Replies

Thanks.

I hate to admit it, but I’m a geezer. But because of that, I remember alot of arguments going on for years in the 60’s and 70’s about states trying to have sales tax on mail order.

And at that time(s), it was UNIVERSALLY agreed that no state should be able to tax something coming from another state.

What has changed?
Economics?
States?
Knowledge?
Greed or not enough spendthrift?

The Constitution? Has the Constitution changed?

I dunno. Life is too hard. You think you can learn the rules, then live by the rules, and you would be OK. But then they just come along and change the rules whatever damn time it’s to their advantage, and you end up with yur butt in the grinder...

I believe that there is no sales tax bought in other states via the internet UNLESS the company has a presence in your state. Most companies like Amazon add the sales tax automatically based on your zip and the company you are buying from.

What has changed?

The cost of buying products remotely has dramatically decreased and the cost of state taxes has increased so much that, for many classes of products, they have crossed. Prior to the internet, buying products from another state was a novelty, now it is commonplace. That's what has changed.

I hate to burst your bubble but CA has had its use tax since the 1930s. It's effectively the same as taxing articles exported from another state.

Residents are asked to pay the equivalent in use tax on an out of state purchase that they would have paid in sales tax had the same purchase been made in CA.

What has changed?

If I had to guess, I'd say today's politicians are more ignorant of the Constitution, the public is certainly more ignorant of their Constitutional rights, and the politicians are probably in worse money straits now than they were then. I doubt today's politicians are any more greedy than those were. Politicians are politicians are politicians.

But you make exactly the right analogy, that to mail order sales. So many people talk about the shift to internet commerce, much of which is interstate, and jump from there to the assumption that the states are LOSING money and that there is some sort of "loophole" if you don't have to pay on interstate transactions. They probably are losing in absolute terms, but so what? They were probably getting too much anyway (when was the last time they complained when some paradigm shift increased revenue). Anyway, the RELEVANT datum is the comparison with what taxes they used to get out of interstate transactions, or what they should have been getting, which is none.