Regarding your December 17th story concerning states’ attempts to collect sales taxes from website purchases: I will start turning in my neighbors who have lots of FedEx trucks pulling up in front of their houses when my state and local legislators stop giving humungous tax breaks and incentives to Walmart, Kohls, Target and other retail outlets when they move to a community and passing this off as something wonderful. As your guest pointed out, we’re all in this together; only retail giants don’t think so. So in collusion with elected officials who present bringing a superstore to an area as an unalloyed good–that the jobs created by the store’s location more than offset municipalities not collecting taxes for a set period which is years long–revenue to pay for streets, sanitation, teachers, schools, fire protection and police are put on the backs of the already overstressed middle and lower class thru the only revenue streams left–property and sales taxes. So please. Leave the poor FedEx employee and internet purchaser alone. The ones to go after are the immoral corporations who continue to look for ways to get a free ride–all the while, of course, telling us how terrific it is when they come to our town so they can undersell local stores and put them out of business while they continue to sell us more cheap plastic crap from China.

The Sales Tax Quandary

Michigan (and other states) should quit crying about not being to collect what is essentially free money.

In Michigan’s case, quit backing and depending on the auto industry, and make it easier to attract those online AND brick & mortar retailers into the state, and then money will be spent locally, as well as creating new local jobs.

When will Michigan wake up? Quit looking for money for nothing and put the effort into creating something worthwhile and create an atmosphere for diversity. And just maybe the state may find it doesn’t need to depend on handouts (taxes).

Getting people to be a sales tax Stasi is unlikely. It won’t happen. People are on a tax cut crusade.
Here we pay sales taxes at 10%, which is very high. Plus there is also a huge “tax” from overpriced merchants and poor quality consumer merchandise. I do much of my shopping online because I can get what I want efficiently from a full selection and at a reasonable price. Even for simple things like Tee shirts I can choose from all the available colors and still beat the local prices by 50%. Or I can often get USA made goods for the price of imported things.

Government does not need more taxes, they need to get rid of corruption and waste, then they would have enough money. Every time the the Government needs more, they hit us, but, where do we get the extra money they want.
We have to cut spending, and that hurts the economy, as we are now.

re The Christmas Chronicles:

What a wonderful little segment! I can’t wait to listen to the full podcasts of the story. Finally a Santa Claus story that I can tell my children with a clear conscience. Can’t wait for the book. My four-year-old daughter, Kira Enéh, was worried the other day that with the snow melting Santa won’t be able to ride his sleigh, ‘and then what do we do, mommy?’ All I could muster up as an answer was: ‘Baby, Santa is quite innovative, we don’t have to worry about him, he’ll figure something out.’ A few years back, my then also four-year-old son, Erik Tas, was looking at rooftops and observed loudly that not all houses had a chimney, and was quite intrigued with how Santa was going to come to those houses. Must be the age
Thank you for presenting this segment on the air.
Your programming is one of the reasons why we support NHPR!

How dare someone suggest people turn in their neighbors concerning their purchases. We do not need more snitches, speculating whether or not their neighbors payed sales tax or not. Neighbors telling others how to mow their lawn, not to hang their laundry out in their own back yards to dry, etc. People need to mind their own business and worry about themselves. Is “1984″ not far off? Is this communist Russia/China with neighbors turning each other in? This does not make good citizens.

Part of the allure of online shopping is the convenience; I can’t stand the chaos of malls and Big Box retailers, so I choose to remove myself from the situation. However – asking me to keep track of every dollar I spend online and determine whether or not I was taxed? REALLY? Some sites charge, some don’t – but I have never seen a warning on any of them that said “be sure to document purchase thoroughly this or you’ll probably be audited by the IRS in some hideously wasteful, inefficient attempt to gain access to the extra $100 you owe us”. Furthermore, to ask me to spy on my neighbors is completely and utterly ludicrous. Shall I keep a running tally, indicating which boxes came from where and turn in my full report at the end of the month? I thought the whole idea behind a “Neighborhood Watch” program was to ensure that our children were safe and our houses weren’t being burgled in the middle of the night. Frankly — I don’t plan to become Gladys Kravitz any time soon.

Wanna know the truth about taxes? Let’s talk for a moment about something called the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports, or CAFRs- ie. the second set of books that is kept of our government’s accounting that none of us gets to see. The CAFRs are the set of books that tells the truth: our government, though it may cry poor- and we all believe it because, after all, there are numbers to prove it and economists and pundits to say it- IS ANYTHING BUT BROKE. This is what really needs to be reported ANY time the subject of taxes arises- ANY taxes.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that EVERY NEWS NETWORK gets a copy of states’ CAFRs annually, due to a 20-plus year media blackout on the matter (ie. networks being threatened with total shutdown)it is hard to find someone willing to talk publicly about THE ACTUAL budget of our federal, state, and local governments as opposed to THE REPORTED BUDGET. If the real numbers were made public, every American citizen would see that the argument for needing tax dollars to do anything is a total farce and we would all listen to these types of segments and laugh. Or revolt. According to our own law, per US Code TITLE 28 > PART VI > CHAPTER 176 > SUBCHAPTER A > § 3002 Chapter 15, the very definition of the United States is “a Federal Corporation.” And so is every municipality down to cities and townships a corporation. Corporations exist for profit. In the official annual Budget Report around which our common knowledge and media revolves, the numbers reflected are the amount of taxes supposedly needed to justify having schools, fire trucks, roads, etc. The revenue reported is merely a fraction of the actual revenue brought in by our government and does not even begin to account for the massive amounts of investment income (including profit from investing OUR tax dollars) and income not generated from tax dollars at all. It has been well documented over the last 25 years that our government operates, not at a deficit at all, but at an OBSCENE PROFIT at the expense of the American people; that the reported numbers are only used to continually justify our current tax system. The income-reporting policies (written by a private company hired by the government to oversee its income reporting- conflict of interest, anyone??) allow for the actual income to be excluded by a variety of ways and means. So feel free to let go of the good-citizen guilt-trip any time. Without taxes we will still have roads, schools, fire trucks, and social programs. The only thing our tax dollars pay for is the interest payments we make to the Federal Reserve on our National Debt- debt none of us actually agreed to, by the way. I challenge NPR to start talking about the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports. As a public radio station, with enough public pressure, they may be able to get away with it. Otherwise a good place to start researching would be The Biggest Game In Town (www.video.google.com), or anything by Walter Burien (of course there are now many others)who pioneered and has extensively studied the accounting practices of all of our municipalities for more than the last two decades. Furthermore public awareness needs to be brought to the fact that a lot of the so-called “government entities” that we commonly believe are federal are also private, for-profit organizations. Here’s the short list: The Federal Reserve, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Homeland Security, the US Postal Service, and the Department of the Treasury. Time to wake up! We need a lot more reform than we think. And NONE OF IT has to cost ANY OF US in more taxes. In the meantime, I am heartened to see that the call we received in this segment to “be good citizens” by reporting on people who aren’t paying taxes was appropriately met with scoffs.
But shame on you, NPR, for not having the courage to report what our other networks won’t. I don’t expect that you will talk about banks’ second set of books (a whole other rabbit hole to get lost in) as Bank of America is one of your major sponsors after all. But keeping us all in ignorance, running on the treadmill to pay our taxes when you know more than you are saying is not helping the American economy, its people, or your listeners whatsoever.

Christmas Chronicles: how very magical and wonderful. Both of you (Robin, of course, your voice so often sounds like the curious child waiting for the door to open to the living room on Chrismas morning) were just captivating. Made me cry, made me laugh (“sheer joy, ho ho ho”)! What a gift, thank you!

Is that “Cemetery Gates” from Pantera’s 1990 release _Cowboys from Hell_ I heard playing as bumper music at the end of today’s (2009DEC17) interview with English author William Fiennes
(‘The Music Room’, http://www.hereandnow.org/2009/12/rundown-1217/#2)? That’s hilarious! Most of your listeners — arrogant jazz and indie rock fans I’m sure — would choke on their vanilla chai lattes if they knew what you’d subjected them to, even if only for a few seconds at low volume. May I recommend a louder, more vigorous sample from Deicide’s “Satan Spawn, the Caco-Daemon” as a bumper for one of next week’s Christmas-themed segments?

The link to the Christmas Chronicles does not work! It worked for a short time after the show aired yesterday, Dec. 17(here in Alaska on KSKA), and I posted it on Facebook and have been trying to share it with everyone I know – but alas, an error message comes up every time- something about being over lines. Please fix – so many children and their parents would love to hear this!

Concerning the state income tax story:

I am all for states collecting income taxes through online retailers who charge their consumers their home state’s income tax. Considering how broke all states are and all the cutbacks they have had to make through this recession, I think this could solve a good portion of the states’ revenue problems without having to levy new taxes. I am all for it, and I think the states should have been collecting taxes on online retail purchases long ago.

From what I understand, it’s a constitutional issue where states cannot tell other states what to do and cannot force another state to involuntarily withhold taxes. Legally that’s a stumbling block, but there must be a way to eliminate that stumbling block so that states can collect sales taxes rightfully owed to them. The technology is clearly there and available. Bestbuy.com, for example, collects your state income tax when you purchase online.

I am not, however, for spying on your neighbors. Technically, the neighbor who has UPS trucks pulling up several times a week MAY just be paying his use tax on that merchandise. Probably not, but you never know, and anyway, it’s none of you business. I always thought this country was innocent until proven guilty right? And it’s not the job of citizens to assume their neighbors are guilty when there is no proof of that.