[matwood]

Interesting that you think it's Amazon that is cheating the kids in CA and not the politicians (or other huge lobby siphoning money from the CA tax payers).

With that said, state sales tax has always been about collecting tax if the business has a presence in the state. This works for Amazon all the way down to the mom and pop that sells across the internet to people in another state.

Most (all?) states have a line item on their tax forms where the tax payer can write in a value on items they purchased out of state and need to pay taxes on. I'm guessing very few people fill that line in. It touches on another problem that no one wants to pay taxes (they always want someone else to pay), yet they want more and more services from the government.