It has always been the burden of the individual to pay the proper use taxes in their own state on purchases made in other states. If I drive up to NY and buy a Plasma TV, I am expected to both recoup my taxes paid in NY on my way out of the state and additionally remit my Use taxes to my home state. This is how the law works. This same law applies to me ordering mail order products (Sears had a whole legal case that decided in favor of this setup), and Internet sales are no different than Catalog sales or sales across state lines. That no one really follows this process appropriately with physically purchased items from other states (though many follow this process for items purchased in other countries) is not enough reason to suddenly put the burden on the small store trying to run it's business according to the law.

Because Ohio, for example, is unable to enforce their local tax laws on their own residents, I, being a business in an entirely separate independent state am somehow required to collect that tax on behalf of the inept state government of Ohio? That does not make sense and is in violation of the independence of the individual State, and violates the Constitution. "No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state." It's pretty simple. The constitution says that the federal government and the states agree not to levy a tax against my products should I export them from my state to another state. The state may levy a tax on their residents for purchasing a product from another state (and they do through the Sales and Use tax), and my state may levy a tax on me for any sale to someone within my home state, but the other 49 states simply cannot levy a tax against my exports to other states.

Invite on it's way to you.

Wish I had mod points. This sums it up nicely!

Sent you an invite so you can check it out.

I wanted to just say "Invite sent." because it was short and to the point, but Slashdot won't let me... it says "This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original...". So... be more original, eh?

An invitation to the services for communications between various social circles mimicking the interactions of real life social circles created by the company named after 10 to the 100th power, only misspelled, has been electronically dispatched to your virtual equivalent of a postal mailbox and awaits your attention and action.

Hopefully that's original enough for Slashdot :-)

Compartmentalization is exactly what Google+ is all about. The Circles feature means you can compartmentalize your work, personal, family, friends, acquaintances, extended family, internet only friends, and any other grouping you can come up with. Each and every post requires that you select just who will have access to these posts, so there is no chance of merging the two if you don't want them to merge. If you have something you want to announce to all of these groups (such as woo hoo! I have a new grandson!) then you can easily do that while still keeping all other communications in their silos. It is leaps and bounds easier to do this in Google+ than it is to do this in Facebook.

I'm for a "Federal Sales Tax". Simple, if I sell in a state I have a physical presence in, I must abide by the local laws where my business resides. If I sell across state boundaries, all of those sales must collect a "Federal Sales Tax". This "Federal Sales Tax" collected is then distributed to the 50 states with 50% being distributed evenly across all 50 states and the remaining 50% distributed based on a percentage of population living in that state (so ND would get a very small portion of the second half whereas California would get a very large portion of the second half, but both states would get an equal share of the first 50% of the tax).

Such a system would eliminate the burden on the buyer to be 'honest' and report their use tax (who really does this?), makes a very reasonable burden on the seller to collect a tax for sales across state lines, and all 50 states benefit from the taxes.

While I'd prefer to just say "screw all of this", eliminate all forms of taxation except sales tax, make it a flat 10%, and tax EVERY sale (from the manufacturer to the wholesaler to the retailer to the reseller), but that's just a pipe dream.

I'm a small business owner. I sell to the 48 contiguous states and D.C. Right now, I have to be aware of any sales that occur in PA, and also have to be aware of any sales to people in Philadelphia specifically, because I must collect different taxes for each case. This is enough of a headache for a one person operation, but I make enough from the side business to make it worth the effort. I expect there are tens of thousands more like me, if not hundreds of thousands. We all are making an extra % of income from side businesses, collecting the tax for our state, and allowing other states to require their citizens to pay a Use tax on products they order across state lines. This is logical, and fair to businesses, as the burden to a business with one or two employees of having to keep track of the taxes in each county, borough, municipality, city, town, hamlet, and commonwealth in each state would be so extreme as to make nearly all small businesses either close shop or stop selling across state lines (and to cut one's audience to 1/50th the size almost guarantees going out of business in this day and age).

Now from my limited understanding of the economy, it would seem that a sudden disappearance of say 5-10% of income on hundreds of thousands of people in the 50 states could negatively impact our economy. Suddenly, I'd not have extra money to spend on entertainment and services (the only things our economy really produces much of at this point), and therefore those services would no longer be collecting taxes from me, and therefore the government would lose money. Seems pretty straightforward to me that to force the business to handle all of the tax legwork for all states in which they sell a product would kill any and all small businesses from selling anything on the internet, and would cripple the larger online businesses, eliminating the grease that makes the wheels of our economy turn.

Am I wrong here? I know I'd have to simply close up shop if a law required me to keep track of all 48 states' tax laws and all the tax intricacies of the various towns and sections of those states. I can't imagine I'm in the minority here.

Invite sent.

Spit in the mud, wipe on the eyes, go rinse the eyes in that river over there... that sounded like a prescription of sorts to me. Another was to go wash in this other river, dipping one's self three times, and the unclean skin would become clean. Again, this sounds like step by step instructions for healing / miracles to me.

Um... I did exactly that. I had received an email from an educational institute, a credit card company, and a theatre club, all addressed to someone with a different first name. My email address is just my last name, so I kinda expected I'd eventually get wrong emails, but this was all email addresses manually provided by this other individual to these companies. With the three emails, I decided I had enough info to do some quick research. I found out who she was, where she worked, etc., and got her correct email address. I then replied to all of the companies, copying her, requesting they correct their records to reflect the correct email address. When they refused, I reset the password on all of the accounts, changed the email address, then clicked on the "reset password" link again. I then emailed the original person telling them what I did because I was tired of receiving their emails. It took less than a half hour, was fun to research, and resolved the issue. It can be done (sometimes).
 
I'll admit that the amount of data available from these simple emails was a bit scary... I could have dropped by her house or gave her parents a ring with the data I found in that short search.

stupid HTML stripping... that was "short ( < 500 mile ) trips"

Yep, this is the route I hope to pursue in the next few years. I hope to buy a Terrafugia or similar, once available and prices are in the $100k range. It'll be nice to drive to the airport, fly to the next airport, and drive to my final destination. 110-115mph isn't the fastest in the world, but with so many small airports, and so much traffic on the major highways during rush hour, for short ( 500 mile ) trips, it will beat out flying commercial any day.

This completely ignores what point I was making. That the article says Google Voice, the root comment "Google Voice isn't VOIP" - this is simply false. It is VOIP. Your comment is correct, but is not in relation to the comment I was making about the root comment being wrong that Google Voice isn't VOIP.

Google Voice integrates with GChat and Google Talk, it's all essentially one service, and my Google Voice number is what people see when I call via the Gmail chat application, so Google Voice is VOIP.