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States will be able to force more people to pay sales tax when they make online purchases under a Supreme Court decision Thursday that will leave shoppers with lighter wallets but is a big financial win for states.
The Supreme Court’s opinion Thursday overruled a pair of decades-old decisions that states said cost them billions of dollars in lost revenue annually. The decisions made it more difficult for states to collect sales tax on certain online purchases.
The cases the court overturned said that if a business was shipping a customer’s purchase to a state where the business didn’t have a physical presence such as a warehouse or office, the business didn’t have to collect sales tax for the state. Customers were generally responsible for paying the sales tax to the state themselves if they weren’t charged it, but most didn’t realize they owed it and few paid.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the previous decisions were flawed. “Each year the physical presence rule becomes further removed from economic reality and results in significant revenue losses to the States,” he wrote in an opinion joined by four other justices. Kennedy wrote that the rule “limited states’ ability to seek long-term prosperity and has prevented market participants from competing on an even playing field.”
The ruling is a victory for big chains with a presence in many states, since they usually collect sales tax on online purchases already. Now, rivals will be charging sales tax where they hadn’t before. Big chains have been collecting sales tax nationwide because they typically have physical stores in whatever state a purchase is being shipped to. Amazon.com, with its network of warehouses, also collects sales tax in every state that charges it, though third-party sellers who use the site don’t have to.
Until now, many sellers that have a physical presence in only a single state or a few states have been able to avoid charging sales taxes when they ship to addresses outside those states. Sellers that use eBay and Etsy, which provide platforms for smaller sellers, also haven’t been collecting sales tax nationwide. Under the ruling Thursday, states can pass laws requiring out-of-state sellers to collect the state’s sales tax from customers and send it to the state.
Retail trade groups praised the ruling, saying it levels the playing field for local and online businesses. The losers, said retail analyst Neil Saunders, are online-only retailers, especially smaller ones. Those retailers may face headaches complying with various state sales tax laws. The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council advocacy group said in a a statement, “Small businesses and internet entrepreneurs are not well served at all by this decision.”
36. The Supreme Court decision Thursday will .
A. Dette business’ rilutions with states
B. put most online business in a dilemma
C. make more online shoppers pay sales tax
D. forces some states to cut sales tax
37. It can be learned from paragraphs 2 and 3 that the overruled decisions .
A. have led to the dominance of e-commerce
B. have cost consumers a lot over the years
C. were widely criticized by online purchases
D. were considered up favorable by states
38. According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, the physical presence rule has .
A. hindered economic development
B. brought prosperity to the country
C. harmed fair market competition
D. boosted growth in states revenue
39. Who are most likely to welcome the Supreme Court ruling？
A. Internet entrepreneurs.
B. Big-chair owners.
C. Third-party sellers.
D. Small retailers.
40. In dealing with the Supreme Court decision Thursday, the author .
A. gives a factual account of it and discusses its consequences
B. describes the long and complicated process of its making
C. presents its main points with conflicting views on them
D. cities some saces related to it and analyzes their implications
【参考答案】CDBAB
Part B
Directions: The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 41-45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A-G and filling them into the numbered boxes. Paragraph C and F have been correctly placed. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)
A. These tools can help you win every argument-not in the unhelpful sense of beating your opponents but in the better sense of learning about the issues that divide people. Learning why they disagree with us and learning to talk and work together with them. If we readjust our view of arguments—from a verbal fight or tennis game to a reasoned exchange through which we all gain mutual respect, and understanding—then we change the very nature of what it means to “win” an argument.
B. Of course, many discussions are not so successful. Still, we need to be careful not to accuse opponents of bad arguments too quickly. We need to learn how to evaluate them properly. A large part of evaluation is calling out bad arguments, but we also need to admit good arguments by opponents and to apply the same critical standards to ourselves. Humility requires you to recognize weakness in your own arguments and sometimes also to accept reasons on the opposite side.
C. None of these will be easy but you can start even if others refuse to. Next time you state your position, formulate an argument for what you claim and honestly ask yourself whether your argument is any good. Next time you talk with someone who takes a stand, ask them to give you a reason for their view. Spell out their argument fully and charitably. Assess its strength impartially. Raise objections and listen carefully to their replies.
D. Carnegie would be right if arguments were fights, which is how we often think of them. Like physical fights, verbal fights can leave both sides bloodied. Even when you win, you end up no better off. Your prospects would be almost as dismal if arguments were even just competitions-like, say, tennis games. Paris of opponents hit the ball back and forth until one winner emerges from all who entered. Everybody else loses. This kind of thinking is why so many people try to avoid arguments, especially about politics and religion.
E. In his 1936 work How to Win Friends and Influence People , Dale Carnegie wrote: “there is only one way…to get the best of an argument-and that is to avoid it. “This aversion to arguments is common, but it depends on a mistaken view of arguments that causes profound problems for our personal and social lives- and in many ways misses the point of arguing in the first place.
F. These views of arguments also undermine reason. If you see a conversation as a fight or competition, you can win by cheating as long as you don’t get caught. You will be happy to convince people with bad arguments. You can call their views stupid, or joke about how ignorant they are. None of these tricks will help you understand them, their positions or the issues that divide you, but they can help you win-in one way.
G. There is a better way to win arguments. Imagine that you favor increasing the minimum wage in our state, and I do not. If you yell, “yes,” and I yell. “No,” neither of us learns anything. We neither understand nor respect each other, and we have no basis for compromise or cooperation. In contrast, suppose you give a reasonable argument: that full-time workers should not have to live in poverty. Then I counter with another reasonable argument: that a higher minimum wage will force businesses to employ fewer people for less time. Now we can understand each other’s positions and recognize our shared values, since we both care about needy workers.
【参考答案】BGEDA
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