That's a 7.5% increase which kind of sounds like a state tax applied to an online purchase. /No idea if that's what it is, just throwing out a theory.
All business and companies doing business on the internet must now charge tax. It happened a week or so ago. So the extra amount is tax - doesn't matter where you live - that's why they call it the internet tax
The issue is the Supreme court overruled an older decision that protected internet companies from having to collect state sales tax from customers in states where the company didn't have a physical presence. There is already legislation being proposed, in the House I believe, to set some ground rules. Congress is involved now so prepare to get shafted harder.
Everyone who plays online games should take 15 minutes to look up and write your Congressional Representative and voice outrage. It's not like we are buying anything tangible. Just killing time and fake monsters to collect their fake stuff. Already did here and I'm not even paying to play.
State I live in decided on a state sales tax for online purchases of 10%. Local sales tax for me is either 7% or 10%..
In my opinion, sales taxes should be limited to physical items that you actually receive. I suppose online games could be considered entertainment but even that is weak to me. I have no problem paying taxes for purchases from online retailers such as Amazon, but I'm terribly annoyed to be paying them for game subs and online streaming.
The rules changed to even the playing field a bit for small businesses, and brick and mortar stores. The change should have been made years ago. To many companies have suffered. Companies like Amazon had a competitive edge if they can not charge tax, so this was fixed. In the long run we all benefit if the playing fields are more even. Having Amazon get so large does not benefit any of us little people. Consumers benefit as these online stores grow, due to pricing things at cost or below, as they grow. and not charging tax. Smaller land based companies have gone out of business due to not being able to compete, and make a profit. All the people that worked there, lost their jobs. This changes, as we have seen with Amazon, prices have increased quite a bit, as the company grew bigger, and not related to tax. If the competition does not exist you will pay higher prices for goods, and higher taxes. It may be to late as Amazon, and the like, have grown to big now.
People don't buy from the internet to avoid a small amount of tax... they buy from the internet because the smaller stores charge FAR TOO MUCH for the same merchandise... Whenever an item can be bought in hand locally w/o getting ripped off most folks still visit the stores... However their base pricing is prohibitive.
Depends on each state in the U.S. As for small towns, I buy online due to its cheaper than driving for an hour to someplace that might carry it.
