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posted by martyb on Friday June 22 2018, @07:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the everybody-self-reports,-right? dept.

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/21/606463186/with-billions-at-stake-supreme-court-rules-states-may-tax-online-retailers

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that states can require retailers to collect and remit sales taxes on out-of-state purchases. The 5-to-4 decision reversed decades-old decisions that protected out-of-state vendors from sales tax obligations unless the vendor had a physical presence in the state.

Those earlier decisions, one half a century ago, the other a quarter-century ago, date back to a time when mail-order sales were relatively small and online sales were all but nonexistent. As the justices acknowledged Thursday, however, the court back then "could not have envisioned" a world in which e-commerce sales have revolutionized the dynamics of the national economy.

Writing for the five-justice majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the previous decisions "were flawed," and in the modern economy, they "create, rather than resolve market distortions." In today's context, he said, the physical presence rule is "an extraordinary imposition by the judiciary on the states' authority to collect taxes and perform critical public functions."

Furthermore, Kennedy said, the previous decisions effectively functioned as a "judicially-created tax shelter" for out-of-state retailers, and put local businesses at a "competitive disadvantage."

The problems with these earlier decisions, Kennedy said, were made "all the more egregious" by technological innovation. "The Internet's prevalence and power have changed the dynamics of the national economy," he wrote in the majority opinion.

[...] The decision was a victory for South Dakota, which, like some other states, has no income tax and relies on sales taxes to fund most of the state's services. Because of dramatic fall-offs in state sales taxes, the state in 2016 enacted a law to test the physical presence rule. Three large online vendors, Wayfair, Newegg, and Overstock, challenged the law in court, and lost on Thursday.

[...] "The chessboard just looks a lot different now," said Stephanie Martz, general counsel for the National Retail Federation, which includes 18,000 businesses large and small. "Now our members are going to be able to figure out how to construct their businesses without worrying about whether putting a distribution center on this side of a state line or that side of the state line will result in a different tax implication."

While the court made clear that the states do not have unlimited power to require sales tax collection, "The court blessed South Dakota's law," said Carl Davis, research director for the Institute of Taxation and Economic policy.

The law specifically protects small businesses from collecting sales taxes if they have less than $100,000 in sales or fewer than 200 transactions in the state. The state also provides sales tax collection software for free for any business that wants it, and using that software immunizes the business from audit liability. Perhaps most importantly, the state law does not permit sales tax collection for past purchases, meaning that businesses don't have to worry about a huge tax bill that they never anticipated.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @07:55PM (27 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @07:55PM (#696920)

    ... present decisions might also be flawed.

    A 5–4 split suggests this is not a rock solid position.

    Also, the court systems practice rhetoric, not logic.

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by frojack on Friday June 22 2018, @08:08PM (24 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Friday June 22 2018, @08:08PM (#696926) Journal

    Sales tax varies by jurisdiction (city, county, state).
    If you sell a widgit to Bob in East McKee's Port how would you know what tax to charge Bob, and where to pay that tax?

    In the past there was no source of tax information that covered every tiny town with sales tax, not way to monitor that actual sales that took place, and no way to know where to send the collected tax. The exemption made sense.

    Even with a mountain of computers available today, this is a daunting task. No commercial software exists that handles more than a few locations. (Big companies have proprietary system that do this, and the maintenance of these is a nightmare.)

    The internet is the only way to make the necessary information available to every seller.
    What could POSSIBLY go wrong with that?

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @08:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @08:21PM (#696933)

      > No commercial software exists that handles more than a few locations.

      There will be damned soon! If QuickBooks doesn't do it, maybe one of the payment operations like PayPal or large credit-card processors will step up?

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Friday June 22 2018, @08:33PM (7 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 22 2018, @08:33PM (#696940)

      In the past there was no source of tax information that covered every tiny town with sales tax

      I do consulting some of which can be sales taxed and in the state I live in, thankfully the state collects all the tax and documents the hell out of it, but you almost need a lawyer to go over the rate info as it is NOT 1:1 with counties, postal addresses, or zip codes.

      Over my lifetime the total amount of fines I've accumulated from the DoR is $20 so I guess I'm doing well?

      Also you forgot another category of taxation which is "F the tourists" where the tax rate varies by season in some locales.

      Big companies have proprietary system that do this

      Amazon collects a big slice of the take, but they do make all your problems go away, and they have AmazonServices and I've considered billing thru them for all sales taxable transactions, although I've never gone to the effort of serious research.

      Adding to the fun, some software and IT type stuff is taxable; some is not. Depending how the contract is written up, regardless of the actual work I do, I might owe big brother a couple percent or not. This is also hilarious. If I "service your prewritten software" by rewriting it because its a piece of shit, then I owe sales tax, but if I "write custom software" then its tax free. The language on the contract determines the tax not the physical work done. Also if I provide you a printed tangible copy of the source code that skirts mighty close to tax evasion... here's an attachment to an email is definitely tax free. If you've ever seen contractor-types doing really weird shit like refusing to submit paper documents of their work, well, now you know why.

      This may be overly doxy because all states have weird tax laws, but I shit you not, if I do something on spec and try to sell it to someone I didn't know before I wrote it, its sales taxable, but if we have any sort of agreement even as minor as a documented business meeting (like a business lunch with IRS approved dated restaurant receipt?) then custom programming work done for a specific customer is non-taxable.

      Its to the point where I have to check state law every time I do something. If I install some back end support stuff that I didn't write to help a customer out, I donno, Putty for SSH, thats taxable, even if everything else I do WRT my personally written software is not taxable. So if you ever wondered why a contractor is like "You install MySQL for me, then I'll touch your server" its all to avoid a tax audit. I'd literally rather help you install some pre-written software for free off the books than have to deal with the tax and audit bullshit if 99.9999% of my work is my own software.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @09:30PM (6 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @09:30PM (#696977)

        Why do we put up with this obvious crap?

        The amount of lost productivity due to such poorly defined bureaucratic red-tape is unthinkable. The other AC's comment resonates with me: Maybe taxation is a bad way to organize society.

        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Friday June 22 2018, @09:47PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 22 2018, @09:47PM (#696990)

          Maybe taxation is a bad way to organize society.

          Well, the state I live in pulled in about $3K per head per year, about $1500 from income tax and $1500 from sales tax.

          The sheer quantity of frictional bullshit in my opinion is about 10x greater for sales than income tax, so theoretically the highest quality of life would come from slashing sales tax (which is usually regressive to the poor) and boosting income tax (which is usually progressive to the poor). It seems like a no brainer, don't really know why its not done.

          Several options have been tried.

          Financing via printing money works until it doesn't then you get hyperinflation and 1920s Germany leading to 1930s Germany etc etc. In theory the government would be voted out and .. handled by the populace, but in practice the economic collapse is far too fast for voters to influence so it always ends in disaster, even though "in theory" if we limited govt spending to a long term average of long term average economic growth it would be stable. In practice its not dynamically stable at all.

          We could chop the size of .gov in half, but a lot of people exist merely to provide votes for government types to provide services to... this option would be chill in the 'burbs, not so much in the blue hell cities. Essentially we would have to send the national guard to occupy the cities for awhile, its not gonna be free. Low tax rates are a white privilege.

          There's not many other options if you're gonna run a welfare state. Improve the demographics of the population? Well, we're working hard as possible in the opposite direction, so thats a non-starter.

          It might be a shitty way to organize society but it seems to be the least shitty of the alternatives.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Saturday June 23 2018, @01:36AM (4 children)

          by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday June 23 2018, @01:36AM (#697076)

          No, it's not. Taxation is absolutely necessary to fund government.

          What *is* a bad idea is having ridiculously complicated tax schemes that cause a huge amount of overhead in being compliant. Taxes should be simple. Just look at the IRS forms needed for various Americans, especially regular W-2 wage- earners, and then compare to the utterly simple 1-page pre-filled-out forms that typical western European wage-earners get from their governments each year. This crap, while making TurboTax and H&R Block rich, imposes a huge cost on society at large.

          Same goes for this sales tax crap. There should not be 10,000 different jurisdictions in the US for sellers to keep up with and remit to, all with different rules on what can and can't be taxed, and how much. It's too fucking complicated. Worse, sales tax is a regressive tax, hurting the lower classes the most.

          Here's a few proposals (some are mutually exclusive):
          1. Eliminate sales tax except on luxury purchases, and only have income taxes. For states like South Dakota, that means they can go bankrupt if they're too fucking stupid to just implement an income tax like other states.

          2. Forbid localities from implementing sales taxes, so sellers only need to remit to 51 or so entities (do territories have sales taxes?), not 9000-something.

          3. Enact a federal law that sales tax is collected based on the location of the *seller*, not the buyer, and remitted to the jurisdiction the seller is located in, since the seller is the one using government services for their business and warehouse.

          4. Enact a federal law homogenizing the sales tax laws across states, so it's easy for sellers to figure out, and they only need to figure different tax rates.

          • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @05:11AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @05:11AM (#697129)

            Just sayin'.

            • (Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday June 23 2018, @12:36PM

              by anubi (2828) on Saturday June 23 2018, @12:36PM (#697178) Journal

              Unfortunately, no matter how we organize ourselves... its gonna be a guv'mint.

              --
              "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
          • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @12:39PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @12:39PM (#697179)

            I would go the other way around: forbid the federal and state governments from taxing individuals. Make all of that done by the locality, and have federal funds collected from states which collect them from counties, which collect from cities/towns/individuals. Go a little bit further, and make nearly EVERYTHING local, down to all laws beyond the constitution. Makes things harder for businesses, but not radically, and it would simplify things quite a bit while weakening the bureaucratic expansion of the federal government and other malignant entities.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @05:46PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @05:46PM (#697266)

            of course this dumb bitch was going to come shilling for government.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 22 2018, @08:35PM (13 children)

      by bob_super (1357) on Friday June 22 2018, @08:35PM (#696942)

      The people who sell you stuff in a brick-and-mortar store (or a multi-location chain) have to figure it out. Why would the internet sellers be excused, just because they cry that it's too hard ? Can't handle it ? stop selling there !
      Of course, some jurisdiction may find that websites stop shipping to them because their tax system is too obscure, which would, if politicians were logical, result in them simplifying things for everyone ...

      One solution to lessen the pain is to stop being stupid, and follow the rest of the civilized countries in showing the customer tax-included prices, which correspond to the average tax expected to be paid for the product. That removes the real-time requirement, and you can figure out remittances over the next few days/weeks based on actual shipping location. If your business absolutely depends on a +/-2% local discrepancy, you're already in trouble anyway.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @08:56PM (7 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @08:56PM (#696958)

        The people who sell you stuff in a brick-and-mortar store (or a multi-location chain) have to figure it out.

        Yes, those stores do, but there is one huge simplification they enjoy that an internet retailer does not enjoy.

        Those brick and mortar stores exist in only one locality and only have to collect sales taxes according to the rules of that one locality.

        Now, yes, that one localities rules may be a byzantine maze of twisty passages, that all look the same, but it is only one set of rules.

        Now multiply that one rule-set by 50 (for 50 states [*]) and then by 100 (for 100 counties in each of 50 states [*]) and then by 20 (for 20 separate local cites/towns/etc. in each county [*]) and you now have a morass of 100,000+ different tax rule-sets, any one of which can change on the whim of a politician, without warning, and with no notification to anyone that they are changing. And all 100,000 of which can result in fines (or worse) for failing to follow them to the satisfaction of the auditor who just stuck his nose deep up your accounting books.

        That's the problem with internet stores collecting sales tax. It rapidly devolves into a nightmare mess of too many twisty passages, all alike.

        I predict the outcome of this decision will be a handful of companies cropping up offering the service of monitoring these 100,000+ taxing localities for changes and keeping their master rule-set in sync with the political winds of the day in each locality, all for a fee (likely percentage based) of sales. Which in effect will simply amount to yet another tax for the customer to pay. Only this time, it is to a "tax-processor" company instead of a local government office.

        * - Yes, I know not states or local govt's charge a sales tax, but I don't have all of those rules in front of me now, so this is a simplifying approximation

        • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 22 2018, @09:03PM (6 children)

          by bob_super (1357) on Friday June 22 2018, @09:03PM (#696965)

          Two things, which should have been obvious before you went redundant:
          1) Physical stores can have many locations across many tax areas, and they keep track. Car dealerships around here (CA) have to figure out your tax based on your home already. It's not like it's a new concept. It's been going on for decades, pretty much a couple centuries. "On a computer" should actually be the easiest part.
          2) Nobody is forcing anyone to sell their wares in places where they don't understand the tax rate.

          • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @09:32PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @09:32PM (#696978)

            The AC is right. Your points are stupid.

          • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @09:33PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @09:33PM (#696980)

            1) Physical stores can have many locations across many tax areas, and they keep track.

            Almost never as many as online stores. I'm more worried about small businesses; the large ones will be able to handle this just fine.

          • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @09:53PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @09:53PM (#696992)

            Physical stores can have many locations across many tax areas, and they keep track.

            Yes, but each store only considers one set of rules, that of the specific locality where that physical store is located.

            If you travel from AZ to WA and make a purchase at a Seattle Best Buy, you get charged Seattle, WA sales tax, not your home AZ sales tax, in the Best Buy physical store.

            So that physical store in Seattle WA only has to worry about Seattle WA sales tax rules.

            You are often responsible for paying AZ their "double dip" sales tax when you return to AZ with your Seattle WA Best Buy booty. Few folks actually pay this part, however.

            But, the Seattle WA Best Buy does not need to know anything about the sales tax rules in your home state of AZ.

            Not so with internet retailers. They are now going to be expected to know that you are presently in AZ, and charge you tax against current AZ rules, while simultaneously knowing all the other rules for all the other localities, plus the location of each purchaser, so they can charge each purchaser the local tax rules of that purchaser.

            This is where it begins to become untenable. Tracking one rule-set per physical store, based upon the physical locality of the physical store, is trivial vs. knowing all of the rule-sets in every possible taxing locality, and then tracking the location of the purchaser to match up the proper twisty rule-set to the correct purchaser location, is the nearly untenable task. Espically for small startup operators. Which is why the big boys (Amazon, etc.) supported this. It puts a huge barrier up against the formation of the next "Amazon" that could grow to rival the current "Amazon". The current Amazon is big enough they can afford to keep track of all the rules. The small internet startup (who could become the next Amazon if allowed to take root and grow) will find it much harder to take root and grow to challenge the current Amazon.

          • (Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Friday June 22 2018, @09:55PM (1 child)

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 22 2018, @09:55PM (#696993)

            1) Physical stores can have many locations across many tax areas, and they keep track.

            Because they usually only have one tax rate, which varies slowly. Even high school kids can be taught to add 5.5% or whatever to every bill, or just hit the "tax" key on the register which is very easy to program with a constant rate.

            Internet businesses serving a large area, especially small ones, will have a different tax rate and different remitting authority for quite possibly literally every single customer.

            If you have 100K customers my state DoR will let your AS/400 minicomputer talk directly to theirs which I'm sure is very convenient for everyone except the AS/400 sysprogs, anything smaller and they're like F-off do it by hand on their website. So that's what I do. Its actually not that hard, although if I had to do it 49 times for other states I'd be getting pissed off. Its possibly the weirdest website I've ever used. They do have on-shore tech support although they only work 9-5 for password lockouts. My favorite feature is I have to submit annually (almost wrote anally) at my small scale and my account is locked after 6 months without a login, hilarious every friggin time. So I log in at the start and end of summer to reset the clock, just did that recently in fact. Looking forward to doing that 49 more times, gonna be such fun.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @11:58PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @11:58PM (#697391)

              It is function of the people who own the addresses... USPS. Check an address and USPS will tell you the rate. Ship with FedEX or UPS or USPS and tell them the value, they will check the address and tell you the rate and amount, and added to your the shipping "cost". Then they are collecting the tax, since they are actually the holding the product and giving it to the consumer. simple and easy.
              PS: dod this on AS/400 that was validting the address with USPS and have a tax table from a big 4 company, with taxes rate by city, county and zip, updated monthly. We were good at it, the states' auditors all 50 states and terrioiries gave us flying colors. We ven built in error corrections, in cases of areas being re-zipped or rename - average simular names in near same zip for exmaple. We tested every address at least once every 90 days to update any zip+4 or new names, hence new tax rate possible. To us and the law... the "cash register" was in the truck in front of house. Just like any delivery truck.

              Mostly good. screwed up on MTAs like Washington State that follow elementary school districts. But in the end it is, owner of the land that affects the tax rate. The land is know by addresses and those are owned by USPS.

              OH. about 3 man-months to general case. Even if USPS was to handle it fully (and they should!

              Federal Land do not pay State taxes
              State Land do not pay County taxes
              County Land do not pay City taxes

              So in Arkansas where a city incorpates all the surrounding land. If the land is own by a "higher" authority... City Sale tax do not apply.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 24 2018, @01:00AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 24 2018, @01:00AM (#697411) Journal

            2) Nobody is forcing anyone to sell their wares in places where they don't understand the tax rate.

            While plenty of people have pointed out the problems with thing #1, there's a huge problem with thing #2 as well. Namely, you completely ignore the problem and why it is a problem. It's like observing that people weren't forced to run through the death maze of the Cold War era Berlin Wall, and thus concluding that the Berlin Wall was fine (ignoring details like the 140 deaths from people killed either through cold-blooded murder or accident, or the fact that East Germany would have completely depopulated, if they didn't have this policy of killing escapees).

            These many, obscure tax districts act as an unnatural barrier to entry for any would-be mail order business. It's great for Amazon to have such obstacles in place. It's not great for everyone else.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @08:59PM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @08:59PM (#696960)

        The people who sell you stuff in a brick-and-mortar store (or a multi-location chain) have to figure it out. Why would the internet sellers be excused, just because they cry that it's too hard ? Can't handle it ? stop selling there !

        Yes, but each physical location has to only figure out one set of tax rules per location. Internet sellers have to know the rules for all potential areas in the country, even if only to figure out which places aren't worth it to them to sell to.

        Besides, is it legal to refuse to sell to, say, Chicago, Illinois, while you do sell to Springfield, Illinois? I honestly don't know.

        • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 22 2018, @09:08PM (3 children)

          by bob_super (1357) on Friday June 22 2018, @09:08PM (#696968)

          > is it legal to refuse to sell to, say, Chicago, Illinois, while you do sell to Springfield, Illinois? I honestly don't know.

          Stores do it all the time. Go back twenty years and try to get a mattress store to deliver 5 miles, let alone 200 miles away !

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @09:56PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @09:56PM (#696994)

            Deliver != Sale

            If you are willing to cart the mattress away on top of your car (or in your truck) they do not care where you live, and will sell you as many mattresses as you wish to buy. All of the sales, however, will be charged the sales tax rules of the locality within which the physical mattress store resides. They don't have to worry about the oddball tax rules at the location where you plan to haul and install the mattress.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @12:32AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @12:32AM (#697059)

            Wow. I've been reading your posts in this thread, and I must say there is nothing super about you, Bob.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @01:34AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @01:34AM (#697075)

              I think you are confused. Super is his _last_ name, came from his family (at least conceptually). If he was pretending to be "super", he would pre-pend the word, ala, Super_Bob, like SuperMan.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @05:50PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @05:50PM (#697271)

      IT IS VERY SIMPLE to do. I set up and maintained a system for home service company.

      SALES TAX is consumer CONSUMPTION Based. Where is it consumed for food, light bulbs, whatever.
      Consumption with low traffic volumes is ASSUMED to be at the point of change of ownership (the place you bought it).
      It is FOB is used in business. It is saying owner ship changed on sell loading docks. So, the buyer has to get it from there to their location so shipping and the like are the buyers problem.

      SALES is hard to manually do, since if you ship with in a state and rate is different every where then a SMALL would have to know every rate with-in the state. In California r around Houston TX. that is bitch.

      Trucking industry is "ownership" of the goods in the truck is ASSUMED to be driver's. If it catches on fire, is harzardous, or what not, it is the drivers fault.

      SALES TAX varies based on address location. So Federal land in State cannot be taxed, State land in County can not be taxed, County Land in a City cannot be taxed. Then toss in MTA and other local taxing authoruty... you get the picture.

      ADDRESS are OWNED by the Post Office. They know what is right and what is invalid. They know the correct zip and zip+4.

      So the fix is cheap (mostly) and easy (mostly)...
      1) Change laws so ownership changes as each person/carrier takes procession. (normalizes trucking assumption)
      2) Sales Tax Rate will be part of Address validation by the Post Office. It would take about 1 month and 3 people to do it. Post Office already knows the type of land and it actual location. It is setting up the filling system by State, COunty, City, MTA, ... to define the geo-coded tax information. Also processing laws. But there are databases out there that do it today. Those table are sold by subscription from large accounting firms. Make it part of the Postal System.
      3) since the item changes hands at the front door of buyer. Then the last mile delivery service (they have physical presences, would "collect" the tax and would be audited on the collections.

      So how would this work?
      Buyer buys and item. During check out the delivery address is checked and validated. That is done to determine the cost of shipping by FedEX, UPS, USPS ... That check will also return the tax rate for that location. Hence two charges, shipping and sales tax. Both of these funds are turned over to shipping company. Now every website can "collect" sales tax without knowing a damn thing about it.

      If I walk in to FedEx or UPS, or USPS, ... I want to ship a goods, I declare value, type and source (used vs new (retailer shipment)), they would determing shipping and tax at the delivery point. They would collect that tax there. You as business can fill for return of taxes paid, since it changed ownership.

      IF you go to USPS site to validate an address, the tax rate would would be returned with the zip+4 and other information. So you can charge the correct amount to consumer and get it shipped at the post office.

      Other things to do...
      1) LAW the tax rate suplied by the USPS is "the valid rate". Even if it is wrong, it is right of legal reasons. So everyone that follows the correct method, validate address get a rate back is protected.
      2) LAW USPS can subcontract / assign others to also provide the service, FED or UPS for example. Allows for more equipment to handle the work load. Also sinceFedEx and UPS will be collecting taxes too, they would be good partners in the process.
      3) LAW Sales Tax what it applies to is normalized items. So if a state allows sales tax on Items: Food, Labor, Alcohol, ... then each of those taxes are returned as separate lines.

      Hard part of TAXES in general is intent. Worked with international restaurants years ago. In one city, they implemented a tax on beverages. The issue was the intend consumption of beverage. A glass of milk, to drink in resturant area was 15%, in the bar area 3ft away 25%, but you pour either place over your food is was 10%. This why normalization is important.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @09:48PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @09:48PM (#696991)

    For all practical purposes, it is rock solid. The Supreme Court will have to overrule itself for the situation to change. Quill vs North Dakota kept online trade open for the last 25 years, but now "things have changed because internet", and states can now effectively levy import tariffs.

    It is the stupidest possible resolution. A federal sales tax or sales tax being paid according to the rules of the seller's site would have been more logical and preferable.

    This will be a drag on 2nd and 3rd tier commerce sites and a gift to giants like Amazon who can afford to negotiate with states on taxation.

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday June 23 2018, @06:10PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 23 2018, @06:10PM (#697288) Journal

      They don't just need to negotiate with states, they also need to negotiate with cities, counties, utility districts, etc.

      The last time I checked the local sales rate is was the sum of about 5 different agencies, each with a quite small share, and, of course, the state with the largest share. But the local rates only apply locally, not outside the areas served by the particular agencies.

      I don't like sales taxes, but they're a whole lot better than bonds, where you end up paying endless interest.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.