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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.'"
No, shipping is an expense, paid by the consumer to the shipper. Sales tax is a revenue for governments (hate'em or not) that is required to provide certain basic services to the citizenry. If you remove or reduce that revenue stream, either be prepared to have other taxes raised(perhaps not as fairly based on consumption or spread across the populace). The only other alternative is the reduction of basic services. I'm here to tell you, we're facing it right now in my state. I work in the state budget office, and we can clearly see the shift in revenues as internet purchasing grows.