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State Coalition Approves Internet Sales Tax Plan
An anonymous reader submits this story about the U.S. states banding together to figure out a way to tax mail-order transactions.
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but why should the internet be diffent then mail order
Mail order doesn't have to pay sales tax. Ever notice that when you order something from a catalog it says something like "$STATE residents must pay $PERCENTAGE sales tax", where $STATE is the state where the busines is located?
Out of state residents pay nothing. In theory they're supposed to submit a report and pay taxes to their own state. In practice, no one ever does this.
You're right. But the Supreme Court decision (Quill Corp. v. North Dakota) that exempted us from interstate sales tax was based upon the fact that the myriad of seperate state/county tax laws would create an "unfair burden" on interstate commerce. Furthermore, they strongly suggested in the ruling that the US Congress should make new law regarding this issue.
Once the states "simplify" their tax codes, there is no impediment for Congress to make a new law requiring interstate sales taxation. In fact, as representatives of the states, your representatives might be pretty encouraged to do just that.
-- Heisenberg might have slept here.
Small lookup table? Almost. You can purchase them right now. It's a problem that has been solved, but it's not quite as simple as you think. I once worked on an automated system that calculated sales tax for customers in several states where the company had a physical presence. First off there may be state tax. Then there may be city tax. Then there may be an Independant School District (I don't know about other states but in Texas they are independant taxing authorities.) In almost every case ZIP code is enough to uniquely identify the 3 or 4 different tax rates. Occasionally there was a ZIP code that was split by different taxing districts. In that case the full ZIP + 4 was needed, introducing a few more lookup values.
Once you've done that lookup, you have the tax rates. Add them all together and you know how much tax to charge.
Of course then you have to file the paperwork with each of those different taxing authorities and cut them their checks, usually on different schedules...
In short, it's a nightmare. But actually doing it for all 50 states wouldn't be much more complicated than for one. At least it wouldn't be too bad from a programmer's point of view. The biggest burden would be on the accountants and lawyers.
To email, do the obvious.
It's interesting to see that Utah's governor is spearheading this effort somewhat. Whenever a governor starts talking about something like this, everyone should stop listening. He has no business talking about internet tax. Only congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce (Gibbons v. Ogden 1824). People need to realize their place in the hierarchy and stop trying to step out of their bounds.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman