Please yes, tax me more
I just went in on a 4 pack of Dead Island with a friend of mine, using a video games download service. She mentioned that “after tax it’s 40 bucks per”. I was thrown a bit– I’ve never been charged tax on a Steam game.
Then I remembered that both she and VALVe live in Washington State. So I offered to be the buyer for the games, thus “cheating” the State of Washington out of roughly $10. Now the State will have to find some other way of paying the salary of a friend up there who specializes in fixing internet shenanigans.
That last bit is somewhat flip, but only somewhat. If you use the internet, Jake- in his official capacity- has made your life at least a tiny bit better. Residents of the 49 non-Washington states are free riding on his efforts.
You may have philosophical objections to taxes, equating them with slavery. That’s certainly an argument worth having. But if you believe (as I do) that taxes are simply the price citizens pay for the privilege of using common infrastructure, then it’s clear that evading them is even more akin to theft than bittorrent.
So: The answer is becoming more clear. Congress needs to enact a national internet sales tax. The money can be handed over to the state in which the item is shipped, or it can be divvied equally among various states. But free riding is becoming a serious issue. Let’s fix this problem.
