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Comment by gregrata | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this at some level taxation without representation? If I don't like how some other state is taxing, I can't alter that behaviour by voting. At least in my current state I might have a chance to do so.

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Am I missing how this operates? I see others on the article making the same claim as you, but isn't the ruling that if company X sells to person A then the state where A resides gets to tax the sale? So in any transaction there will be one or more party that can vote on the tax. You can hardly complain about that unless you think it is valid to tax transactions that occur between two people if and only if they live near each other. Edit: and the sales tax was already legal to impose, the only change is whether the purchaser or the seller collects it. So this doesn't change whether anything is taxed, hence not changing whether it's taxation without representation.

The taxation is on the person living in that state. Most states require that a person buys something and doesn't pay sales tax, they are supposed to self-report and pay the tax. (Most people don't).

>The taxation is on the person living in that state.

Right, and before this decision, it was that person's responsibility to remit. Now it is the business's. So the burden of remittance has shifted to the disenfranchised party.

"...the burden of remittance has shifted..."

And the party paying the tax has not shifted. The party paying the tax votes on representation.

>The party paying the tax votes on representation.

Technically the business is "the party paying the tax", in the sense that they are the party sending money to the government. If I drop ten dollars on the counter and sprint out of a store carrying an item that costs ten dollars plus tax, the store is still responsible for paying tax on that item to the government.

Not really disenfranchised. You don't have to sell to someone in another state if you don't want to.

The laws of various states place many restrictions and requirements on businesses who want to sell to their citizens. This is just another one of those.

Yes, I believe the term for this is "use tax".

By that measure, if I am driving through a state, and I don't like their gas tax policies, me paying tax on gas that I had to buy while driving through is also taxation without representation.

If this is taxation without representation, you should see how green card holders and people on visas are dealt with.

[x] Taxation

[ ] Representation

This is about whether using a common carrier to ship goods somewhere is considered a business nexus. And the supreme court ruled that it is, if you are making 200+ shipments a year or $100k in revenue.

Doesn't cover what happens with electronic delivery. Pretty slippery slope towards banning the use of VPN's when shopping, for example.

(and yeah, I get this already happens if, for example, I visit the state. Just seems to be different in this case)

So buy from a retailer in your state.

>Isn't this at some level taxation without representation?

I'm not a fan of the ruling but I would expect the answer to your question would be: "No because you aren't forced to buy the product from a retailer in that state"

From the perspective of "the retailer is being taxed," then this _is_ taxation (of the retailer) without representation. But of course, almost every retailer passes sales taxes right along to the consumer, so "the retailer is beng taxed" is only true in a theoretical sense.

And if the retailer really doesn't like it, they can just not sell to customers in the state. But we know that's not going to happen. Like you said, the customer is the one paying the taxes, and the customer is the one who votes to elect those who make the tax laws that affect him.

The retailer isn't being taxed. They may collect the tax, but it's a transaction between the customer and their state.

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