Not saying I agree with it, just saying the law is probably on the books.
And how many do you think actually report these items and pay the taxes? My guess is it much closer to 0 than 10%.
Before the internet catalog sales, at least Sears Catalog sales, had to include sales taxes at the rate of the state they were shipped to.
Not paying sales taxes on internet sales is an unfair disadvantage to brick and mortar retail stores.
Not going to argue with you there. I worked for a state tax agency. One of our own employees glitched the system when he reported this use tax on his income tax form. He was probably the first. I know I certainly didn't.
Most of what I bought on-line came from operations that had brick-and-mortar stores in our state and they collected the tax at the time of the sale. Some didn't. At the time, I bought relatively little on-line, or from catalogs. I still don't buy much on-line. More and more on-line retailers are adding the tax.
Yes, you know why? Because of the brick-and-mortar laws. I explained this above. Sears likely had brick-and-mortar business in every state. That is why they added the tax to your catalog sale.
Not paying sales taxes on internet sales is an unfair disadvantage to brick and mortar retail stores.
When I buy something on-line, it is because the brick-and-mortar stores don't have it for me to buy here, or the cost of the product and all other fees (shipping, etc...) is less than that of the local stores. If I can get it locally for the same or close to the same price, I do.
Thousands of brick and mortar stores are ALSO selling on-line.......and unless they have a "brick and mortar" store in the state of that "on-line purchase"...they aren't collecting taxes on that sale.
It’s no more of an advantage than mail order has always been, mail order only charged tax if they had a physical presence in the state of the purchaser. Places like Sears that was everywhere, most other places it was 1 or 2 states. Brick and mortar offer instant gratification and in person assistance for possibly, though not necessarily, a slightly higher price. Plus they can always go online too. It’s a pretty level playing field.
The reason Sears Catalog had to collect sales tax is because Sears had retail stores in every state.
Lands End for a long time didn’t have to collect sales taxes because they didn’t have stores except in a couple of states. As they opened outlets around the country, they had to keep adding states for which they collected sales tax.
Virginia was often one of the first because we have two large outlet malls which attract the national catalog companies like LL Bean, Lands End, Lillian Vernon, and others.
On the other hand, people from Virginia often drove to North Carolina to buy furniture, so they wouldn’t have to pay sales tax (you could avoid sales tax by showing your driver’s license). Of course, Virginia requires people to fill out a use-tax form for those purchases, but lots of people cheat on their income taxes.