of taxes, but those fees are usually waived and/or extremely nominal. In the above-scenario, criminal liability simply does not happen. The above is not legal advice.

[bdcravens]

Isn't the same true of TurboTax?