High Court: Online shoppers can be forced to pay sales tax

AP ^ | June 21, 2018 | Hessuca Gresko

[a fool in paradise]

So are their first 200 transactions tax free every year to each state or at their 201st transaction do they owe taxes on 201 transactions with sellers who aren't going to willingly be billed sales tax months after completing the transaction?

[a fool in paradise]

Amazon has a brick and mortar presence in any state that has a Whole Foods. They may still have a presence with their warehouses and distibution services even without WF.

How many states is Amazon not collecting sales tax in these days?

[Mouton]

Why is it whenever I like a particular SC decision, it is not considered settled law and seems to get overturned? I love to see Roe get overturned but that has not happened.

Meanwhile, seems to be this may form a basis for national concealed carry. After all, if a company is now going to be required to enforce another states sales taxes, that state should also be required to follow the other states carry rules.

I guess the swing vote here, Kennedy, probably has a gig with Amazon as soon as he leaves office.

[a fool in paradise]

Are mail order catalog and phone sales still exempt?

[Jeff Chandler]

Any programmer out there want to collaborate on a WooCommerce plugin?

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

They have already done this with a statement on their state income tax. Not sure how it works in states that do not have income tax.

As long as they do not turn me into their unpaid tax collector I am sanguine about it.

They say that I have to collect the sales tax from all my customers and remit to all 1000+ tax collecting agency in which they might live and I shut the website down.

[Red Badger]

Who collects the taxes?

When a citizen from one state buys from another state does that person pay both states’ taxes?.................

[relee]

Thanks.
If I live in NYC (and my credit card bill to address is in NYC) and I make an online purchase while on vacation in Florida and ship it to the hotel in Florida, will the retailer still have to charge me the NYC the sales tax? Just wondering ...

[Jeff Chandler]

https://www.google.com/search?q=woocommerce+plugin+sales+tax&rlz=1C1AVFC_enUS779US780&oq=woo&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j0j69i65l3j69i60.2135j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[Jim W N]

Once again, as is almost always the case, it looks like they’ve ruled on something that is not a genuine federal issue.

If this is regarding state taxes within the state, that is not within the authority of the feds or the Supreme Court. If applicable, the ruling should only apply where one state is taxing goods from another state, which I believe would be unconstitutional.

So it would appear this ruling is unconstitutional because it is not a genuine constitutionally-recognized federal issue, or unconstitutional if it involves one state taxing goods coming from another state.

[mewzilla]

Nothing that I see prevents that and states like California and New York are quite greedy and tax hungry.

They are just plain desperate. And Sutton's Law is still in force. So for businesses not presently unaffected, fear not, they'll get to you...

[jeffersondem]

“High Court: Online shoppers can be forced to pay sales tax”

When the government services you good, you don't mind paying 50 percent of your money in taxes.

And when legislators didn't take enough, the Supreme Court passed a law to set things right.

[Moonman62]

As a small business, this is frightening. While South Dakota law has $100K threshold before requirement to collect taxes, will other states?

...

According to what I’ve read in another article, there probably will be legal pressure on other states to keep their laws simple like South Dakota’s and not be a burden on interstate commerce.

[Lazamataz]

What an odd mix. Liberals against; liberals for. Conservatives against; conservatives for.

[Fair Paul]

If I sell on eBay am I required to collect (and remit) sales tax for each location I sell to?

[chrisser]

"If I were a retailer here in Tulsa, I would have to collect 8.5% sales tax on every transaction. I could compete against Amazon on service and other variables. But Amazon doesn't have to charge that 8.5% tax. That is just not right or fair. "

True, but by definition, the out of state retailer must ship the product to the consumer. Aside from the shipping costs, there's the time delay. Those factor into consumer decisions. If we're really concerned about absolute fairness, then maybe we should force in-state retailers to pay an additional tax on sales from inventory to offset the cost of shipping and the inability to deliver at the moment of the transaction to the out of state retailers.

I'm not suggesting that, only trying to point out that fairness can be interpreted broadly.

If fairness was really the goal, then the focus would be on collecting sales tax at the state from which the product ships, not the state to which the product is delivered. The delivery companies are already paying taxes to cover that part of the transaction. The destination state isn't paying anything for the costs of running the business in the source state. If taxes are to be collected, it should be where the business doing the shipping resides.

Of course, that wouldn't be "fair" to states with high sales taxes...

[NutsOnYew]

I wonder who will collect the tax, the retailer when the sale is made or the tax payer when filling out their tax return?

I used to purchase cigarettes online for personal use. One day I got a letter from the State saying they knew I was buying cigs and they wanted me to pay taxes on past purchases. The good news is that it was a small amount of money, so I just paid it. The bad news is that there was no longer any incentive for me to buy online, so I stopped. There is not much that works better than taxes to depress consumer enthusiasm.

[Kipp]

I operate a business in California and have collected state sales tax since 1985. It's a pain doing it for one state; if I had to deal with filing 50 state tax forms, I'd just give up.

I also sell on eBay and Amazon. They both automatically charge CA sales tax to California customers for me. If those sites could collect the various state taxes and automatically sent them to the states, I'd be fine with that. But if I had to file individual state tax forms, I'd just give up on selling online. (I'm nowhere near selling $100K out of state,so this would only matter if there was no ceiling.)

Maybe there should be one sales tax rate for online purchases so companies wouldn't have to fool with all the various state, county, city, special district tax rates. Say there's a universal 6-7% online tax. If I lived in a state where the tax rate was 4%, I'd still buy online for the convenience. I currently pay 9.5% sales tax when I shop locally. I don't think my local/online shopping habits would change just to save 3% on taxes.

[Repealthe17thAmendment]

I wonder who will collect the tax, the retailer when the sale is made or the tax payer when filling out their tax return?

I'd prefer to see the taxpayer have to pay the tax directly to the taxing agency, whether it's the state or local government. When the tax is included in the price (or taken out of a paycheck) the taxpayer often doesn't understand the full extent of the taxation.

If people had to write the check for every cent of tax they paid, maybe they would give more attention to how that money was spent.

[fruser1]

“’Each year the physical presence rule becomes further removed from economic reality and results in significant revenue losses to the States. These critiques underscore that the physical presence rule, both as first formulated and as applied today, is an incorrect interpretation of the Commerce Clause,’ he wrote.”

That’d be for congress to decide bubba. Legislating from the bench.