"The cases the court overturned said that if a business was shipping a customer’s purchase to a state where the business didn’t have a physical presence such as a warehouse or office, the business didn’t have to collect the state’s sales tax. Customers were generally responsible for paying the sales tax to the state themselves if they weren’t charged it, but most didn’t realize they owed it and few paid."
https://apnews.com/332abb7455cb4b60b2effc0852ff3c89/High-Court:-Online-shoppers-can-be-forced-to-pay-sales-tax
Appreciate the reply, but as an issue its still confusing.
I get that a state wants its local citizens to pay state sales tax for purchases in state. But if I go out of state and make a purchase, my home state has no in state purchase to tax. I am equating physically going out of state with virtually going out of state by purchasing online. If the state cant tax what I bought when I was physically in another state, how can they do so when I buy online from another state? Up til now they could not.
I admit this is a consumer tax loop hole (and as a consumer I like it), but if a state wants to collect taxes for its citizen buyers on their online purchases from out of state sellers, then it seems like they will have to create expensive enforcement mechanisms to track transactions and then bill the buyer in state, or somehow bar the out of state seller from taking orders online from the buyers state. They could try to bill the out of state seller, but if I was the out of state seller and another state told me I had to collect tax for them, I think I would tell them to pound sand.
Now as I write this, I guess if both buyer and seller states got together and created pact and laws to force collection on each other, then the seller is stuck collecting as if the buyer physically purchased locally. But this would be a thing coordinated between states, kind of like reciprocating on drivers licenses, or CC permits?