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This is a false equivalency. Opening a retail store in a state is not the same as opening a website people in that state can access. There's no conscious decisi

This is a false equivalency. Opening a retail store in a state is not the same as opening a website people in that state can access. There's no conscious decision, or deployment of capital to that state. My website does not use any of the public resources of infrastructure of other states. There's no legal or practical justification for having me taxed by those states. Laws should also consider practical aspects like whether they're going to dampen the economy, restrain commerce and favor corporations over small businesses. It may be equivalent in your academic mind, but it's not equivalent to the people who will have to do 50 times more work just to continue running their single-location family-owned business as they have for the past 10-20 years.

dragonwriter 14y ago
> Opening a retail store in a state is not the same as opening a website people in that state can access. There's no conscious decision, or deployment of capital to that state. Yes, its much more expensive to open a retail store, and involves some contribution to the local economy to operate it, so the two are not equivalent. On the other hand, they are similar in that each is a conscious decision to conduct business with people in the State, and there is no rational reason to favor remote business.
- dangrossman 14y ago
  Neither should be favored. If a customer that lives in each of the 50 states walks into our retail store, we still only have to collect a single sales tax and remit it to a single entity. If a customer that lives in each of the 50 states logs into our online store, we have to collect 50 sales taxes and remit them to 50 entities. That's a law that favors retail store owners over online sellers. A law with the same practical effects could be written that favors neither by having a single federally-operated sales tax that's distributed to the states according to the relative sales volume to residents of those states.

dragonwriter 14y ago

> Opening a retail store in a state is not the same as opening a website people in that state can access. There's no conscious decision, or deployment of capital to that state. Yes, its much more expensive to open a retail store, and involves some contribution to the local economy to operate it, so the two are not equivalent. On the other hand, they are similar in that each is a conscious decision to conduct business with people in the State, and there is no rational reason to favor remote business.

dangrossman 14y ago
Neither should be favored. If a customer that lives in each of the 50 states walks into our retail store, we still only have to collect a single sales tax and remit it to a single entity. If a customer that lives in each of the 50 states logs into our online store, we have to collect 50 sales taxes and remit them to 50 entities. That's a law that favors retail store owners over online sellers. A law with the same practical effects could be written that favors neither by having a single federally-operated sales tax that's distributed to the states according to the relative sales volume to residents of those states.