pacino wrote:

Werthless wrote:

thephan wrote:Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt spent $2,749.62 on "tactical pants" and "tactical polos," according to new disclosures cited Wednesday by The Intercept. The clothing items are part of his security expenditures. The disclosures showed that Pruitt spent $288,610 on various security items, bringing the total amount of public money Pruitt has spent on security items to $4.6 million.

When he is fired, do those polos become property of the next EPA Admin?

i can't imaging the dude will ever be fired; if nothing's gotten to him yet, he's in there for the long haul. he's there to make sure those rule changes actually go through.

A lesson to be learned from both him and Trump - you can ignore political pressure

JUburton wrote:so are we getting Janus today or what

two boxes brought out, might be saving Janus for Monday


railroads win an appeal of a 7th court decision centered around claiming stock options are compensation, 5-4 with Gorsuch writing

next one is 6-3, Kagan writes the opinion, Thomas a concurrence. Lucia v SEC

administrative law judges are apparently 'officers of the United States' and that means the President can appoint them instead of having them go through civil service (this tries to ensure competency and lack of political bias). the government had switched from being against it to being for it once Trump was elected. not good.

from SCOTUSBlog:

Justices Thomas and Gorsuch have a concurrence arguing in favor of the original meaning of the phrase "Officers of the United States,” which they take to include "all federal civil officials who perform an ongoing, statutory duty." That would be pretty broad.

that's everyone; they'd argue that every ongoing federal job should be appoint by the POTUS and be a patronage job.

another is a technical ruling on deportation hearings; 8-1 with Sotomayor writing

pacino wrote:next one is 6-3, Kagan writes the opinion, Thomas a concurrence. Lucia v SEC

administrative law judges are apparently 'officers of the United States' and that means the President can appoint them instead of having them go through civil service (this tries to ensure competency and lack of political bias). the government had switched from being against it to being for it once Trump was elected. not good.

from SCOTUSBlog:

Justices Thomas and Gorsuch have a concurrence arguing in favor of the original meaning of the phrase "Officers of the United States,” which they take to include "all federal civil officials who perform an ongoing, statutory duty." That would be pretty broad.

that's everyone; they'd argue that every ongoing federal job should be appoint by the POTUS and be a patronage job.

That's not 100% accurate, the Appointments Clause allows for Congress to give Courts or Heads of Departments the power to appoint.

The Court overruled a previous case that required "physical presence" in a state for a state to subject a store to state tax.. could have huge ramifications for online taxing (I think)

More opinions tomorrow

Ugh

Getting granted cert was bad enough, but the Court getting over stare decisis in Wayfair does not bode well for Janus.

slugsrbad wrote:Getting granted cert was bad enough, but the Court getting over stare decisis in Wayfair does not bode well for Janus.

feel like janus was doomed ever since gorsuch was confirmed.

JUburton wrote:

slugsrbad wrote:Getting granted cert was bad enough, but the Court getting over stare decisis in Wayfair does not bode well for Janus.

feel like janus was doomed ever since gorsuch was confirmed.

It's just a matter of how far they go

slugsrbad wrote:The Court overruled a previous case that required "physical presence" in a state for a state to subject a store to state tax.. could have huge ramifications for online taxing (I think)

Was close too. 5-4. People think that this will hurt the big online retailers (Wayfair, Amazon) but conventional wisdom in the tax arena is that their systems are so big that the relative cost of compliance won't be a big deal to them. This is really going to hurt the small retailer that has an online presence and now may have to comply with 50 state sales and use tax law. Hopefully states enact some de minimis thresholds.

slugsrbad wrote:More opinions tomorrow

stick around here all day and you will get plenty of opinions

is it the cost of compliance that will hurt them or the loss of competitive advantage?

Squire wrote:

slugsrbad wrote:The Court overruled a previous case that required "physical presence" in a state for a state to subject a store to state tax.. could have huge ramifications for online taxing (I think)

Was close too. 5-4. People think that this will hurt the big online retailers (Wayfair, Amazon) but conventional wisdom in the tax arena is that their systems are so big that the relative cost of compliance won't be a big deal to them. This is really going to hurt the small retailer that has an online presence and now may have to comply with 50 state sales and use tax law. Hopefully states enact some de minimis thresholds.

Doesn't Amazon already collect sales tax in almost all states?

The Sarge wrote:

Squire wrote:

slugsrbad wrote:The Court overruled a previous case that required "physical presence" in a state for a state to subject a store to state tax.. could have huge ramifications for online taxing (I think)

Was close too. 5-4. People think that this will hurt the big online retailers (Wayfair, Amazon) but conventional wisdom in the tax arena is that their systems are so big that the relative cost of compliance won't be a big deal to them. This is really going to hurt the small retailer that has an online presence and now may have to comply with 50 state sales and use tax law. Hopefully states enact some de minimis thresholds.

Doesn't Amazon already collect sales tax in almost all states?

Yes. The compliance issue is huge for smaller retailers though, as in some states (such as my own) the sales tax rate can depend on your county or municipality. Since zip codes do not follow tax jurisdiction boundaries, all this could be potentially a huge headache. At this point though there's probably an opportunity for someone like Square to solve this problem for smaller retailers.

TenuredVulture wrote: At this point though there's probably an opportunity for someone like Square to solve this problem for smaller retailers.

We have a winner. That said, your example of flexible taxation by notional geography is not necessarily solvable in any easy manner. Middle man takes the risk as part of the service, allowing some upcharging to manage the tax burden.

the data is already there in geolocation databases, where you can pull specific municipality information via a specific address. Google, ESRI, OpenCage, etc., all have this data available. Some free, some not.

a canadian mining company plans on mining parts of grand staircase that trump unprotected last year. make america great again, indeed.

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/21/62212855 ... t=20180621

Squire wrote:

slugsrbad wrote:The Court overruled a previous case that required "physical presence" in a state for a state to subject a store to state tax.. could have huge ramifications for online taxing (I think)

Was close too. 5-4. People think that this will hurt the big online retailers (Wayfair, Amazon) but conventional wisdom in the tax arena is that their systems are so big that the relative cost of compliance won't be a big deal to them. This is really going to hurt the small retailer that has an online presence and now may have to comply with 50 state sales and use tax law. Hopefully states enact some de minimis thresholds.

South Dakota's law (that was subject of this case) was at least 100k sold in the state in a year.