On June 22, 2018 the US supreme court made the decision that US states can legally prosecute taxes from companies not physically located within their jurisdictions. States have been arguing that they are losing money because their subjects who reside in the state can buy taxable products outside of the state and have them shipped in, thereby avoiding paying tax to their state.
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You as a citizen of the state, always had the legal responsibility to send uncollected taxes to the state on any purchases made outside of your state. Many of you probably weren't even aware that you are a law breaker who can be picked up and jailed for this very reason. Because the state doesn’t have enough money to sue millions of people for tax evasion and would be forced to pay more than they could hope to collect, this ruling which has been years in the making, was their only recourse.
Businesses have always been at the forefront of tax matters because they are centralized. The fact that you as a subject of the state, are so many, makes it difficult for the state to single you out (unless you are wealthy, or the unfortunate scapegoat of an IRS employee who wants to show that they are doing their job). In the field of cryptocurrency, this is known as decentralization. It’s the very same reason why bitcoin has not been successfully shut down (though they’ve tried very hard). The vastness of the internet transcends state jurisdictional boundaries to a large extent.
However, as a business owner, my centralized business model is now threatened by state powers outside of my jurisdiction. Some of you may have noticed that I’ve not been blogging for the past few months. The reason is that I’m now in IvanOnTech’s Blockchain Coding Academy. As I also take care of an elderly parent, my time is very limited now. It is also simply impossible for me to hire enough lawyers to research the laws in all 51 states, especially on my poverty stricken income, I am forced to reject all orders of my software from USA jurisdictions where I don’t have the technical apparatus to collect. This includes all states except New York State, which I’ve been submitting taxes to all along.
As a customer from the USA, your only option to buy now, is to continue to break the law as you already have been (who hasn’t bought something outside of their taxing jurisdiction), by using bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency, and make damned well certain that I don’t know where you reside (because if I know this, you will have forced me into legal liability because a bitcoin transaction cannot be rejected, only sent back). I simply cannot take on the legal liability of the other 50 states as a one person company. I don’t have the manpower or financial reserves to do this.
The sales tax software that is currently available does allow me to differentiate between counties in New York state, but I’ve been doing this manually because it’s an extra $50/month (that’s what it was in 2005, but it’s probably much more expensive now) and most months I don’t have sales in NY. The existing software is also not currently up to date on reacting to the 9000 county jurisdictions as they are now changing their legislation to take advantage of the supreme court ruling.
Some states also already have minimums in place, but again, I can’t go through all 50 to figure this out. A mistake made here would ruin me, so I am forced to reject US transactions not made in New York state. For those of you inconvenienced by this ruling, please accept my apologies. In the mean time you might consider writing to your state representatives about this. I suspect that many of them had no clue what a mess they create. Parasites typically don’t have to care that their rulings reflect reality or are even possible to adhere to.
Users from foreign countries are unaffected by this legislation and you can continue to order as usual using your national fiat. But I strongly suggest you start using bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency for moral and ethical reasons. State actors are responsible for the greatest atrocities in all of human history. Use of national fiat is what has enabled the atrocities of the Iraq war, Afghanistan, Auschwitz and so on. Nationless cryptocurrency is the money of the future.
Edit: The following states have no state sales tax and are exempt from this rule:
Alaska
Delaware
New Hampshire
Oregon
Montana
For the remaining states, there are two other options... come to New York State and take possession of my software from NY, and pay NY sales tax. Also some of you may have addresses outside of the USA as well as inside. If you order, to avoid it being rejected, make sure to use a non US address or one of the states listed above.
I may in the future be able to add new jurisdictions if the conditions are made clear in said states, but the vast majority of states involves reading tomes of legal fine print and hoping you've dotted every "i" and crossed every "t", so this is likely to be a very long process and could take years to sort out.
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