Although the debate around states taxing Internet and catalog sales has gone on for years, it has reached a new level of interest recently due largely to incidents involving online retailing giant Amazon. In addition, new laws have been proposed in both the Senate and the House in regards to these issues.
However, Adam Thierer, a senior research fellow with the Technology Policy Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, doesn’t think that either of these bills offers an effective solution to the problem. He told WebProNews that these laws would essentially give states the authority to create a system for collecting Internet sales taxes, which he thinks would tax everyone at a higher level.
He co-wrote a paper with Veronique de Rugy and introduced 3 different approaches to the problem. The first option abolishes sales taxes completely. The second would implement a nationwide sales tax that would give states a certain portion of the income. While both of these serve as options, Thierer doesn’t favor either one.
Instead, he is pushing an “origin-based sourcing rule” that would tax consumers at the origin of sale and not where the destination takes place, which is the approach that the states are taking. Thierer told us that this method would help to increase tax competition between states, eliminate constitutional tax headaches, and keep interstate vendors from having to deal with complex tax systems.
Do you think this sounds like an effective plan?
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Oct 29th, 2011. 
Although the debate around states taxing Internet and catalog sales has gone on for years, it has reached a new level of interest recently due largely to incidents involving online retailing giant Amazon. In addition, new laws have been proposed in both the Senate and the House in regards to these issues.
However, Adam Thierer, a senior research fellow with the Technology Policy Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, doesn’t think that either of these bills offers an effective solution to the problem. He told WebProNews that these laws would essentially give states the authority to create a system for collecting Internet sales taxes, which he thinks would tax everyone at a higher level.
He co-wrote a paper with Veronique de Rugy and introduced 3 different approaches to the problem. The first option abolishes sales taxes completely. The second would implement a nationwide sales tax that would give states a certain portion of the income. While both of these serve as options, Thierer doesn’t favor either one.
Instead, he is pushing an “origin-based sourcing rule” that would tax consumers at the origin of sale and not where the destination takes place, which is the approach that the states are taking. Thierer told us that this method would help to increase tax competition between states, eliminate constitutional tax headaches, and keep interstate vendors from having to deal with complex tax systems.
Do you think this sounds like an effective plan?
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Oct 21st, 2011.
While VoIP has gotten more popular in recent years, a new report from research firm Point Topic predicts that it will grow into a $ 40 billion market by 2015. The report looked at global fixed line services, which does not include services such as Skype.
Oliver Johnson, the CEO of Point Topic, spoke with us and said that the real growth would be in services such as Skype. He also told us that this growth should be taken with caution since there are many challenges in the space. For instance, the VoIP market faces technical and mobile challenges as well as pushback from regulators.
Despite the challenges, Johnson expressed optimism about the future of VoIP.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Jul 27th, 2011.
There has been a lot of talk about the possibility of a tech bubble recently, and a new report from legal Q&A website Avvo increases this speculation even further. As Mark Britton, the company’s founder and CEO explained to WebProNews, questions regarding tech startups, online companies, starting a company, intellectual property, and more, have risen tremendously in the past 6 months.
Avvo has received questions such as, “Is a verbal partnership agreement for a startup binding in California?” and “How do I fire the co-founder of my startup?” and has seen 30 times more pageviews for these types of questions in the Silicon Valley alone.
Whether or not this is any indication of a tech bubble is debatable, but it definitely shows that people are curious about the legal structure of a business, which cannot be a bad thing.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Jul 21st, 2011.
When the FCC recently released its “Future of Media” report, it received a mixed response. The right wing applauded the commission, while the left wing believed it fell short on several issues.
In all honesty, the report did not make many recommendations, which Adam Thierer, a senior research fellow with the Technology Policy Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, considers a positive move. It’s no secret that new media has brought a fair share of challenges to the table, but Thierer told us that he doesn’t think the government stepping in would provide any solution. He believes that the market will work itself out.
Where do you see media going in the future?
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Jul 1st, 2011.
