New U.S. Sales Tax Regime For Internet Sellers?

morganew writes "As reported last week on Slashdot, States are pushing for new sales tax rules that would force Internet sellers to collect taxes for up to 7500 jurisdictions. Legislation has been introduced. The House Judiciary Committee held hearings today; here's CNet news on the bill, and here's a report (PDF link) on what it could mean to internet sellers."

Comments

International orders?

[grub]

Will this put US online sellers at a disadvantage to, say, Canadian ones for importing? For example an amazon.com order plus the taxes verses an amazon.ca order with shipping and the exchange rate differences?

U.S. Constitution Article I Section Nine

[Anonymous Coward]

"No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State."

That about wraps it up.

Re:Death of eCommerce

[NanoGator]

" But once the price advantage of no sales tax goes away, goods that incur a shipping charge will be better bought locally, all things being equal."

That's not necessarily true. Not everybody orders online because it's cheaper. Amazon comes to mind. It's much easier to buy gifts for people throuhg Amazon than it is to go to a bunch of stores, find the items, and then giftwrap them.

Businesses are another example. It's problematic to send an employee out to buy office supplies. Delivery is a nice feature.

And, for a third example, there's the whole "if I have it delivered, I can order it from work." aspect of it that most ppl won't admit to.

I agree that the tax will cause problems, may even cause some places to fail. No argument there. But it's an exaggeration to say that it'll kill off eCommerce. If mail-order is still around, then eCommerce is still around.