States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-21/states-can-require-internet-tax-collection-supreme-court-rules-jiomtl5c <comment><USER2> What no one is talking about here is how this would be handled, especially for a small online sellers. There are almost 10,000 tax jurisdictions ([https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact- checker/post/mccon...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact- checker/post/mcconnells-claim-that-there-are-nearly-10000-tax-codes- nationwide/2013/04/26/a6b3bef4-aeaa-11e2-a986-eec837b1888b_blog.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c97e1f8f782e)) and you're not allowed to collect sales tax unless you register for that jurisdiction. There is also a fee collected by most jurisdictions to register and most make you send in periodic reports, even if you didn't collect any taxes for them.

<comment><USER3> Read the story...

"...South Dakota, whose law requires retailers with more than $100,000 in sales or 200 transactions annually in the state to pay a 4.5 percent tax on purchases"

"..Kennedy's majority opinion strongly suggested the measure was constitutional, in part because it has the $100,000 threshold and doesn't try to impose retroactive taxation."

A clear bar is set for what is covered here and what is a burden.

<comment><USER4> $100,000 in sales is a very low bar. That's equivalent to a business with a single employee, the owner, and they're probably not making a livable wage yet.

<comment><USER5> $100k of South Dakota revenue is either an almost exclusively local single- owner business or a much larger internet shop.

But regardless, that kind of number is a full time job. If you're selling over the internet and making a full time job out of it, you can handle computing sales tax for SD residents. Yes, it's burdensome. Yes, it would be good to have a simpler federal framework for this. No, it's not the end of the world.

"No tax on the internet" sort of made sense in 1997 when it was a new and exciting market and we wanted to see what would happen. Now, it's just a giant subsidy for Amazon. We can put that money to better uses.

<comment><USER6> I think you've got it kind of backwards. The absence of tax collection is what allowed Amazon to become Amazon and this change is now a barrier to a new entity challenging Amazon.

Amazon voluntarily started collecting taxes nationwide without a blip to its bottom line.

The new law will in fact put Amazon's first-party goods in parity with 3rd party sales. Third party sellers could often undercut Amazon's own pricing due to the disparity.

This tax change is a huge win for Amazon on many fronts. Any protests they make to the contrary are strategic, imo.

<comment><USER7> All this would do is create an opportunity for a SaaS startup or existing payments provider to offer collecting the correct amount of tax for you.

I personally worked on this sort of problem for a large company; most of the work is in figuring out what the business logic ought to be; turning it into code is (largely) trivial.

Figuring out the logic only needs to be done once, and the payments provider is the natural place for it to live.

<comment><USER8> Indeed, several already do this - Fastspring, Paddle, and there are services like Taxamo (although I'm not sure if Taxamo actually remit the tax on your behalf, or are just an API to calculate what your obligations are).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a hunch that this will, in the end, be a massive win for large retailers vs. small ones. The task of figuring out how to calculate tax for all states is more or less the same amount of work regardless of size, which means for someone like Amazon it's more or less trivial, but for a mom-and-pop store it's a major hassle.

<comment><USER10> Many online payment gateways already offer some kind of sales tax API. Keep in mind in California, sales tax changes per county. In places like Tennessee, the tax rate can change if your item is a grocery or isn't a grocery.

There are companies that already sell massive lookup tables or API access to calculate a lot of this stuff. I think for most retailers, this won't be that big a change.

Most mom-and-pop online stores have disappeared too. Gone are the days when you went to Pricewatch.com and Pricescan.com. Now all the individual shops just create a store on Newegg, Amazon and eBay. I'm pretty sure the big players will start offering up tools to do these calculations for them as well.

<comment><USER11> Tennessee also has a "Sales Tax Holiday" on which _certain items_ are tax exempt during _certain times_ (during the holiday). And because we know how much programmers love date and time manipulations, it starts on "the last Friday in July" (I mean, it kinda had to, to be a weekend).

[1]: [https://www.tn.gov/revenue/taxes/sales-and-use-tax/sales- tax...](https://www.tn.gov/revenue/taxes/sales-and-use-tax/sales-tax- holiday.html)

<comment><USER12> An exemption such as this is one of those things that I'd say is not worth supporting unless you're based out of TN, or do enough of sales there to make it worth your while. Sure, I'd implement it if it's required but every special case is just another point of failure.

<comment><USER13> But if you don't support it, are you liable for collecting more tax than required? How do you "not support" it? Just reject purchases from people in TN during the holiday?

<comment><USER12> Disclaimer: I am not an accountant. I would figure tax holidays are optional and might even require an application to take advantage of. So you would charge the regular sales tax and remit it to the state.

UPDATE: Out of curiosity I looked it up. And it looks like sales tax holidays depend as usual on the state. The MO back to school one is optional if less than 2% of merchandise is affected. But the TN one doesn't look optional.

<comment><USER14> Collecting 'tax' on an untaxed item could be considered acting falsely under color of law.

<comment><USER15> "Under color of law" means that you're a law enforcement official. Collecting extra tax and then remitting to the state will almost certainly not cause you any issues.

<comment><USER14> >"Under color of law" means that you're a law enforcement official.

No.

Collection of taxes is done to enforce law, unless the state is compelling people with something else?

<comment><USER16> > Collection of taxes is done to enforce law

To _comply with_ law.

<comment><USER14> comply with and enforce

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Something like ten years ago now, Washington State changed their sales tax requirements in a way that required the seller to look up the four-digit rate code of the buyer, both for determining the rate to charge and later for remitting to the state. The quarterly file they provide with this information is ~150000 rows. Prior to that date, you just reported for the jurisdiction in which the business was registered.

Between this and similarly far-reaching laws (e.g., GDPR), it's becoming increasingly burdensome for small players to the point where secondary services like Avalara are effectively required.

<comment><USER18> It sounds like Avalara costs $50 per year for small businesses, but scales up for larger companies. So compliance is trivial if it truly works.

<comment><USER19> If compliance were required to this new extent, then avalara could likely raise prices

<comment><USER20> And if that happens then certainly competitors would enter the market. If avalara is overpriced people will switch over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The actual (quite readable) Supreme Court decision is here: [https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-494_j4el.pdf](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-494_j4el.pdf)

Most of the coverage I've seen downplays it, but it should be noted that the question is not whether tax is owed on these out-of-state internet purchases, but whether the retailer should be required to collect it and submit it to the state. Currently, the purchaser is (in 45 of 50 states) legally required to pay a "use tax", but most Americans (98%?) are blissfully unaware of this requirement, or have simply decided not to pay it. This is pure illegal tax evasion, based on the (correct) assumption that enforcement is lax and risk of punishment is low: [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/16/177384487/most...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/16/177384487/most- people-are-supposed-to-pay-this-tax)

Rather than attempting to enforce these existing laws against their residents (unpopular and difficult), states believe it will be easier to get compliance from retailers. Until this decision, it was unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause for a state to demand this collection unless the retailer had a "substantial nexus" in the state, generally defined as a physical presence. Post-decision (pending new national laws created by Congress) all retailers are fair game. The particular South Dakota law in question has requirements as to volume of purchase, but this is not a principle of the decision.

Beyond the implications for internet retailers, this is an interesting counter-example to the Supreme Court tradition of "stare decisis" (to stand by things already decided). Apparently, everyone on the court agrees that earlier decisions that produced the physical location test were poor precedent. Usually, the court is very reluctant to revisit these decisions, but in this case, the majority justices decided to abandon precedent and explicitly call the earlier decisions mistakes. The dissenting justices, despite conceding that "Bellas Hess was wrongly decided", felt that the court was better off sticking with the flawed precedent than changing things up now.

Personally, whether or not this is good constitutional precedent, I think I agree with the dissenters that allowing local jurisdictions to make laws affecting far-away businesses who have no other local presense is going to lead to problems. Beyond just the burden of collecting confusing locally defined taxes, I fear about where else it leads. If a locality can enforce its local tax laws, what other custom crafted local laws can it enforce in return for access to customers? Can it require a business license? Should it be allowed to enforce its local environmental and labor standards as well? Is this a good thing?

<comment><USER22> >If a locality can enforce its local tax laws, what other custom crafted local laws can it enforce in return for access to customers? Should it be allowed to enforce its local environmental and labor standards as well?

This is pretty much what happens with California and car manufacturers. Even today on certain aftermarket car parts (primarily exhaust systems), there are explicit notices that they are legal anywhere in the US except California.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Yet another tenuous stretching of _nexus_ by lawyers who have little interest in how technology works, but _do_ have every incentive to justify increasing their own scope. This is the equivalent of telling New Hampshire stores that they're responsible for collecting Massachusetts sales tax for people coming over the border to shop.

A business collecting taxes for the state they are in, even for orders shipped out of state, _would_ make sense. But the individual states seem unwilling to do this, as it would decrease their own businesses' advantage. And that's the whole point - we _should welcome_ competition in tax rates, wherever it can possibly even be found.

Referencing New England was not arbitrary, as the ability to drive two states over to simply have dinner is a condition that holds the state governments to a modicum of honesty.

<comment><USER24> >holds the state governments to a modicum of honesty.

Coffee almost came out my nose.

Governments in southern New England are only regarded as legitimate because people in MA and CT bury their heads in the sand and RI compares itself to NYC and Chicago (that's not to say that useful or good programs don't exist within these governments).

>This is the equivalent of telling New Hampshire stores that they're responsible for collecting Massachusetts sales tax for people coming over the border to shop.

I fully agree that state tax should follow the state of the merchant. If a state's cost of doing business (through taxes, cost of living or some other reasons) is so high that businesses that have to pay to ship their good can out compete them then it's that state's problem. If it wants a cut it's going to need to change things so that more business happens in its jurisdiction. Sales taxes are regressive anyway so they should be a race to the bottom.

<comment><USER23> Sure, but at least MA/CT sales tax is just above 6%, while CA is pushing 9%.

The bigger picture is that if one wants to live close to family and friends in New England, they're still able to move and pay 0% sales and state earned income taxes. Whereas if one wants to live close to family and friends in CA, they're completely over the barrel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I find it hard to argue with from a fairness perspective. Clearly, retail is in a much different place from when Quill was decided. My concern is more in how a mom & pop online shop operating independently complies as a practical matter, which means not only collecting the right amount for different types of items but presumably remitting and filing with a huge number of different tax jurisdictions.

<comment><USER26> In Colorado you're already asked when filing state taxes what the value of the goods you bought online that haven't been taxed yet, so the onus is on the filer to look up receipts from the year for tax purposes.

Amazon already collects tax in Colorado, but a few smaller retailers will send you a letter at the end of the year totaling up your untaxed purchases. Since different counties and localities collect different rates, it's hard to get the total tax right at the time of sale.

<comment><USER25> >In Colorado you're already asked when filing state taxes what the value of the goods you bought online that haven't been taxed yet

Many states do this. I imagine that relatively few individuals (as opposed to businesses) actually comply.

<comment><USER27> People rarely comply, unless they are tax lawyers that fear the IRS wants to put them up as a trophy:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/16/177384487/most...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/16/177384487/most- people-are-supposed-to-pay-this-tax)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What a boon for SaaS payment providers, and what a loss for both smaller and larger shops doing things in-house.

We are seeing in action the consolidation and corporatization of the internet, as regulators and laws catch up from the wild west days. This is how every industry goes, but start saying goodbye to startups as they've been for the last 15 years. Already its a better deal for most workers to just work at a bigco (and has been for a while).

Of course, this doesn't address whether internet sites should have to deal with state taxes (they probably should), but gosh everything is getting a heck of a lot more complicated.

</comment><comment><USER29> The situation for retailers shipping to states where they have no physical presence reminds me of the situation of foreign retailers with significant online sales to customers in the EU.

In each case, the seller (who has no physical or other presence in X) is required to collect tax from the buyer (a resident of X) and remit it to the tax authorities in X.

The tax is owed by a resident of X, to the tax authorities in X. But the tax authorities in X want someone outside X to collect it on their behalf.

EDIT: According to Wikipedia, some states charge sellers sales tax, and others do it the way I assumed (tax is charged to buyers, but collected by sellers).

<comment><USER30> That is the price of doing business with customers of the EU, similar to how you must comply to EU regulations if you want to sell physical goods. In return, you get access to the EU market and can deal with a single ruleset for the whole EU instead of each country individually.

Also, this is only for consumers, to business customers you can reverse-charge the VAT so they have to handle it.

<comment><USER29> Anything can be construed as 'the price of doing business'. If the EU instead required every retailer with at least one customer in the EU to get a tattoo of the EU flag, in return for getting access to the market, would you also consider that just 'the price of doing business'?

My objections to this are:

\- If an EU country is owed tax by people resident within its borders, then perhaps the country's tax authorities should arrange for it to be collected, rather than relying on some foreign entity (e.g. Chinese company) to collect it.

\- There are ~200 countries in the world. Should any company who wants to sell over the internet need to know about the sales tax or VAT registration thresholds in each of those countries? If so, this gives a huge advantage to large retailers over small ones.

<comment><USER31> VAT (Eu sales tax) is a tax on the seller it is not a tax that individual residents pay at all.

<comment><USER29> Your statement is wholly incorrect.

[https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/vat/what- is-v...](https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/vat/what-is-vat_en)

That page says that VAT is 'a consumption tax because it is borne ultimately by the final consumer. It is not a charge on businesses.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Isn't this at some level taxation without representation? If I don't like how some other state is taxing, I can't alter that behaviour by voting. At least in my current state I might have a chance to do so.

<comment><USER33> The taxation is on the person living in that state. Most states require that a person buys something and doesn't pay sales tax, they are supposed to self- report and pay the tax. (Most people don't).

<comment><USER34> >The taxation is on the person living in that state.

Right, and before this decision, it was that person's responsibility to remit. Now it is the business's. So the burden of remittance has shifted to the disenfranchised party.

<comment><USER35> "...the burden of remittance has shifted..."

And the party paying the tax has not shifted. The party paying the tax votes on representation.

<comment><USER34> >The party paying the tax votes on representation.

Technically the business is "the party paying the tax", in the sense that they are the party sending money to the government. If I drop ten dollars on the counter and sprint out of a store carrying an item that costs ten dollars plus tax, the store is still responsible for paying tax on that item to the government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is good news for the country, even if it's bad for my wallet. The prior state of affairs was absurd. Online retailers already have major advantages in terms of convenience and inventory. Getting a N% discount vs. brick and mortar by not charging taxes was completely unnecessary.

<comment><USER37> Exposing consumers to more regressive sales taxes is in no way good for the country. What would be good for the country is to abolish sales taxes entirely.

<comment><USER38> "What would be good for the country is to abolish sales taxes entirely."

In favor of what, exactly? Don't pretend that sales taxes could just be abolished, and states would just go without that revenue. Kansas tried gutting their tax revenue; it failed miserably.

<comment><USER37> The most reasonable and fair replacement would be land value taxes. See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Unless I'm totally misunderstanding this, doesn't this mean the following:

If you sell a few thousand digital goods (let's say video courses or ebooks) to people spread across 30 states in the US over the year, you will be responsible to collect sales tax and do the paperwork to pay each of those 30 states sales tax every quarter (or per year)?

When dealing with a low priced item, it's not difficult to accumulate a high number of transactions.

Not only are those fees a huge financial burden but I imagine the act of filing all of that is going to kill any motivation to do anything. For me, I'll end up either stop doing what I love (creating educational content to help other developers while making enough $ to live on) or move to a different country with a better tax system.

</comment><comment><USER40> Fascinating mix of justices on this one:

 _> The vote was 5 to 4. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion and was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch._

I can't imagine we're gonna see RBG agreeing with the Alito/Gorsuch/Thomas clan too often.

<comment><USER41> So how exactly is this a constitutional question where a new court can have a different opinion?

 _Quill now harms states to a degree far greater than could have been anticipated earlier._ That hardly seems like it changes the Constitution.

<comment><USER42> The Constitution uses a fair amount of fuzzy language. "Undue burden", "excessive bail", "cruel & unusual punishment", "unreasonable search & seizure", etc.

Thus our perception of what is undue, excessive, cruel, or unreasonable can change, without the Constitution changing a word.

<comment><USER41> That's relevant to specific sections not the entire thing. I really don't see any applicable fuzzy language involved.

As far as I can see it's purely a political question and they simply chose ahead of time to change their minds independent of any arguments given. That's a huge perversion of the entire idea of the supreme court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > Grover Norquist, president of the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform, > said in a statement, "Today the Supreme Court said yes -- you can be taxed > by politicians you do not elect and who act knowing you are powerless to > object."

That doesn't follow. The people being taxed are the people living in that state, and _their_ representatives are enacting that tax. As usually Norquist is making up BS to scare people.

<comment><USER44> Think of it from the perspective of the business selling goods. Then the quote makes more sense.

<comment><USER43> No it doesn't. The business isn't paying the tax. They are only collecting it on behalf of the taxing agency.

<comment><USER45> Maybe a more precise wording is "you can be forced to collect tax from others and must pay registration fees to collect said tax by politicians you do not elect and who act knowing you are powerless to object."

The sentiment is still the same.

<comment><USER43> While that may be true, it's meaningless. As a tourist, you are also subject to tax that was enacted by representatives you didn't elect. You can choose not to go there, just like a business can choose not to sell to someone who lives there. In California, every city has it's own sales tax, so every city I go to is taxing me without representation.

There are many many cases in the US where you are taxed without a choice of the representatives. You have a choice not to be taxed though, by not going there or doing business there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> So, if a state has a flat sales tax for all purchases then that's pretty easy to implement. But often you tax different categories of product at different rates. And there are fuzzy edges. The advertisements for Fig Netwons famously were "a cookie is just a cookie, but Newtons are fruit and cake." But is that true, legally speaking? And if it's true in one state jurisdiction does that that necessarily translate to another? How you you avoid having to figure out the tax rate for each product you carry in each of the 50 states?

<comment><USER47> I would think the same way any national chain does it.

<comment><USER46> That's true but stores have an advantage in that if they mess up it's harder for regulators to notice. But I'd bet the way this actually works is that companies mess up on this all the time and regulators will yell at companies to fix it before they start resorting to fines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is great news for Amazon. They already collect sales tax on everything they sell in most states (47 I think?). Now that smaller sellers (marketplace sellers, eBay, etc.) also have to collect tax, that hurts the ~8% discount built in, so why even shop around?

<comment><USER49> The problem with Amazon is that shipping can take months for non-prime users. In most cases you are better off buying from walmart if they carry the item.

Sent from someone outside of the US

<comment><USER41> US sales tax is not relevant if you're not in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> There should be no sales tax to begin with, Or income tax or property tax.... Most taxes can be simplified and reduced to a 1 simple wealth tax.

If you look at this matters with some attention you realize system works against poor...

Only income taxes are progressive. And Rich don't get richer because of their income.

Whether you're a trillion dollar company or about to make your first sale to pay rent you owe same amout of sales tax.

Wether you live in NYC and pay 3k in rent or live in Alaska you pay same federal income tax.

.... Wealth tax is way simpler... It let's govt tax wealth/income on its last form. Like a fraction in reduced form, or equation that's been simplified.

Easier to conduct business, easier to start business, easier to pay taxes, easier to be poor. Much much fair to all.

Capital tax is not same as wealth tax. In fact if you have wealth tax there is no need for capital tax.

I suggest 4% wealth tax and remove pretty much all other taxes.

If your wealth is 200 billion, first year you pay 8 billion. If your wealth is $5000 then you pay only.. $200, doesn't matter if you earned 400k. If you didn't accquire assets you spent it and some else have that now so they will pay it...if you bought stuff then your wealth isn't really 5k

<comment><USER51> This disincentives savings and is in many ways the opposite of VAT taxes, which many tax scholars hold out as one of the most efficient ways to raise revenue without distorting desirable economic behavior.

<comment><USER50> The incentive to be wealthy is far more greater than 4% tax on wealth could be a disincentive. Beauty of this is you only pay if you are rich, not if you are poor or even if you earn a lot and still have lot of expenses (medical, live in nyc, or have children etc)

<comment><USER51> A perpetual 4% tax on wealth is a great disincentive to saving. It's like compounding interest, but in reverse.

I would be curious to know if any politician or scholar has ever proposed relying on a single tax like this? I studied tax in law school and practiced as a tax lawyer for the better part of a decade, and I have never heard it mentioned. I'm not up on all the latest developments since I left law to build a startup, and I'd be curious to know if things are leaning in this direction now.

<comment><USER50> you say that but then what about inflation .. that is worse than 4% tax now as it hurts poor more whose most savings are in cash form, and inflation doesn't really affect say land value, it automatically adjusts. While person with $3k saving becomes poorer.

I forgot to add... to me ideal is this.

\- no artificial inflation. \- fixed currency rate. \- taxes on wealth only. \- interest free limited loan by government. (ie. you can borrow x amount of money in lifetime, x increases if your wealth increases)

That's perfect to me.

The only system that can't be endlessly manipulated by conglomerate/old money/corporations/lobbyists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >Although the court left open the possibility that other arguments could be pressed against the South Dakota law, Kennedy's majority opinion strongly suggested the measure was constitutional, _in part because it has the $100,000 threshold_ and...

Anyone know where the Constitution talks about this $100,000 threshold?

>doesn't try to impose retroactive taxation.

Similar to how it presumably not limiting what arms can be sold makes it 'constitutional'.

<comment><USER52> I haven't been able to read the opinion yet, as I'm on a phone, but often these types of thresholds or tests come from related cases that have been previously decided.

Natural places to start looking in this case would be the _Quill Corp. v. North Dakota_ or _National Bellas Hess Inc. v. Illinois Department of Revenue_.

(If not there, following the footnotes in Kennedy's opinion will likely get you there eventually.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Someone needs to develop a service to make calculating and paying the sales tax easier. Something like plugin an address and it spits out the tax percentage and where to remit the payment to. Ideally the states would get together and create a centralized service so companies don't have to be mailing checks to every single county government that has a sales tax.

<comment><USER54> The problem with this is: how do you know what the tax rate is for the product you're selling? For instance, if you're in New Jersey and you're selling a clothing item like a pair of socks, then there's no tax. But if you're selling a fur coat, then there's full sales tax. There's different tax rates for different products, and it varies wildly across almost 10,000 different jurisdictions in the US.

<comment><USER55> In general you would identify the product type from a list of a lot of product types and then let your sales tax calculator as a service provider sort out what needs taxed and at what rate.

<comment><USER56> What if each state has a different set of product types?

IMO, the federal government's responsibility to regulate interstate commerce should include creating a standard of product categories. States can then tax those categories at whatever level they see fit.

<comment><USER55> That shouldn't matter too much, identify with the most granular option there is one time for each product and then let the tax provider figure out what falls into each bucket for each state. Also, UPC codes should help automate it for large swaths of products. If I buy a Sony lens cap from B&H or Amazon or Random Joe's Camera Shop it would have the same UPC and can be automatically classified by any number of tax vendors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> The ruling gives states the power to collect state taxes, but will states require out of state retailers to also collect and remit sales tax for each county, special tax districts, and cities?

It does not level the playing field if a non-local business must collect and remit sales taxes for thousands of jurisdictions while a local business must only collect and remit sales tax for their jurisdiction. It actually flips it completely around, burdening online business more than local business.

As a small business owner, the sales tax remittance is super annoying, it's so byzantine. They often refuse to let small businesses use automated submittal unless you have enough volume, and if you don't, you have to hand write out the forms and send in a check. Per jurisdiction. Separate forms for state+county, and city. I'd rather see the states take back the taxing authority of cities and counties, and dole out funding from the state sales tax revenue based on population.

</comment><comment><USER58> So how is this going to work? Imagine you're a small online retailer and people from every state buy your stuff. Does that mean each state can send you a tax bill? Without knowing what you owe? And what if you ignore it? What recourse does the state (that you don't live in or don't own a business in) have? Seems like none or very little. Plus, the administrative burden could be quite large for any given state. And it's a crapshoot from the state's perspective, since the state has no idea which retailers are heavily used in their states. I wonder if the states will work together on collections and figuring that part out... Seems like in the short term small sellers will be ignored by the states and the large sellers will loose. Mid to long term -- who knows... Obviously, I'm guessing.

And another thing... The idea that the states are "losing out" on revenue seems like a very simplistic way to look at things to me. First, the states have undoubtably already adjusted their tax structure to get the revenue they want/need. Lots of things affect that and the states adjust all the time. The weather (literally) for instance. It's not like there's an unaccounted for shortfall.

Second, the retailers in question are always local to a given state and their online businesses contribute to their home state's revenue. If those businesses have the administrative burden of managing sales tax across fifty states they may contribute less to the given state's revenue. Or -- they raise prices.

I think it probably hurts people starting up the most as it effectively creates a lot more regulatory risk.

In any case, an economic drag as all bad regulation and regulatory uncertainty is. There's huge uncertainty here as who knows what/if congress will do. "Nothing" is a certitude for a few more months at least. Probably a few more years. Just long enough for it not to be worth creating a business around solving the problem.

</comment><comment><USER59> This decision has effectively killed the "internet lemonade stand", where a person with a bit of web knowledge could go online and a day or two later have a store that sold something.

Oh sure, you can still do that. But now it's going to all be channeled through gatekeepers that will ensure regulatory compliance. And run their own little walled gardens. Better not tick them off. (This is a nice little website you have here. Are you sure you're happy with that tweet you sent one night after heavy partying seven years ago? Be a shame if somebody made a fuss about that and started harassing your gateway provider)

There should also be some interesting macro changes. At some certain price and weight points, it's probably going to be easier to buy overseas and avoid taxes, at least for some residents. I would expect international shipping to tick up a bit.

<comment><USER60> Yes on international, just bought a one plus phone, came from Hong Kong, not one penny in sales tax. Quite the advantage over the iPhone x where I would have paid close to 100$ in sales tax.

<comment><USER61> And soon you'll get hit with a 10% tariff on it, as the phone most likely originated in Shenzhen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> This is potentially much broader though -- say you buy a domain on some registrar, do you pay taxes on that now? Every such place then needs your address, too.

And going down this road, p2p barter on the internet of any kind might be subject to a tax regime soon.

<comment><USER62> You don't need people's address to charge them sales tax. The business is responsible for paying the sales tax - not the customer.

e.g. If I buy a sandwich I do not give my name and address to the deli.

<comment><USER17> You need the address to charge them the _correct_ sales tax. In Washington State, the rate is based on the address where the product is delivered, so in the case of your example sandwich, that's the address of the deli.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> If you're going to take the onus away from the _purchaser_ to file correctly for his state and put it on the retailer, then there should be a uniform, very simplified way to correctly do that in place first.

</comment><comment><USER64> I run a little side project that sells a small software tool for $12/customer (forever, not recurring). It generates about $1200/month.

Should I care about this? I use Stripe to collect payments, if it matters.

<comment><USER65> If I were a lawyer, I'd be able to tell you with great certainty and precision what all the reasons are why you shouldn't look for an answer to that question here.

<comment><USER64> True, but there probably aren't many lawyers who can answer the question either.

<comment><USER66> > True, but there probably aren't many lawyers who can answer the question > either.

Strange take. On the contrary, there is an entire industry of lawyers who specialize in the ability to answer precisely this kind of question.

<comment><USER35> Or are at least willing to indemnify you based on their answer should their answer prove incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> IF this is as burdensome as it sounds, I think Amazon will create an even- larger competitive advantage for their marketplace and start collecting and remitting taxes for all sellers in all states.

Since January 2018, Amazon has started collecting and remitting taxes for all orders / all merchants in the state of Washington and Pennsyvania, and Oklahoma will join in July.

They already do it. Why wouldn't they expand that program?

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't understand how this can be enforced for selling digital goods online.

Right now you can process a credit card transaction with only needing the number, exp date and CVC. You do not need the card holder's billing address. You don't even need the card holder's name.

So what's stopping someone from buying your digital item (let's say an ebook or course where you use Stripe / PayPal to handle the transaction) but put in a fake address, or an address they don't live in. I don't think Stripe / PayPal will halt the transaction. Instead they might flag it as questionable but the transaction will still go through.

In this case the business owner has no idea where the customer actually lives to tax them properly and the customer has no incentive to put a real address in because they are not getting something delivered to an address.

</comment><comment><USER68> If you run a SaaS company, you're affected too. You probably live in California (which doesn't consider SaaS sales-taxable), but other states do[1] so you'll have to start collecting taxes.

[1] [https://blog.taxjar.com/saas-sales-tax/](https://blog.taxjar.com/saas- sales-tax/)

</comment><comment><USER69> It's already non-easy to figure out what customers want, make it, make sure they know you have it, and get them to buy it.

On top of that, lately it seems more challenging not to be an oligopoly if you have customers in Europe and/or the US.

I suppose this represents an opportunity for startups to help other startups to manage compliance and payment.

</comment><comment><USER70> I tend to view the avoidance of paying local taxes as one of the internet's original legislation workarounds (1). The entire wholesale (you buy for resale, pay taxes when that happens) vs retail (you sell to the end user) division was abused to allow the historical "nobody pays taxes on the internet, so buy there and avoid them" logic many people used.

It would have been interesting to see how differently retail sales would have grown, especially Amazon, if they were required to wrangle with local sales tax in all the places they sold into.

Additionally, most locations have a Use Tax that's identical to local sales tax, so it's transferring the legal burden onto the buyer. Almost nobody does this.

1: It's not a new or internet-specific tactic either - many car dealerships advertise "No City Sales Tax!" and are barely on the other side of the city limits.

<comment><USER71> This wasn't invented by the internet. Interstate mail order sales delivered by railroad in the 19th century were always tax free. E-commerce inherited that system.

<comment><USER72> Then there was this thing called mail-order. Comic books seemed to rely on advertising mail-order novelty items as their revenue model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ideally, there would be an API provided by the federal government that would give you a list of tax rates for any address. Where there's always a standard rate for general goods, and then any additional rates for things like school supplies or other stuff.

</comment><comment><USER73> It's a shame that this wont apply to us here in the 51st state. US companies will continue to drive on UK roads, use UK security and UK law and UK infrastructure to access UK consumers, and will continue to pay less tax than me.

<comment><USER74> What? US companies have to pay VAT in the UK, just like anybody else.

<comment><USER73> 1) Consumers pay VAT not companies. Companies only _collect_ VAT, unless you mean they are buying goods in the UK.

2) Google use EU cross border services rules to avoid charging VAT in the UK. But since it is b2b it is generally reclaimable so no gain to exchequer either way

3) Uber avoid VAT by classing their drivers as self-employed so they each run a business below the threshold for registration. This is despite being found at fault for this.[0]

So there are some very large cases of US companies not charging VAT.

[0]: [https://goodlawproject.org/uber-case/](https://goodlawproject.org/uber- case/):

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> So while the states and small businesses are busy patting themselves on their backs, Amazon will quietly build distribution points in every zip code and prepare for 1 hour shipping everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER76> Any idea how this will affect SaaS folks with no physical products?

<comment><USER77> Some states consider SaaS [1] and digital products [2] taxable. Refer to the blog posts below:

[1] [https://blog.taxjar.com/saas-sales-tax/](https://blog.taxjar.com/saas- sales-tax/) [2] [https://blog.taxjar.com/sales-tax-digital- products/](https://blog.taxjar.com/sales-tax-digital-products/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Sales tax has one of the most complicated structures. Recently ADP built logic to tax according to counties and sub-zones (not just states and cities) to save millions on taxes for its customers. I doubt small start-ups can afford their software. It will be great if Stripe can come up with an API to simplify this. Or else, its clearly a win for large retailers and not as much for small ecommerce stores.

<comment><USER79> Automated Tax Calculations in the Orders API:

[https://stripe.com/docs/orders/tax- integration](https://stripe.com/docs/orders/tax-integration)

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Will foreign companies who sell internet services to US customers have to collect state sales taxes?

This would be a serious nightmare. We already limit our sales to Canada because if we go over a relatively low threshold, we'd have to collect and remit state sales tax for about 12 territories. Having to do the same for 11,000 US jurisdictions would instantly stop foreign entrants into the US market.

</comment><comment><USER81> Does this mean companies need to file 50 different state returns? How can any company other than a mega-corporation be expected to handle that level of bureaucracy? Even if their are firms that pop up to handle compliance it's probably going to cost a fortune. This will put a huge strain on small companies forcing many of them out of business.

</comment><comment><USER82> So what if you split your company:

1) A US based warehouse/shipping company. 2) An offshore entity that owns the products and sells them - but the products never leave the US.

Company 2 sells the products to consumer, company 1 ships them. Company 2 is, presumably, beyond the enforceable jurisdiction of the states and therefore can't be forced to pay the taxes?

</comment><comment><USER83> The federal government was granted the power to regulate interstate commerce. They seem more than happy to regulate matters of in-state commerce, yet when it comes to actually doing a job they have legal authority to do, standards are conspicuously absent to the points where it's quickly becoming a problem for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER84> I'm Just wondering how long it will take to happen a data breach with all these tax info. what a headache.

</comment><comment><USER60> Anyone ever feel like a vendor is collecting sales tax, but never remitting it to the taxing authority. I remember Vonage was collecting a city\state telecommunication services tax for where I lived but only the city (not the state) actually levied the tax.

</comment><comment><USER85> I see a opening for a SaaS business, that can automate and outsource this, and figure out how much tax is due per transaction, and then make the payments for small businesses - its something online payment processors like stripe, for example could do too.

</comment><comment><USER80> This is a huge opportunity for payment services to value-add. Providing automatic sales tax calculation, collection and remittance (including another couple of percent for their trouble) is a no-brainer.

</comment><comment><USER86> It seems kind of silly that the stock prices dropped for online sellers that already collect state sales tax. Is this a knee-jerk reaction or is there more to this ruling that would be cause for this?

</comment><comment><USER87> A good TL;DR from my co-worker at the Tax Foundation ([https://twitter.com/jbhenchman/status/1009808187137150977](https://twitter.com/jbhenchman/status/1009808187137150977)):

Does your state online sales tax law have:

* Safe harbor for sellers who have limited activity

* No retroactivity

* Adheres to SSUTA

* State level admin

* Provides software

* Provides immunity for errors

If so, upheld. If not...

</comment><comment><USER88> Does this affect the sale of services or info products sold online?

I run an online business from Canada with American customers and am wondering if I'm affected. All digital products or services.

<comment><USER76> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> I've lived in many a city in "flyover country" and I think it's long overdue.

The result of plunging sales tax revenue due to online shopping, for a lot of places, is bridges falling apart, underfunded police agencies, teachers leaving the profession because they don't want to live in poverty, schools without supplies, without music programs, without art programs, let alone STEM programs, colleges shrinking, faculty not being hired, roads going unrepaired, homeless population growing, libraries being gutted, social programs and social service agencies facing layoffs and shortages, and on and on.

<comment><USER90> >... is bridges falling apart, underfunded police agencies, teachers leaving the profession because they don't want to live in poverty, schools without supplies, without music programs, without art programs, let alone STEM programs, colleges shrinking, faculty not being hired, roads going unrepaired, homeless population growing, libraries being gutted, social programs and social service agencies facing layoffs and shortages, and on and on.

Non one can seriously claim the lack of sales tax revenue from out of state shippers has that big of an impact on state and local revenue.

According to the article:

>...Broader taxing power will let state and local governments collect an extra $8 billion to $23 billion a year, according to various estimates.

As a comparison in 2012:

>...Tax revenues increased in all but five states in fiscal year 2012, with some recording noticeable gains. In all, states collected $794.6 billion, a record-high that represents a 13 percent increase from 2010 totals

[http://www.governing.com/gov-data/state-tax-revenue- data.htm...](http://www.governing.com/gov-data/state-tax-revenue-data.html)

So even using the high estimates of 23 billion, that would be a small fraction of total state/local tax revenue. The extra few percent of revenue from taxing out of state businesses isn't going to solve the huge list of problems you listed (nor is it obvious that the money will be spend on any of those issues).

The real question with this ruling is how much it will cost all the Internet retailers to comply with the law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> It's about time for internet sales tax. Just how do local firms stay in business when internet based businesses can undercut them by 5-10% automatically.

</comment><comment><USER92> Fucking RIP literally every internet store that doesn't have the ability to register for 10 thousand (literally) different fucking tax jurisdictions.

</comment><comment><USER93> How does this apply to traditional mail-order catalogues? I thought their no- sales-tax orders were the model for e-commerce.

</comment><comment><USER94> Shouldn't this require an amendment to the constitution, to eliminate the constitution's clause forbidding the taxing interstate commerce?

<comment><USER95> > Shouldn't this require an amendment to the constitution, to eliminate the > constitution's clause forbidding the taxing interstate commerce?

No such clause exists; there is a clause in Art. I, Sec. 9 prohibiting state import and export duties, but a tax on sales applied equally to sales into the state regardless of whether the origin is in or out of state is not an import duty, and therefore not prohibited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> How does this work for virtual delivery of products? Do online SaaS companies have to ask for an address now as well?

</comment><comment><USER97> How did catalogue/mail-order retailers handle this (presumably in business since before the Internet)?

<comment><USER98> This ruling overturned previous rulings that allowed mail-order businesses to avoid collecting sales tax outside of their state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I think Amazon will figure out a way to make things good for the end customer.

\- They already collect taxes properly for all cities and counties for everything THEY SELL. \- They already calculate/collect/remit sales taxes for all orders(including merchant orders) shipped to Washington && Pennsylvania && Ohlahoma.

For other states, they can fairly easily take on this burden if it benefits the customer.

</comment><comment><USER99> Maybe the problem is sales tax. Its regressive. Its complicated in the multi- jurisdictional context.

<comment><USER50> Exactly

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> > and who act knowing you are powerless to object

I still have the power, mostly, to just not buy from other states.

</comment><comment><USER101> More friction for everyone, benefiting the entrenched leaders in all online retail spaces, looks like another step towards Balajis Network State, his Startup Society speech is amazing [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiLUPvUsdXg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiLUPvUsdXg)

</comment><comment><USER102> Is this for only physical products? What about digital downloads and software services?

<comment><USER102> Anyone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> This is going to drive so much business OUT of states with these taxes.

<comment><USER76> Unlikely. This is similar to an occupancy tax... why not soak out-of-state guests who don't have much choice in the matter, and won't be voting to do away with the tax. A SaaS business is going to refuse to do business w/, say, Proctor & Gamble and pay Ohio sales taxes? No way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> Why don't we get rid of taxes altogether?

</comment><comment><USER105> Amazon and other retailers' stocks are down to session lows after the news. Makes sense.

<comment><USER106> Really Amazon already collected sales taxes but now it extends to Amazon marketplace sellers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> More compliance and regulation for us to deal with. How about you just tax property? It doesn't move. And also, how about the state stops spending money?

<comment><USER108> Thankfully, we have computers! Any online sales program worth paying for includes automatic sales tax collection by jurisdiction.

Note, this ruling doesn't mean that all businesses will immediately be taxed. The law over which this suit was filed requires collection if your annual business in the state is $100,000 or >200 sales, which means you're already doing a sizeable business.

<comment><USER109> Compliance is far more complex than a simple look up table. Rates vary by state, county, city, school district, mass transit zone, water district. And each of these political subdivisions and the sales tax they assess changes with every ballot issue!

There's a lot of faxing, forms to fill, etc.

So most of the value is the vendor doing the legwork in keeping up with details and fixing corner cases. And leveraging their pre-existing trust network and economy of scale.

<comment><USER110> Don't forget type of product, if it's a sales tax holiday, phase of the moon...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One of the nice benefits of the US system of government is that the ability to relatively easily pick and choose where to live, where to work, where to do business, etc forces the states to compete with each other to some degree. This ruling runs counter to that because using online retailers to avoid local taxes is a very low effort way to avoid local taxes or avoid funding a local government you disagree with and this ruling paves the way for states to prevent that.

I have no problem with sales tax. I have a problem with states getting a cut of transactions that did not result in transfer of money to an entity within their borders.

Sales taxes generally follow the location where the money was received, not where the goods were used. If I buy something at a brick and mortar store then I'm subject to the sales tax where that store is located. Why should the state of buyer be getting a cut of the transaction when the state of the merchant is the one that is responsible for the environment in which that commerce happened?

If I live in MA and drive to NH and buy fireworks then MA has no claim to tax the transaction because it's obviously the environment of NH that made that commerce possible at all (you can't buy fireworks in MA). What if I live in CA and want to buy some special paint or cleaning product not for sale in CA so I drive to NV to buy it? What if I want to buy a widget and my home state taxes it and some other state subsidizes it (not necessarily at the retail level, the tax/subsidy could be anywhere in the supply chain) so much that I drive to the other state. In that case my home state still has no claim to tax the transaction since it happened out of state. What if the price is so much better elsewhere I'll be willing to pay shipping from half was across the country? How does the fact that the a 3rd party (shipping company) is responsible for getting the goods to their address change the situation? Does the fact that the transaction originates online affect anything?

I have no problem paying state sales tax as long as it goes toward the state of the merchant. The state of the merchant is responsible for creating the environment that facilitated the commerce. They should be the ones getting a cut.

Edit: I genuinely would like to know what the reasoning of those who disagree with me is. I see no good that can come from allowing states to exert authority on businesses outside their jurisdiction.

<comment><USER111> In what way? I choose to live in Oregon. Oregon doesn't have a sales tax. So the Supreme court ruling has no bearing on me. There is nothing stopping anyone from moving to one of the states that don't have a sales tax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER112> Software engineers and entrepreneurs are extremely clever, numerous solutions will arise to integrate with all of the major ecommerce platforms to automate this. This won't be much of a burden on business. As long as regulations are clearly defined (unlike GDPR) the industry will deal. Uncertainty is always the biggest risk.

<comment><USER113> You have no idea what you are talking about. Won't be much burden on business? If you have physical shipping addresses, it is a bit easier, but what if you sell virtual goods/services? Billing address? But that doesn't actually have anything to do where the person is actually buying the product. If I go to a masseuse in California but my credit card has a Texas billing address, I am still charged California taxes. So the precedent of using billing address for tax calculation is a bit ridiculous and innaccurate. What if I have a foreign billing address? So do we use IP address? My IP address routinely has me in the wrong city and sometimes wrong region. When I lived near Avignon, France, my IP would always show me as being in Corsica. Then there is VPN that could make us all in Oregon and avoid taxes completely. Oregon-as-a-Service.

Engineers are clever. Sure that might be true, but now that cleverness is going to be wasted building tax compliance solutions which aren't even close to being "not much of a burden."

<comment><USER112> If the purchaser has an address in an area with taxes, you then pay it. If they do some weird VPN workaround and billing address in the Cayman Islands, then you don't pay the taxes. It's self compliance. We sent men on the moon in 1969, this isn't rocket science to calculate a tax bill.

<comment><USER114> It's really interesting to think about this. Very different types of complexity.

The smallest possible correct program implementing a tax calculator is going to be a LOT bigger than the smallest possible correct program for controlling a 60's era manned flight to the moon. The latter is more complex in other ways, of course.

Complexity can be "deep" or "wide". software for rockets is "deep and thin complexity", but calculating hyper-local minimal tax bills is extreme "wide and shallow complexity".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why doesn't Hacker News use a captcha? - <AUTHOR> how do they do such a good job of keeping out bots and stuff? <comment><USER2> When I first came here 4 years ago I naively made some comments like I was on Reddit. My comments quickly got downvoted and I started putting more thought into my comments, only commenting when I had something interesting to say. The (very) harsh downvoting culture here does a good job of keeping low-effort comments out. That has been my experience at least.

</comment><comment><USER3> You get a captcha sometimes when signing up, probably depends on how dodgy your IP is perceived to be.

</comment><comment><USER4> They have duplicate link detection in place and newcomer post will not appear to public.</comment>


How I lost my faith in Lisp (2002) - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/6f75cfb5a289d3f6?pli=1 <comment><USER4> After 35 years of programming, I discovered Common Lisp and programming is enjoyable again. I wish I'd discovered it earlier.

With what I've learned in the last five years I've (1) written a Common Lisp compiler that interoperates with C++ and uses LLVM as the backend (github.com/cando-developers/clasp); (2) I've used it as the basis of a programming environment for designing new molecules and materials; (3) we've developed a Jupyterlab kernel and ported Jupyter widgets to Common Lisp as the graphical user interface for the programming environment.

I say "I've" and then "we've" because while I started this myself - <USER2> people have joined me and we are now turning it into products.

Common Lisp is great - no other language is as rich and expressive and fun to program in. Real macros (code that writes code!), multiple dispatch, conditions and restarts - it goes on and on. There are lots of features in Common Lisp that haven't made it into other languages.

[edit]

Oh - and then there is this: [http://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp- content/uploads/2017/09/pape...](http://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp- content/uploads/2017/09/paperSLE.pdf) Of all the dynamic languages (and who doesn't like dynamic languages?) Common Lisp is the most energy efficient by a long shot.

<comment><USER5> One thing I struggle to understand is how common lisp deals with the "modern" multi-core world. Not just "async i/o" \- that's just the tip of the iceberg - but concurrency in general.

I know that common lisp (the spec) explicitly doesn't mention any of this - <USER3> was the early 90's so who cared anyway - but how would you fit common lisp into a modern server-side app that has to process many things at once? Or is that just not an area that it's concerned with?

<comment><USER4> I implemented multithreading in Clasp using pthreads and added support for the 'bordeaux-threads' library ([https://github.com/sionescu/bordeaux- threads](https://github.com/sionescu/bordeaux-threads)). Now any program that does multi-threading using the bordeaux-threads library works in Clasp. This is how Common Lisp adds support for new capabilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A few questions for the Lisp fans out there:

1\. The summary here seems to be "modern high-level languages, used, well, are just as productive as Lisp." Does that seem right?

2\. One of the tensions for me in technology is between love of simplicity and love of complexity. An example of the latter is Enterprise Java, where the tendency toward a FactoryProxyBeanMutatorFactoryInterfaceImplementation is well known. Is the perceived superiority of Lisp perhaps because it attracts people with strong simplicity bias?

3\. Every "Lisp is super-productive" story I hear is about a lone individual. Is Lisp's suite spot that of the solo programmer? Since the rise of the Internet, I think most software has shifted to be about teams, and I'm wondering if Lisp is less suited to team collective ownership or projects where many teams are involved.

<comment><USER7> My answers only reflect my own opinions as a long time Lisper and Scheme user. Other's mileage may differ.

1\. _Yes_ , more or less. LISP used to be superior to everything else but modern languages have caught up in most areas. LISP still has a few special tricks like MOP in CL, macros, dynamic loading of code, resumable exceptions, but these are rarely needed in everyday programming.

2\. _No_ , not at all. Neither CL nor Racket nor any other mature LISP and Scheme dialects are simple to use and easy to learn. They have long-steep learning curves, especially idiomatic CL. The syntax is somewhat simple if you ignore special reader extensions, but that's irrelevant. CL is a large language, you need to learn both imperative and functional programming techniques, and then there are tons of libraries and conventions to learn.

3\. _Yes_ , I would say. LISP is incredibly powerful in the hand of one hacker who really knows the system. You will get awesome results very fast and can do things that would be really hard in other languages. It also encourages high level abstractions like no other language I've ever seen. But the main disadvantage of LISP is maintainability. It may be hard to even understand your own code a year or two later, let alone that by other people. Everybody has his own stile and every larger program will create a DSL you have to learn in order to understand what it does.

<comment><USER8> > But the main disadvantage of LISP is maintainability.

LISP allows programmers to use abstraction so powerful that sky is the limit. Problem is, humans have their limits, too. And different humans have different limits. Abstractions are powerful, but then you have to think abstractly in order to use them properly.

When you are good at abstract thinking, LISP will liberate you. When your colleague is better than you, or just as good as you but has more LISP experience, reading their code will make your head hurt. To make you two cooperate, your colleague would have to give up some of their powers... but the ability to use those powers to their maximum was the thing that made them love LISP. So now one of you is going to suffer.

Other languages often put artificial limits to your abstract thinking. For example, you have a few parts of code you realize are somehow just different instances of the same pattern; the pattern could be extracted and reused... but doing it in this language would either be impossible, or the outcome would be really ugly, or it would require writing so much boilerplate code that the more abstract version would end up being longer, less legible, and not really nice at all. So you sigh and don't do it. And the same thing happens to your colleagues in similar situations, so now you are all writing approximately on the same level of abstraction.

In other words, with lesser languages, the frustrating thing is the language. With LISP, the frustrating thing is other humans (and that may include yourself on a different day). But the frustration is always there. Unless you are really good and working alone, I guess. But that puts the company that employs you in a dangerous situation, so it is unlikely to happen.

<comment><USER9> When your friend is a faster runner, and is wearing running shoes, he will leave you in the dust. Solution: everyone wears combat boots, and carries a 30 pound load on their back. Now the field is level; and you even have to cooperate to go forward.

<comment><USER8> That's the sad fact about human nature: when you have a project that requires everyone to move at the same speed, chaining people together and putting unnecessary weight on their back works better (more reliably) that asking the fastest ones to please slow down a little.

(Then of course there are also other problems, such as companies wanting to keep all their employees completely replaceable, which is incompatible with people using their unique skills.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is "famous". Look, here is a Japanese translation:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20021113063322/http://www.gembook...](http://web.archive.org/web/20021113063322/http://www.gembook.jp:80/html/moin/moin.cgi/How_20I_20lost_20my_20faith)

Link to pure article headers+body:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=comp.lang.li...](https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=comp.lang.lisp/L5dZ-j6Id-s/9tOJorXPdW8J)

</comment><comment><USER10> " _At this point I was seriously considering the possibility that there really was a thriving Lisp economy out there somewhere, and that I was being excluded from it for some reason, like maybe my reputation for being obnoxious. (But even that theory came unraveled when you showed up, Erik.)_ "

Ouch.

And in further posts, Erik responds,

" _Sigh. Will you _ever_ get a clue? (For full credit, your answer must be 2000 words or longer.)_

" _A free hint for you: Cut your losses and just _move_on_. If Python is so great, enjoy it for what it is, and make it your new community. Pursue your happiness -- if it is to be found elsewhere, move accordingly. Hanging around here apparently makes you progressively more unhappy._ "

<comment><USER11> I saw that too...ouch. What's the beef about here?

<comment><USER12> Erik was (he has passed away) fairly obnoxious. Like makes Linux Torvalds look like a diplomat obnoxious.

e.g. Naggum on XML: [http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/xml/s-exp_vs_XML](http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/xml/s-exp_vs_XML)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My summary: he worked at Google in the early 2000's (when there were indeed many astonishingly productive progammers), and he saw them being super productive in languages like Python. And he himself became productive in such non-Lisp languages.

He uses the hash table as an example, and I think it's apt. Lisp does feel "old" to me with respect to having 10 different choices for hash tables in 10 different dialects. (I briefly worked with Julia's femtolisp a couple years ago and felt this.)

I also felt it when trying OCaml like 5 years ago. I loved the language, but having to "choose" which hash table to use felt odd.

Newer languages like Go and Rust (I think) both have Python/Perl-like hash tables built-in, or at least close to the core where all libraries can interchangeably use them. I think this is here to stay. Hash tables won :)

<comment><USER4> You have four different choices for hash-tables. You choose how the key hashing should work with four levels - pointer hashing (which is very fast) to hashing the contents of arrays and list keys (which is slow). If you only get one choice then hash-tables wouldn't be as powerful.

<comment><USER14> And in many implementations you have several options for weakness on hash tables. While not required by the standard, weakness is a very powerful enhancement to hash tables. (Weakness is the kind of thing programmers could add themselves if CL had a MOP for the garbage collector.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Previous threads:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2308370](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2308370)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=107683](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=107683)

<comment><USER16> On one of these I like the comment "You sound like an English speaker claiming that English is easier for people to understand than other languages. "

well yeah of course english is easier, else there wouldn't be these kind of tables : [https://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language- guide/lan...](https://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language- guide/language-difficulty)

There's no equality amongst languages. Japanese students have to get up and do one hour of kanji learning every year from 8 years old to 18 years old in addition to normal language classes for instance - there's nothing comparable in english.

<comment><USER17> That table is ranking languages by how easy they are _for an English speaker_ to learn -- that is, how much commonality they have with English. It doesn't make any claim about English having some fundamental property that makes it easier to learn.

<comment><USER10> From the first paragraph:

" _The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) has created a list to show the approximate time you need to learn a specific language as an English speaker._ "

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> (2002) I believe. I wonder where the author stands now? 16 years is plenty of time to get your faith back and lose it again.

<comment><USER19> you could ask him yourself. these days he goes by the name "ron garret," and he commented right here on this site only an hour ago.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lisper](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lisper)

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you are interested in LISP but want to have a much lower risk of having an aneurysm or becoming a hermit, I'd recommend Clojure/Clojurescript

</comment><comment><USER21> I first met Lisp in university and I fell in love immediately. Over the years though, I went through the same thing as the author here and now I'm happy with the mainstream languages.

I still think it's beauty is unrivalled but in the OO world, Typescript comes pretty close.

</comment><comment><USER22> Clarification: He only lost his faith into Enterprise Common Lisp. He didn't make his Lisp into Space (the Mars Rover), only as simulator, and then he had to write the Google Adwords program in Java.

There are still plenty of successful but very small Enterprise Common Lisp companies, many of them being bought later and converted into something worse: Viaweb, Ithaka, Nintendo, NaughtyDog, ... KTI, Bentley or Grammarly still doing strong.

[https://lisp-lang.org/success/](https://lisp-lang.org/success/)

</comment><comment><USER23> > What's more, once I got knocked off my high horse (they had to knock me more > than once -- if anyone from Google is reading this, I'm sorry) and actually > bothered to really study some of these other languges I found _myself_ > suddenly becoming more productive in other languages than I was in Lisp. For > example, my language of choice for doing Web development now is Python.

Wonder what critical features of Python are particularly hard to replace with Lisp extensions. Interface with other runtime environments?..

</comment><comment><USER24> I had tons of fun with Lisp in college and have wanted to use it various times in my career but never had any success convincing my colleagues.

I am also very fond of Perl and I've been able to use it many times because it was already there (I didn't need to install anything) and I could find excellent modules on CPAN.

I bet Lisp would be way more popular if every Linux installation came fitted with it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Ron Garret did a talk at Google closely related to this post in 2012.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gZK0tW8EhQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gZK0tW8EhQ)

</comment><comment><USER26> How do I view this without logging into Google?

<comment><USER27> Google Groups often gets into a weird halfway-authenticated state that won't let you see public posts. It's visible if you're actually anonymous. Try it in an incognito window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > BTW, ignorant is not a pejorative term. If you think it is you are ignorant > and you need to go look the word up in a dictionary.

Did that. The Merriam-Webster, in fact. Here's what they said:

> There are several meanings of ignorant, all of which are concerned with a > lack of knowledge in some sense; some of these are more insulting than > others, and care should be exercised before applying this word to people who > you do not wish to offend. Saying "They were ignorant of most of the laws of > physics" means that the people in question did not have a specific body of > learning. Saying "You are an ignorant person" is possibly describing someone > as primitive, crude, or uncivilized.

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ignorant](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/ignorant)

I'm going to resist the temptation to call the original author ignorant since I don't want to spawn some sort of infinitely recursive ignorance-accusation chain. Instead, I'll call him unintentionally rude.

<comment><USER29> Far too often people confuse dictionary definitions and colloquial usage. Dictionary definitions always lag colloquial usage. The meaning of words comes from their usage and the quote you referred to seems like someone being intentionally obdurate to linguistic changes. The person acknowledges that there are people who use the word ignorant in a pejorative way.

<comment><USER28> OK, I'll bite. Do you live or work in an environment where you could call someone ignorant and be understood to mean _only_ that there is some specific bit of knowledge they don't posses, without making a larger accusation of intellectual incompetence?

Where?

I try to be sensitive to issues of usage like this because civility does not come easily to me, and I have to be careful of what I say lest I inadvertently offend. And I am confident that when I have heard the word used, it is almost invariably in the larger sense. Use in the narrow sense tends to be by foreigners, who seem to be looking for a translation into English, and could easily not know the broader implied meaning.

<comment><USER29> I think you misunderstand my post. The person who was quoted as saying that "ignorant" isn't pejorative since the dictionary definition of the word isn't pejorative is being an ass. Colloquial usage trumps dictionary definitions when it comes to interpreting speech.

<comment><USER30> Depends on the context, too. Especially in non-casual contexts, where more rigor is expected, you take greater care to use and define terms more consistently in order to make communication more accurate and effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Meanwhile, I ported Arc to JS: [https://imgur.com/0Ba0NZN](https://imgur.com/0Ba0NZN)

If LN turns into anything, it'll be because of Lisp, not in spite of it. It really doesn't matter that the world is phobic to it when you alone are the blacksmith.

One could argue "See? It's running in JS. Doesn't that mean Lisp is useless?"

Maybe. But macros are a thing. And when you can generate React on the fly, without having to make a class for every single thing you want to do, the power disparity starts becoming very apparent.

There are interesting Lisp codebases, but you have to dig for them. Abuse (a game engine) comes to mind. [http://abuse.zoy.org/browser/abuse/trunk/data/lisp](http://abuse.zoy.org/browser/abuse/trunk/data/lisp)

And what other language could let you add type inference with relatively little effort? [https://web.archive.org/web/20070610012057/http://www.cs.ind...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070610012057/http://www.cs.indiana.edu/classes/c311/)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20070615124421fw_/http://www.cs....](https://web.archive.org/web/20070615124421fw_/http://www.cs.indiana.edu/classes/c311/a10.html)

<comment><USER32> FWIW, React is a built-in feature of the new Arc-in-JS port. Here's how it looks:

      ( href: "https://news.ycombinator.com" "Hacker News")

That lets you merge s-expression syntax with React syntax quite nicely.

      (
        (
          (
 width: "100%" "Hello, world")))

Here's the output of a REPL session.

      $ rlwrap bin/lumen-node

      > (load "arc.l")

      > (print:compile:expand '( href: "https://news.ycombinator.com" "Hacker News"))
      React.createElement("a", {href: "https://news.ycombinator.com"}, "Hacker News")

      > (print:html ( href: "https://news.ycombinator.com" "Hacker News"))
      Hacker News

      > (print:html ( ( (
 width: "100%" "Hello, world"))))

Hello, world

      > (print:html (whitepage "Look ma, no Racket"))
      Warning: Each child in an array or iterator should have a unique "key" prop.

      Check the top-level render call using . See https://fb.me/react-warning-keys for more information.
        in body

      Look ma, no Racket

You can see it's actually JS, since you get all the same warnings that you'd normally get in a node repl. (It's literally running on Node.)

And (print:html (msgpage 'shawn toofast*)) spits out a page saying "You're submitting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks."

I find it much easier to generate HTML than traditional methods, and much more maintainable. But it's not fair to claim that something new is inherently better. Time will tell.

I'm most interested in any unexpected warts, but there don't seem to be any so far.

<comment><USER32> Current code is at [https://github.com/lumen- language/lumen/blob/f7bfd4dca71ed1e...](https://github.com/lumen- language/lumen/blob/f7bfd4dca71ed1e4eb380e7e819a302825d37936/arc.l#L2234-L2245) if anyone's curious. It's basically a copy-paste from the official arc3.1 release.

(You can diff with the official sources at [https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/f01d3f9c661eed055...](https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/f01d3f9c661eed05511711a0f3388ca2a1d34fa2/news.arc#L400-L411))

Apologies for the nested replies; wasn't able to edit.</comment></comment></comment>


Business Insider: UBI needs to die after 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/ubi-universal-basic-income-trump-2016-12 <comment><USER2> Business Insider needs to die after 2016.

</comment><comment><USER3> The inevitable upcoming impas is that less people have to work, but it's a norm to punish and look down at the unemployed.

So, with the unemployment rates rising everywhere, mostly due to technology displacing labor, what does the future hold?

<comment><USER2> More of the same.</comment></comment>


Web 2.0 Marketing – 5 Concepts That Matter - <AUTHOR> http://www.relativitycorp.com/web2marketing/article9.html <comment><USER2> I didn't want to post so many negative comments today... but I seriously can't believe I wasted my time reading this marketing-speak ridden junk. How did a submission from an account that is 5 hours old make it to the RSS feed?</comment>


President Trump Fires FBI Director James Comey - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2017/05/09/527663050/president-trump-fires-fbi-director-james-comey <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14304088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14304088)

</comment><comment><USER3> 1 hour ago thread is here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14304088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14304088)

(Not sure why it's already down to 2nd page despite 408 points in 1 hour!)

<comment><USER4> HN doesn't run on upvotes alone; it's a constitutional democracy. The constitution is [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and this story is unconstitutional.

If 500-point stories on hot topics were dispositive, HN would be a 500-point- stories-on-hot-topics site. It isn't that kind of site, and intervention is required to keep it from going that way.

This is a clear case of 'if they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic', so it's worth dwelling on. It doesn't mean the story is unimportant (on the contrary), but that it doesn't fit the mandate of the site. Sometimes there are exceptions, and this isn't one.

More here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14306111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14306111)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Previous thread pointed out the interesting fact that Trump fired FBI director Comey, who is heading an investigation against him, at the recommendation of Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from said investigation.

</comment><comment> steve-benjamins This isn't great news. A Trump appointed FBI director will not be an improvement over Comey.

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75SEy1qu71I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75SEy1qu71I)

</comment><comment><USER7> @dang, @sctb: Could you let your many users know the current HN policy on political articles? Obviously something is going on, it seems since (February?). Not being up front leads to frustration with wasted time on submissions and comments, and of course a bit of suspicion (e.g., is it supporting some political agenda?). I don't think people want to to reverse engineer your intentions; it's your site, just politely say what they are.

I know the guidelines object to _Most stories about politics ... unless they 're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon_, but that is enforced very unevenly. The top story, last I looked, was about politics, as are many others.

I know moderating is thankless, so many thanks. :)

P.S. IMHO it would be useful to answer on the guidelines page or FAQ. Answers in a thread probably won't be seen by most readers; for all I know, you've already answered several times.

EDIT: For those interested, here is some recent discussion of it by dang, but not really addressing this question directly.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13857086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13857086)

<comment><USER4> The policy has been the same since 2008. Most political stories are off-topic. Sometimes there are exceptions. The principle that guides exceptions is whether the story is 'deeply interesting', as originally described here: [http://web.archive.org/web/20090206141746/http://ycombinator...](http://web.archive.org/web/20090206141746/http://ycombinator.com:80/newswelcome.html), and still here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Let's hope this one doesn't get flagged and buried by the aggressive "I want HN to be a tech-only news site" crowd, like the other article did.

edit: to add more content, we may be witnessing history here. I think it would be a huge mistake for us to stick our heads in the sand in a misguided effort to avoid politicized discussions.

<comment><USER9> Which is unfortunate because I left work thinking I could catch up on the comments when I got home. I was wrong.

Is there a way to find the old thread? I value the discussion this community has to offer.

ETA: Thank you both

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14304088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14304088)</comment></comment></comment>