"Oh, that's a pretty silly comment then, it's where their store is. Given that people have to supply a card and/or delivery address when buying it's not going to be a massive pain for online retailers."
So why can't it apply the same way to online merchants? Where their business is located?
You obviously don't run an online store. It's not as easy as just charging them tax. There are so many different tax rates (that are constantly changing btw) that it's going to be very difficult for any small retailer to keep this up-to-date.
It would be much easier to just require the customer to claim it on their tax forms (which I believe is already a requirement).
To claim this is "lost revenue" is about the same as when the RIAA claims piracy is lost revenue.
I think what you are claiming is disingenuous, if this was actually the issue then they could easily set some lower income bound on having to collect the tax (eg $10mil/year or something). It's not the mom & pop stores selling stuff online that the government is worried about; it's Amazon and other huge online retailers.
Amazon is able to handle the import duties for dozens and dozens of countries, each of which have complex rules that depend heavily on the actual product. Sales tax is strictly easier than what they are already doing, and saying that it is too complex for them to handle is simply absurd.
What about taxing delivery services instead? If states charged a flat tax on UPS and Fedex, distributed proportionally to cities, would it be enough to fill the gap in state and city budgets?
Do you go after 300 million people or do you go after 10s of thousands?
This is a problem with your states, not with the general idea that in the US the internet retailers are getting away with helping people avoid sales tax at the moment.
This was inevitable, if you didn't see it coming you're a fool.
Also this type of 'problem' is easily automated by computers, you're just going to have to pay for it.
Oh, that's a pretty silly comment then, it's where their store is. Given that people have to supply a card and/or delivery address when buying it's not going to be a massive pain for online retailers.
And web retailers are willing to handle sales taxes where their stores are. The difference is that they're being expected to handle sales taxes for cities and states they don't actually have any presence in - ie, in every state and municipality that has a sales tax.
Indeed. I live in one city and do most of my work in a neighboring city. They both have sales taxes, but the rates are different, and (more important for this discussion) the exceptions (which rate applies to a specific item) are subtly different. I've been here ten years and I still have to think about it -- when I care. Usually I don't bother to worry about it; it's not a significant difference on most individual purchases. A retailer wouldn't have that luxury. And how in the world is a retailer supposed to determine if I'm buying the item in City A and using it in City B, or vice-versa? That happens a lot - the shipping address I give has more to do with where I'm likely to be at delivery time than where the item will actually be used. Will City A start demanding its cut of items delivered in City B? Will I have to pay taxes to both cities? What happens if I rent a mail drop in neighboring Village C that doesn't even have a local sales tax? What happens when a state with major online retailers (say, "Washingham") starts levying a punitive counter-tax on items purchased from a state (say, "Sickinois") that's insistent on collecting mail-order sales tax? That'll do wonders for the Sickinois economy, won't it?