How to Get Less of Something: Only More

Last week I posted about how to get less of something; raise the price.  You see, as price goes up, demand goes down, that’s how it works.  If you sold 3 cases of beer at a buck a bottle, you could expect to sell less than 72 bottles at 2 bucks a bottle.  Now, this isn’t all bad news.  Sometimes, the supply is limited.  Take, for example, a concert.  You can only fit so many people into the RBC Center.  So, what sense would it make to price the tickets where the demand exceeds the supply?  Rather, a shrewd business manager would continue to raise the prices until the demand met the supply exactly.  Anyway, I digress.

In our story, the Great State of North By God Carolina has only begun, Be-GUN, to talk about assessing state sales tax for on-line purchases made as a result of pass though retailers.  Wow.  That’s a lot to think through.  But it works like this.

Say, as readers are flocking to this site by the ones and twos, I decide to cash in on the traffic.  I make a deal with randomsite.com and put their advertisement on the side of my web page.  Then, as my gentle readers clock though to randomsite.com and make purchases, I get a percentage.  The beauty of Capitalism.

Now, however, North Carolina is wanting to apply sales tax to those purchases made as a result of click through programs.

Much like our local pub above, these retailers are seeing sales go down as a result of prices going up.  After considering their situation, costs, benefits and other tricky business school kinda stuff, they decide to end their commission relationships with their on line partners.

Net/net – North Carolina sees the same amount of sales tax dollars as they would have without the law.  Namely $000,000.00.  And, this is the best part, North Carolina residents who run websites see a reduction in their incomes.  Further, we have to assume that these North Carolina residents are reporting the income that they make as a result of these relationships.  That is, they have to submit as income and then pay State and Federal income taxes on any money that they make.  Now the state, AND Obama, is losing the State Income tax revenues too.

Awesome.  Simply by talking, just talking, about such a tax, we have seen two on-line retailers leave the market.  The latest?  The NewsandObersever is reporting that Overstock.com is ending their arrangements with North Carolina partners.

The real slap in the face for Carolina?  This concept is SO insane that even the Govna’ of California, The Terminator, vetoed a similar bill in California.