Kevin Drum wrote Amazon Caves In "Amazon has spent years fighting ruthlessly to avoid having to collect sales taxes on merchandise it sells over the web. When California recently insisted that it do so, Amazon not only refused, but started collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that would nullify the new law. But now Amazon has backed off".
I'm not sure but I suspect that charging sales tax for online purchases would be a good thing. It would raise revenue for budget crunched states and it would help local businesses by removing an unfair advantage that online (and out of state) stores have. In the early days of the web it would have been difficult for online stores to follow the sales tax laws of all states and territories, but now that's all outsourced to payment services anyway. My only doubt is that we're in a depressed economy and making things more expensive for consumers is a bad thing but I think helping local businesses outweighs the bad.
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