[saarons]

I'm always curious how taxes like this are enforced, presumably the City of Chicago can just sue companies like Netflix and Spotify if they think they're not getting their share. If I have my own small-time video streaming business does that mean I have to worry potentially about any municipality coming after me for unpaid taxes? That could get a little nuts if there are thousands of cities that could potentially have ordinances like this. How do I keep up? Am I just not understanding the scope of this?

[ourmandave]

From the article:

Wynne said the additional fees, applied in a city already known for high taxes, could be enough to push individuals and companies over the edge. He said that since the taxes will be levied based on Chicago billing addresses, there’s nothing to stop individuals from moving outside city limits or listing billing addresses in other towns. The same is true for businesses.

“Let’s say I sign up for streaming business data in the city but I have offices throughout the country,” Wynne said. “I will definitely make sure my billing goes through a different office.”

[stickfigure]

This doesn't answer the question. Who actually pays the taxes to the city? How does the city come after either the consumer or the provider, especially if the provider is in California/Europe/Russia/etc? I read the article and I don't understand how this works.

[maemilius]

From the article: "But those companies could start collecting taxes sooner to avoid paying the taxes themselves."

This is also how I understand other, similar taxes (like Sales Taxes) work. The business whose service/good would have incurred the tax is also responsible for paying the tax. You're liable for it, regardless of it you collect it from the consumer or not.

[tedunangst]

That does answer the question in the narrow, but more broadly: what are the practical implications for a company with no other presence in Chicago if they don't pay?

[CydeWeys]

They can be sued in a Chicago court, and if they don't defend themselves, a default judgment will be rendered, and then the fees will be collected directly out of the company's bank account, wherever it happens to be.

The United States is a pretty monolithic entity as far as laws and enforcement goes. You don't get away with, e.g., assault by fleeing to a different state; you'll simply be caught by that other state and turned over to the first state to face charges. Similarly, you don't get away with tax evasion any more easily. Now if your company is based in another country, then you might have a better chance.

[tzs]

This sounds like a good argument to use a local bank that only operates in your state, rather than a national bank.

That way, if someone gets an out of state default judgement from a court that does not have personal jurisdiction over you, they will have to bring that judgement to your state and file it with a court in your state in order to get something enforceable in your state. That should give you an opportunity to challenge the validity of the judgement on jurisdiction grounds.

States are required to recognize the judgements of the courts of other states, but only if the court rendering that judgement had jurisdiction.

My Civil Procedure recollection is rather hazy. Suppose Chicago sued, in Chicago courts, a small entertainment company that clearly does not have sufficient contacts with Chicago to meet the Constitutional requirements for giving Chicago courts personal jurisdiction.

I believe that as part of its pleadings, Chicago would have to tell the Court why it believes that Court is the proper place for the suit, and part of that is explaining to the Court how it has personal jurisdiction.

Here's what I do not remember. If the defendant did not appear to dispute that, would the Court simply accept plaintiff's theory of jurisdiction, or does the Court review on its own whether or not it does indeed have jurisdiction?

I have a vague recollection that it is the latter, because the issue of whether or not the court has jurisdiction is not an issue between the parties, but rather determines whether the court even has authority to adjudicate the case, but I could easily be confusing this with something else.

PS: not a lawyer, yadda yadda

[tzs]

Not quite. For you to be liable for it, the entity that wishes to collect from you has to be able to sue you in a court that (1) recognizes that you are liable for it, and (2) has personal jurisdiction over you.

Generally, courts of the region in which you reside have personal jurisdiction over you. So, if you and the collecting entity are in the same state, then that state's courts satisfy #2.

If you don't reside in a region, that region's courts may still have personal jurisdiction over you depending on how your activities relate to that region. There has to be some connection between you and that region, and you have to have purposefully done something to create or benefit from that connection.

As the Supreme Court put it in an important case on jurisdiction (Hanson v. Denckla), "unilateral activity of those who claim some relationship with a nonresident cannot satisfy the requirement of contact with the forum State. The application of that rule will vary with the nature and quality of the defendant's activity, but it is essential in each case that there be some act by which the defendant purposefully avails itself of the privilege of conducting activities within the forum State, thus invoking the benefits and protection of its laws."

So, getting back to the question that was at the start of this branch of the comments, if the small streaming business really has no contacts with the out of state municipality trying to collect taxes, and has not purposefully tried to get customers from that municipality, it is unlikely they would be liable for the taxes of their customers in that municipality. (But check with a lawyer familiar with your state's tax laws--you want to make sure your state has not entered into some sort of reciprocal tax collecting arrangement that does require collecting taxes on transactions between the two).

There's a lot of case law on this. Googling for "Personal Jurisdiction" is a good start if you want more on this. (And while Googling, be sure to take some time to make sure that Hanson v. Denckla is still good law...I haven't checked to see if it has been overturned or superseded).

[gamblor956]

You're confusing separate jurisdictional issues. Personal jurisdiction is relevant to the underlying lawsuit, because it can nullify a judgement.

Personal jurisdiction isn't very relevant to an enforcement proceeding, as presumably it is filed in the state in which the defendant is located. For a business, this generally means any state in which it is incorporated, registered as a foreign corporation, or has facilities such as (but not limited to) offices or factories. If a court doesn't have personal jurisdiction over a defendant in an enforcement proceeding, that simply means the plaintiff needs to file again in the proper venue.

[tzs]

My first paragraph was badly written, so perhaps made it look like I was talking about the enforcement proceeding to collect whatever was won in the underlying lawsuit.

The intent, though, was to talk about the underlying lawsuit, and the effect of a lack of personal jurisdiction of that court over the defendant.

[ourmandave]

You're right, it doesn't. =(

Maybe they can only really collect on U.S. companies.

From the article:

The change adds a 9 percent tax to Chicago residents’ subscriptions to streaming services such as Netflix and the paid version of Spotify.

[cjensen]

IANAL... Within the US, you are only responsible for paying taxes in the jurisdictions you reside in. It's pretty simple to cover those cases and ignore the rest.

For example, a business with offices in California and Nevada must collect sales tax when selling mail-order stuff to California and Nevada addresses, but are not required to collect sales tax for selling mail-order stuff to the other 48 states.

[gamblor956]

That's wrong.

You are responsible for paying taxes in any jurisdiction in which you have sufficient nexus to justify taxation. For individuals, residence is the generally accepted means for establishing residence, but some states also use employment as a nexus (such as New Jersey). For businesses, nexus is much broader, and generally includes any state in which the business is incorporated or registered to do business, any state in which it has facilities or employees, and (for sales and GST taxes) generally any state in which a customer is located.

The Chicago tax would be most similar to a sales/GST tax. Under well-established state and local tax principles Netflix, et al, could generally be required to collect the Chicago tax on sales/services to Chicago customers.

[tzs]

> You are responsible for paying taxes in any jurisdiction in which you have sufficient nexus to justify taxation.

...

Yup.

> For businesses, nexus is much broader, and generally includes any state in which the business is incorporated or registered to do business,

Yup.

> any state in which it has facilities or employees,

Yup.

> and (for sales and GST taxes) generally any state in which a customer is located.

Nope. That may be a sufficient nexus to satisfy due process, but it is not a sufficient nexus for the dormant commerce clause. See Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, 504 U.S. 298 (1992).

It will become sufficient if Congress ever passes and the President signs the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2015 or something similar, but that bill is a long way from that.

[ghaff]

Unless you're Amazon, which has yielded to pressure to collect sales tax in some states where it does not have a physical presence.

Note "collect sales tax." In at least some states, e.g. Massachusetts, residents and (I assume) businesses are asked on their state tax returns to report out-of-state purchases consumed within the state on which they are then responsible for use taxes equivalent to sales taxes.

[tsotha]

Amazon "yielded" to that pressure because they intend to have same-day delivery in every state. There's no way to do that without a presence in every state. So Amazon was going to be paying sales taxes anyway.

Since they've decided to pursue a business strategy that has them paying sales taxes, they're pushing for an agreement that has competitors paying taxes even without a presence in that particular state.

[chatmasta]

Legislation breeds opportunity.

You could probably make a good business around collecting taxes from customers. Piggyback on stripe, provide an API to take in address and service type, then return the appropriate tax amount.