June 21, 2018

The US Supreme Court Rules in Favor of an Online Sales Tax

Earlier today, the US Supreme Court narrowly ruled in favor of allowing states to collect taxes from online sellers, even if the seller may not be physically located within their jurisdiction. Up til now, a seller was required to collect taxes only from customers purchasing product that were located within the same state as their business. Essentially, it is now up to Congress to determine how the ruling will be handled, since there are more than 12,000 local tax jurisdictions, making the task of collecting taxes onerous at best. Moreover, many smaller online resellers may not have the resources to handle the new tax impositions, which could require loads of paperwork to complete and an inordinate amount of time to fully address. A simple solution would be to impose a flat tax across the entire union, perhaps somewhere in the neighborhood of 4%, which might be low enough to dissuade customers from shopping elsewhere. For more information on the ruling and what it could mean visit USA Today.

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Tales of Transparency – Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Out of curiosity, we sometimes get asked why we do not have a new item physically in stock even though it may be marked as such on our web site. The simple answer is time or perhaps more to the point, time management. We run a tight ship here at The Motor Pool. When a noteworthy item comes in that has been pre-ordered up the gazoo, we begin the arduous task of searching our ordering system for the item in question then wedding it with other items that may already be held for the customer or other newly received items expected around the same time frame, thereby reducing shipping costs for everyone concerned. For instance, when the 1:32 scale Forces of Valor vehicles start appearing on the horizon, we may need several days head start to address each new item, contacting the customer if we do not have their proper billing information, editing orders to prevent redundancy, adjusting inventory counts, and such. If we waited until the merchandise actually arrived, then we’d get swamped with new orders as well as old, potentially undermining the process of getting product out in the most expeditious manner possible. As we get larger, and make our products available on additional venues, this issue can easily get exacerbated, so we make every effort to keep everything correct, up-to-date and ship-shape, particularly during the hectic holiday shopping season.

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