Baron Von PWN wrote:BigBallinStalin wrote:
Because they obviously use less state-provided resources.
What economic distortions? Customers save more money? The internet market creates a demand for the delivery of such goods--and those delivery companies buy stuff, which is taxed? Looks like a self-correcting 'distortion'.
Seems to me(using your TGD example) things being automatically 10% cheaper online would cause more people to buy things online, for no other reason than the tax loophole. Maybe I'm misusing the term "economic distortion" but the situation seems to be distorting the market in favour of online.
In other words without the tax loophole online stores wouldn't be as competitive versus brick and mortar. I'm no economist but that seems to make sense to me.
Yeah, no one's arguing against that, except maybe TGD.
Baron Von PWN wrote: Online retailers do actually exist somewhere. They use roads, are protected by police/fire departments, they take advantage of information networks which may be publicly funded, they use electricity often publicly funded/subsidized, their children go to school, their customers possibly use state assistance. However as the tax is charged to the consumer that's all irrelevant, as the consumer is without a doubt using state resources.
Sure dude, that's why they pay taxes on other items, or on their income--e.g. corporate tax, or income tax.
When considering the minimal amount of government-provided/controlled resources that these people use, your kind of justification is grasping at straws. For infrastructure, the proportion of taxes justified is less than 5% of total tax revenue of the US. The overwhelming amount of taxes doesn't go to the more useful things (cuz without free prices, there's no rational planning), and most of it doesn't go to anything relevant to purchasing books on the internet.
The argument in support of additional taxes is based on imagined 'strain' of government-provided resources. They get enough money as is for the services people actually used.