When I go door to door around the area to sell advertising for the show, one of the things business’ tend to tell me is that the sales taxes are murder particularly with NH only a town or two away. If you live in Townsend or Ashby a retail store doesn’t have a chance.
Now here comes Illinois deciding it want to tax net sales. I can’t imagine anything more foolish. Instead of one border state that is not taxing drawing sales from the state. Now Illinois web sellers have 49 states that can undersell them by a percentage. That certainly will not help.
Every dollar not spent on those Illinois business is a dollar not re-spent by them, and taxes are generated by dollars that move within a closed system. If those dollars don’t move within Illinois they will move elsewhere.
And if that isn’t enough Amazon and overstock will be ending relationships as Backyard Conservative has just discovered:
Greetings from the Amazon Associates Program:
We regret to inform you that the Illinois state legislature has passed an unconstitutional tax collection scheme that, if signed by Governor Quinn, would leave Amazon.com little choice but to end its relationships with Illinois-based Associates. You are receiving this email because our records indicate that you are a resident of Illinois. If our records are incorrect, you can manage the details of your Associates account (here).
Please note that this not an immediate termination notice and you are still a valued participant in the Amazon Associates Program. But if the governor signs this bill, we will need to terminate the participation of all Illinois residents in the Associates Program. After that point, we will no longer pay any advertising fees for sales referred to amazon.com, endless.com and smallparts.com nor will we accept new applications for the Associates Program from Illinois residents.
If you are looking to raise money, is it dead foolish, but it’s not a question of raising revenue, it’s a question of a government wanting control.
How’s that blue state way of doing things working out?
Update: I have the feeling that Illinois is taking advice from this lady.
Update 2: And it looks like the Chicago papers aren’t interested in this story
No reporting on this in the Chicago Tribune or Chicago Sun Times. Like this isn’t news? Here is the Trib copy off their website. It’s not even the top story.
As Moe Lane point out Illinois has the right to be wrong and will pay for it:
At this point we usually hear from the people who want to ‘yes-but’ along the lines of “Yes, but the state of Illinois has a right to those sales taxes.” Indeed, the state of Illinois has the ‘right’ to raise and levy taxes on in-state purchases. No matter how burdensome and archaic that might be when it comes to online purchases; and no matter that it might be wiser to consider that possibly the fact that people shop online to avoid state sales tax implies that state sales taxes are generally too high. Wiser… but not politically safe; Democratic politicians prefer that government revenue be high, even when it’s at private revenue’s expense. That hypothetical sales tax money wouldn’t be going towards business-friendly programs, after all: it’d be largely going towards government entitlement programs, which are notoriously unprofitable*.
But then, having groups like Amazon pull out of Illinois would be a win, for a certain class of smug types: after all, they showed those corporations who the boss was! – And, really, they don’t actually care about anything else.
Like Massachusetts Illinois is getting the government it deserves.
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