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I disagree. I believe you should only have to collect sales tax in and for the jurisdiction where you do business (i.e., the city/county/state combo). Washingto
by rbritton 16y ago
I disagree. I believe you should only have to collect sales tax in and for the jurisdiction where you do business (i.e., the city/county/state combo). Washington state changed how they require sales tax a couple years ago and now charges sales tax based on where you _ship_ the end product. Out-of-state is zero as in every other state, but in-state is where it gets miserable. The table the department of revenue publishes has something like 150000 rows where, to get an accurate sales tax jurisdiction code and rate, you have to look up by the full Zip+4. Remittance monthly/quarterly/annually requires YOU to do all the work of breaking it out by jurisdiction. With any volume at all it's absolutely miserable.
- ericd 16y agoYeah, unless the federal government manages the coordination of maintaining an easily accessible nationwide database of these varying tax rates, or there's a mandate that the state tax code and collection be vastly simplified for online stores, I think this is likely to smother small e-commerce companies and discourage new ones from starting up.
- kgermino 16y agoI still think that paying sales tax _only_ in the district where the business is based isn't right either because when a company gets large enough (Think Walmart) that's a ton of money going to one town. However I don't see why you can't tax based on where the product is shipped from, or the closest company office to the buyer. That's no worse than a company that has stores in different districts and spreads the revenue closer to what it would actually be in a retail store.