States Push to Collect Online Sales Tax

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "On Saturday, 18 states will implement the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, which will make it easier to collect local and state sales taxes on purchases made over the Internet while offering amnesty on uncollected taxes. In their longstanding opposition to collect sales tax, many online retailers 'have cited a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that said that it would be too onerous for e-tailers to calculate all the permutations of differing state and local tax rates,' the Wall Street Journal reports. 'One goal of the project was to remove the ruling as a key defense for online merchants.' Is your state involved? 'The states that have signed on are Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and West Virginia. Five more -- Arkansas, Ohio, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming -- are in the process of finalizing the requirements needed to join, while Washington, Texas and Nevada are in earlier stages.'"

Comments

Direct URL to SSTP web site

[xmas2003]

Here's a direct link to the StreamLined Sales Tax website which is confusing as all get out with their last press release being in 2002; makes you wonder how "legit" these guys are. BTW, should this be filed under "The Mighty Buck" instead of Politics?!? ;-)

BTW, there's been a noteable increase in Wall Street Journal stories on Slashdot - certainly has improved the quality - kudo's to the editors and Carl Bialik from the WSJ

halloween webcam is coming

Re:Direct URL to SSTP web site

[hsmith]

If i recall correctly, this is actually a company that is trying to sell their taxing product to the several states and they have a good few states lined up. The guy in charge was on a talk show i listen to a few months ago. Basically, they wrote the software to do all the taxing and now they are going and getting the clients (individual states). So once they have enough states they are "in business" so to speak.

Not quite

[dreamchaser]

Prior to online sales, the rule was that if the seller had what is called a 'nexus' (meaning a busines presence basically) in a given state, then sales tax applied. The buyer and seller did NOT have to be in the same state if nexus could be established.

While I disagree with this arguement, it *could* be argued that the Internet creates a presence in every state, far beyond the old days of mail order catalogs.

What it really boils down to is politicians on both sides of the aisle hate seeing money being exchanged that they can't get their greedy hands on.

That varies from state to state

[brokeninside]

Many states, Ohio being one, tax all purchases that are made out of state and shipped to an Ohio address. There is even a special line on the Ohio income tax form especially for reporting the amount of goods you've purchased online, through mail order, over the phone, etc.

Of course no one I know of that lives in Ohio has ever put any amount there other than a 0. Nonetheless, it isn't accurate to say that interstate transactions are not subject to and have never been subject to sales tax.

Re:California charges it

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If the end buyer is (delivery is taken) in CA then I simply pay the "use tax" on the item. The customer never sees a sales tax entry.

Use tax =/= sales tax.

Use tax is assessed on any item purchased by the end user. There are many exemptions but the primary one is the end user is exempt from paying use tax if the end user has already paid sales tax.

If you are paying the "use tax" for the customer and not showing taxes paid on the receipt then CA may go after the customer for use tax. The customer can't prove sales tax was paid on his/her purchase.