Author: Adam Thimmesch

I teach at the University of Nebraska College of Law where I focus my research on state taxation, tax privacy, and general tax-policy issues. I teach Individual Income Taxation, State and Local Taxation, Corporate Taxation, Corporate Finance, and Business Associations. I occasionally tweet (@AdamThimmesch), occasionally run, and try to keep up with my four kids.

Online Shopping and Tax Privacy

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By Adam Thimmesch

The privacy implications of online commerce are complicated and fascinating. On the one hand, it allows individuals to protect their privacy by shopping for sensitive items without the knowing glances of store clerks, fellow patrons, or those passing by. On the other hand, it creates a digital trail that can connect them to a particular vendor or purchase in perpetuity. This can occur with respect to items that are politically, medically, or sexually sensitive and with respect to items that they’d just prefer to keep a secret. (For example, if you forget to browse in private mode, you might find that your wife’s Facebook feed now includes ads for the items that you were searching out for her birthday. Woops. Sorry dear.)

Your online shopping habits might also soon be known to your state revenue authority. Given states’ limited jurisdiction to require online vendors to collect sales taxes from consumers, some states have taken a new approach—requiring those vendors to, instead, rat out their customers to the state. Continue reading “Online Shopping and Tax Privacy” →

President Trumpeting Marketplace Fairness?

By Adam Thimmesch

Hello everyone! I’m excited to be joining the Surly Subgroup and appreciate the opportunity to share some of my thoughts in thus forum. I’ve been at the University of Nebraska College of Law since 2012, and I teach Individual Income Tax, State and Local Tax, Corporate Tax, Corporate Finance, and Business Associations. Much of my research to date has focused on state-tax issues, though I’ve recently been spending time also thinking about how our tax systems intersect with individual privacy interests. I am looking forward to blogging about these issues—and maybe a good tax-and-soccer scandal from time to time.

This is a particularly good week to enter the blogging world as a state-tax guy. I woke up yesterday ready for a regular day of summer research and writing when this happened:

Now, I’m generally inclined to not give much attention to our current President’s tweets, but it isn’t often that state-tax issues get presidential attention, so it seemed like a good opportunity to dig into the tweet a bit more. (Plus it gave me the opportunity to use a terrible Trump pun right off the bat as a blogger.)

The Tweet

Although the President’s tweet is difficult to interpret (and that’s being gracious), it appears that he was primarily attempting to criticize The Washington Post as “fake news.” That came a day after the paper reported on the fact that several of his golf clubs had posted fake Time magazine covers on their walls. Trump made this criticism, though, through an oddly constructed reference to the paper’s relationship with Amazon and Amazon’s position with respect to “internet taxes,” which most likely is a reference to the collection of use tax on online sales. (The Washington Post and Amazon are not related, of course, except that Jeff Bezos—the founder, chairman, and CEO of Amazon—purchased the paper in 2013.)

Continue reading “President Trumpeting Marketplace Fairness?” →