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By Steve Levy
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About this blog: I grew up in Los Angeles and moved to the area in 1963 when I started graduate school at Stanford. Nancy and I were married in 1977 and we lived for nearly 30 years in the Duveneck school area. Our children went to Paly. We moved ...
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About this blog: I grew up in Los Angeles and moved to the area in 1963 when I started graduate school at Stanford. Nancy and I were married in 1977 and we lived for nearly 30 years in the Duveneck school area. Our children went to Paly. We moved downtown in 2006 and enjoy being able to walk to activities. I do not drive and being downtown where I work and close to the CalTrain station and downtown amenities makes my life more independent. I have worked all my life as an economist focusing on the California economy. My work centers around two main activities. The first is helping regional planning agencies such as ABAG understand their long-term growth outlook. I do this for several regional planning agencies in northern, southern and central coast California. My other main activity is studying workforce trends and policy implications both as a professional and as a volunteer member of the NOVA (Silicon Valley) and state workforce boards. The title of the blog is Invest and Innovate and that is what I believe is the imperative for our local area, region, state and nation. That includes investing in people, in infrastructure and in making our communities great places to live and work. I served on the recent Palo Alto Infrastructure Commission. I also believe that our local and state economy benefits from being a welcoming community, which mostly we are a leader in, for people of all religions, sexual preferences and places of birth.
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Expanding the taxation of online sales
Uploaded: Apr 16, 2018
Tomorrow the Supreme Court will take up a case to overturn a 1990s decision (the Quill case) that prohibited states from collecting sales tax from online sales where the seller does not have a physical presence in the state.
I support allowing states to collect equal sales taxes on all online purchases..
Currently Amazon and some others collect sales tax on all their direct sales but do not collect taxes on sales from other vendors that use the Amazon site.
I support an equal playing field for all online sellers and store retailers.
I think online sales are on a growth path and store outlets will slowly decline but equal taxation is a fairness issue though it will slightly slow but not reverse the trend toward online spending.
25 years ago there may have been an "infant industry" argument for not taxing online sales at all but now this is mature and rapidly growing market segment and does not any longer deserve special treatment versus store retail.
It will be interesting to see what the Supreme Court does.
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