For the past several years Congress has been kicking the can down the road on what to do about taxing sales made on the internet. It was all the way back in 1992 that the Supreme Court issued a ruling that required online businesses to file sales taxes only if they had a physical presence in the state where the sale was made.
It has been quite a while since 1992and internet sales have pervaded the mainstream, making it difficult for brickand-mortar retailers to keep up with their online counterparts. Often it is just the sales tax that makes the difference between a store making a sale or losing it to some company online.
Those against the internet tax complain that it is just another tax to the public, but the National Retail Federation points out that the law is already on the books that people must report purchases on their tax returns as “use tax” – but less than 1% of anyone actually does.
Making online sellers collect sales tax would even out the playing field for regular line retailers. What do you think?
I am not big enough, am a sole proprietor 66 years old, selling mostly vintage jewelry. The US Supreme Court said “Oh they can just buy the software. If you sell on eBay you can only charge the state tax rate. Many states like NY and CA have county, city, special taxes that we have to pay out of pocket. Online is not very profitable for small sellers now that every large brick and mortar is online. I work out of my condo and prepare all the shipments, pay state and federal income tax and end up paying what amounts to the district, State, local city taxes that are also levied in many counties in the large state of California. We can’t collect those on eBay or even on my website which only sells my own designs. i don’t pay for ads so not too many sales, I can’t afford it on there but collect taxes in the same way.
I think the sales tax law should be structured to the size of the business, of course, big business can handle these taxes levied against them, whereas a small business may struggle to keep in the black. The law is not a one size fit all, for those that can clearly afford to pay the tax should or lobby for adjustments, but for some business that operates within the fine margins, should be given some slack as their not operating clearly with big profit margins.