E-commerce Sites to Collect Sales Taxes Nationwide

aengblom writes "An agreement between 38 states and some of the nation's largest retailers is bringing taxes to the net, The Washington Post reports. In return for collecting taxes for all U.S. sales, the retailers would not be held liable for taxes they 'failed' to collect previously. Best quote: 'If we disclose who these companies are, it's like putting a target on their back.' The Post reports that Wal-Mart, Marshall Fields, Target, Toys R Us and Mervyn's have all 'independently' announced plans to collect taxes nation-wide." Internetnews.com has a story about the taxes and an article claiming it won't hurt online sales.

Comments

Re:IMHO

[Grishnakh]

The only thing Walmart.com is really good for is printing digital photos. You can upload your photos there, and have them delivered to any Walmart in the country when they're done, and their prices are the cheapest online. The sales tax will suck, but with no shipping fees it'll still be better than overpriced places like ofoto.

Just taking your photos to the local Walmart isn't an option since there's no ubiquitous read/writeable removable data storage format other than useless floppy disks.

This article is misunderstood!

[purple]

The stores that are affected by this are NOT the mom-n-pop stores that do most of their transactions over the Internet. This deal is ONLY used to tie major retailers' brick and mortar locations to their respective websites. As a specific example, here is a quote from the article:

"For example, Wal-Mart has 1,500 stores scattered across all 50 states, but WalMart.com, a separate subsidiary, has a physical presence in only nine states."

WalMart.com's presence in nine states requires them to collect taxes for those nine states. However, this deal would require them to collect in all fifty, since the .com's parent company Wal-Mart has retail stores in those states.

A store like mWave.com (a personal favorite), whose only presence is in California, would still be treated the same way they've always been: Purchases from outside California are tax-exempt, just like they would be from a mail-order catalog.

I imagine Dell will be affected by this. They charge no sales tax for orders from "Dell Home", but "Dell Business" charges tax to everyone. It's likely that, if they buy in to this deal, Dell Home will charge tax to everyone.

The short of it is, though, Don't Panic! If you're shopping for bargains online, you'll still find them.