When faced with two options, one simplistic and short term and the other more sophisticated and long term, you can bet your bottom dollar which one the grocery clerks who run government will pick.  So as our nation desperately needs an engine to drive our economy back to vitality, the grocery clerks of New York have scored a victory by staving off the Amazons attack on New York’s collection of taxes. 

Hey, it’s taxes!  Government LOVES taxes, especially those collected by someone else on its behalf.  I know they say they don’t, but they’re lying.  They need them like addicts need crack.  They use them to pay their COLAs and filled their annual budget increases.  The bigger the budget, the larger the genitalia.  Who wants to be a grocery clerk with small genitalia?

From the AP :

New York state won a round in court against Amazon.com over a new law requiring out-of-state online companies to collect sales tax from shoppers in New York.

The law applies to companies that don’t have offices in New York, but have at least one person in the state who works as an online agent — someone who links to a Web site and receives commissions for related sales.

A state Supreme Court justice [Eileen Bransten] in Manhattan ruled the suit should be dismissed, saying Amazon had no basis for legal action.

The suit argued the change unfairly targets Amazon, is overly broad and vague, and violates the commerce clause of the constitution because it imposes tax-collection obligations on out-of-state entities.

New York state argued that the law closes a “tax loophole.”

Businesses with a physical presence in New York already collect the state sales tax on online purchases. The proposed law would apply to companies that have $10,000 or more in New York sales.

Officials estimated the state would gain nearly $50 million in the next two years from the tax.

Dontcha just love the word “officials”?  It makes everything they say sound so, well, official.  And $50 million certainly sounds good, kinda like getting an annual bonus from Bernie Madoff.  What’s not to like?

The answer is that online retailers are not the functional equivalent of brick and mortar stores, the bread and butter of sales tax advocates who prefer taxes to be as regressive as humanly possible.  While Justice Bransten views this extension of tax collection as a neutral law, she reveals her lack of understanding or appreciation:

The judge said New York’s law doesn’t broadly tax “any and all Internet sales,” but instead requires companies to collect state and local sales taxes if the company generates $10,000 or more in revenue as a result of commissions paid to persons in New York for sales referrals. “The neutral statute simply obligates out-of-state sellers to shoulder their fair share of the tax-collection burden when using New Yorkers to earn profit from other New Yorkers,” the judge wrote.

By tossing in the buzz words “fair share,” the court  somehow believes that changes the world and makes things right.  It doesn’t. 

This law obligates Amazon to collect New York taxes on every product purchased through it and delivered to a purchaser within the state because it sells items from such stores as J&R Musicworld on Park Row in Manhattan.  So what’s the message?  Stop doing business with J&R Musicworld and sell the same product from Seattle instead.  In other words, just stop doing business with New York businesses.  That will certainly help New York.

Before my fellow New Yorkers jump all over me for denying our grocery clerks their due, bear in mind that our state collects taxes on everything that happens within the state.  They collect directly from J&R in corporate income taxes.  They collect personal income tax from its employees.  They collect sales taxes from its employees when they buy food to eat to give them the strength to go to work.  They collect taxes on every tissue used by J&R employees to wipe the tears from their eyes over the amount of taxes they have to pay.  So would we be better to run J&R out of business over this?

Even more importantly, the internet is a digital landscape without borders, and was meant to be.  The smallest business is able to compete with the largest.  The garage retailer in Seattle can go head to head with the megastore in Raleigh-Durham.  It fundamentally changes the nature of business, and provides a benefit to every person with a computer who can shop for best quality and price anywhere in the world. 

Once the states stick their itchy little fingers into the mechanics of the internet, sucking greedily on the teet of supposedly never-ending cash to fill their perpetually undernourished coffers, rest assured that they will suck it dry.  It’s time for the federal government to pre-empt the states’ efforts to kill the internet for its own purposes, but the fear is that the grocery clerks who run the federal government will be far more interested in taking its own piece, the largest piece, then preserving the one economic engine that could propel us to future economic stability.