4 ms·
I can understand the argument that you don't want the complexities of dealing with 50 different state taxes to burden the little guy, but what would stop the US
by rflrob 15y ago
I can understand the argument that you don't want the complexities of dealing with 50 different state taxes to burden the little guy, but what would stop the US Congress from passing legislation that requires any company doing inter-state business over $N to pay sales tax to the receiving state?
- ScottBurson 15y agoI think we need such legislation, with the caveat that there needs to be an easy way to compute the amount of the tax. (Figuring out what sales tax rate would apply at the purchaser's exact location is hard because of county and city taxes. In some cases the 5-digit ZIP code is not even sufficient.) A single tax rate for all such sales is probably too simple, as it would put online retailers at a disadvantage when shipping to a state with no sales tax. A single tax rate for each state might work. At the other extreme, it could probably be done based on the 5-digit ZIP code, but I don't think it would work to go any finer than that. Even at that level, we'd need an online service to do the lookup.
- tzs 15y agoThe complexity of dealing with 50 different state sales taxes isn't much of a problem. It's the tens of thousands of county, city, and local sales taxes that make it a problem.
- throw_away 15y agoand as I've mentioned on earlier threads, then you have to add another dimension of which things are taxable and which are exempt.