I'm somewhat baffled by California not being a member.

California's threshold below which out of state remote sellers do not have to register, collect, report, or remit sales tax is $500 000/year of sales into California.

If I'm a remote seller using the free SST option to handle my taxes in the SST states, and am selling say $300 000/year in California, I will not be collecting any California tax.

If they joined SST, I would have to collect California tax even though I'm below the threshold because the deal to get free full service tax handling under SST is that I collect for all SST states.

I don't see any downside for California. At the stroke of a pen, they would suddenly be getting tax collected from a ton of remote sellers that fall below the $500 000/year threshold.

Same with Texas, which also has a $500 000/year threshold, or New York which is $500 000/year and 100 transactions, or Florida which is $100 000/year, or Illinois which is $100 000/year or 200 transactions.

California is not a member of the SST because it does not currently tax a number of things that are subject to tax under the SST regime. For example, digital goods are taxable in SST states but not in California.

Similarly, there are a number of other product categories where CA's taxability classifications do not match the SST's classifications.

Generally, the total tax they could collect from remote (non-CA) sellers below the $500k nexus threshold is not worth the effort it would take to change things so that CA could join the SST, and moreover, it would require significant changes by CA sellers.

Generally, those same considerations also apply in NY: the cost burden on local sellers to make the change would dwarf any minuscule tax increase from joining the SST.

The US could really use some national action on sales taxes.

I'd like to see Congress make it so a state can only require remote sellers with no physical presence in the state to collect tax for the state if:

1. Tax rates on remote sales are uniform within a zip code. No more having to deal with "123 Fake Street, Hooterville, 65026" having a different tax rate than "124 Fake Street, Hooterville, 65026". (Worse, I recall finding an example where a tax boundary apparently ran through an office building, so different offices on the same floor had different tax rates!).

2. They adopt a standard for tax classification that will be specified by the Federal government. They don't have to change the classifications used for taxing sellers with a presences in the state, but for remote sellers they have to use the Federal classifications.

3. Rates for remote sales can only change once per quarter, and the data for the quarter must be published one month before the start of the quarter. It must be published on the web, at a URL that requires no registration or fees, in a format specified by the Federal government. The Federal government would maintain a web page that contains links to the state data pages.

4. Sellers can report taxes using a uniform format defined by the Federal government. The format supports reports that cover the taxes for more than one state. The seller can file such a multi-state report with any state that requires remote sellers to collect tax that they owe tax to, and that state will forward the report to the other states it contains data for. The seller can also pay all the tax to that state, and it will transfer the appropriate amounts to the other states.

If Congress did this it would make dealing with remote sales tax so much easier.

Does Congress have that power? I suppose you could argue they're interstate commerce regulations, but idk if that'd fly.

Edit: Obvious SD v Wayfair is relevant here, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-494_j4el.pdf

It's too complex to even take a stab at guessing what they'd say based on that though. Also, I'd forgotten what a wild lineup the votes were.

GINSBURG, ALITO, and GORSUCH, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., and GORSUCH, J., filed concurring opinions. ROBERTS, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined.

Edit again: Seems Roberts agrees Congress can do something:

Roberts noted that Congress has been considering whether to alter the physical-presence rule, and “nothing in today’s decision precludes Congress from continuing to seek a legislative solution. But by suddenly changing the ground rules, the Court may have waylaid Congress’s consideration of the issue.”

The majority “proceeds with an inexplicable sense of urgency,” the chief justice said, and it “breezily disregards the costs that its decision will impose on retailers.”

There are complex distinctions made in more than 10,000 taxing jurisdictions, he said.

“New Jersey knitters pay sales tax on yarn purchased for art projects, but not on yarn earmarked for sweaters,” Roberts said, while Texas imposes a sales tax on plain deodorant but not on deodorant with antiperspirant, and Illinois treats Twix and Snickers bars differently for sales-tax purposes.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2018/06/opinion-analysis-court-ex...

It's kind of hinted at somewhere in Wayfair that this is really kind of about the defaults when Congress declines to speak.

Congress has extremely broad powers to regulate interstate commerce which would let them decide if and how states can make sellers in other states collect for them. So far, Congress has declined to weigh in, and so we get the default.

For some things the default is that states cannot do them unless Congress says they can. For others the default is that they can do them unless Congress says they cannot.

With Congress remaining silent, it is up to the courts to figure out what the default is for a given thing. Wayfair is essentially saying the older decisions picked the wrong default.

Although your belief is a common one even at the highest levels, reality is that Art. 1, §8, cl. 2 is not actually as broad a power as is believed and/or imagined. People are reading something into that clause that did not exist when it was written, nor should it exist today. It is a function of the misunderstanding of what "regulate" means as it is and was meant, rather than what today's manipulators or "designing men" as Andrew Jackson called them, intend to imprint on it.

When written, "regulate" did not mean control by authoritarian and dictatorial means, absent of checks and balances and controls on power as it is implied today, i.e., "we {insert unelected bureaucratic authoritarian agency} decree by regulation that you may not do this thing or that you have to do this thing." What "regulate" meant when written was to order and bring into purpose suited structure, to bring into a regular state, opposed to an irregular state. There was no overt or hidden or implied sense of manipulation and control implied, it was a description of state, not action.

It is something that is to a large extend willingly overlooked by those who are authoritarian minded, but this natural entropy of language/meaning and even often deliberate and intentional manipulation of language and words (see today's public dialogue and clear and intentional manipulation of language, i.e., you can say some things and the meaning and use of other things is imposed or assaulted), causes excessive amounts of problems. A good example of this kind of change, is the word matrix; that means a pattern of lines or marks, usually in a uniform layout, which used to mean nothing more than a female breeding animal since time before records and well into the 18th century, including even today in niche agricultural circles. The connection to the breeding female coming from the sense that a mathematical matrix is a component into which quantities can be set, or bred into.

Congress does not technically have the right to control commerce, let alone trade, but it does have the power to set commerce into and orderly, or regular state; opposed to an irregular state, i.e., into a wanton and unpredictable state. That does not include using its powers to change or manipulate it with objectives or outcomes in mind.

But regardless of what I say or even the founders meant, the great powers of human hive-mindedness and whoever can control it will ultimately determine the outcome and impacts. We are rapidly approaching a state where everything and anything in the Constitution is essentially put through an authoritarianism conversion where everything is interpreted as meaning centralized control and power, while always and relentlessly stripping individuals of power and control over their own lives and freedoms … all by changing language, which is precisely why certain groups are so focused on changing the language, because if you change the meaning of freedom to slavery, then you are halfway to 1984.

>Although your belief is a common one even at the highest levels, reality is that Art. 1, §8, cl. 2 is not actually as broad a power as is believed and/or imagined.

Ultimately, reality is whatever people alive now determine it to be. The intentions of the original authors of the Constitution are interesting, sure, but only "real" in the sense that they guide the actual decision makers of today.

Fascinating claims. Can you link to any legal treatises that explain this idea further?

Sorry Ot and won't sound offensive, but i am reading each 'commerce' interpreted with 'ads' -so my two cents... (-;

comic #646 are you in a partisan state ?: > //abload.de/img/646_en_areyouinapartisxjts.png

Probably not to enforce standards, but they certainly have the power to create standards and incentivize their use. Much in the same way they can't control speed limits on national highways or the drinking age in various states, yet these laws are largely uniform across the country.

Those rules have to be on a funding source that's plausibly related and it has to be non-coercive. I'm struggling to think of a relevant funding source here.

> Those rules have to be on a funding source that's plausibly related and it has to be non-coercive.

That seems to not be the case in practice. Highway funding is dependent on states setting a legal drinking age no lower than 21. Those two things are not plausibly related. And it's definitely coercive.

The two are completely plausibly related. Drinking age has a direct affect on the amount of drunk driving on roads and therefore the safety of them. The main group behind the push to 21 was Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

In fact, the Supreme Court case about this was where they came up with the rule!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Dole

The actual test is:

    The spending must promote "the general welfare."
    The condition must be unambiguous.
    The condition should relate "to the federal interest in particular national projects or programs."
    The condition imposed on the states must not, in itself, be unconstitutional.
    The condition must not be coercive.

TIL states can now force out-of-state companies to collect and remit taxes.

Yeah, it sucks. However, not all goods, not all states even have an existence of a nexus. Virginia specifically exempts sales taxes of digital products delivered electronically, such as software, downloaded music, ringtones, and reading materials.

The basic rule for collecting sales tax from online sales is: If your business has a physical presence, or “nexus”, in a state, you must collect applicable sales taxes from online customers in that state. If you do not have a physical presence, you generally do not have to collect sales tax for online sales. In the court ruling that allowed this, it was determined that Wayfair did have a nexus in those states. Not all businesses operate that way and there are a lot of gray areas.

> If you do not have a physical presence, you generally do not have to collect sales tax for online sales.

That was how it stood before the Wayfair ruling. Under Quill Corp. v. North Dakota (1992) and others, the Court had ruled that states did not have the power to force out of state sellers to collect tax for remote sales unless the seller had a physical presence in the state.

Wayfair overruled Quill. The Court created a new kind of nexus, an "economic" nexus, and ruled that an economic nexus was sufficient to allow states to force out of state sellers to collect.

Merely selling a sufficient volume into a state is sufficient to create an economic nexus. They didn't give any hard and fast rule for deciding what is a sufficient volume, but the state involved in the Wayfair case, South Dakota, was trying to charge tax on any out of state seller that had more than $100 000/year in sales or more than 200 sales per year in South Dakota so we know that is on the "sufficient volume" side of things.

The rule for online sales tax in the US is now this:

1. If you sell online to customers in state X, you need to look up that state's economic nexus law to see what their threshold is. Here's a good place for this [1].

2. If your sales volume is not under the threshold, you need to check to see if that state exempts your particular product or service.

If you hit the threshold and there is no exemption, welcome to hell.

[1] https://www.avalara.com/us/en/learn/guides/state-by-state-gu...

1. Congress does not have that power, as it would interfere with the states' control of in-state commerce. They could however make that a requirement for requiring out-of-state sellers to comply with sales tax.

2. Same as #1.

3. Rates for sales tax generally change every few years as it requires an unbelievably large amount of notification to sellers, service providers, etc. Where sales tax rates change faster than that, it is usually part of a pre-planned and pre-published change in rates occurring over several years. A sales tax rate changing annually is actually fairly uncommon; a sales tax rate changing more frequently than annually (absent special circumstances like COVID19 incentive rates) is extremely rare.

4. This is basically the purpose of the Streamlined Sales Tax, which is an initiative of over two dozen states to streamline sales tax compliance: only a single return is required and it covers all of the member states. However, it is voluntary.

Note that your suggestion for payment is unfeasible, since it would require each payment to also include the tax liability data for every other state, and each state would have to set up a separate bureaucracy to handle money transfer. It's faster and more efficient for taxpayers and states to simply have the taxpayer use existing payment mechanisms to pay each state separately. On the taxpayer side, it's literally seconds more work if you're using a unified tax system (like the SST).

1. Oops. I forgot to say that this was only to apply for sales taxes on out-of-state sellers.

2. I did remember to mention that for #2.

3. The rates that apply to a particular location in a state might change infrequently, but there are a lot of locations, so even if each location's rates change infrequently there can still be a lot of rate changes within the state each quarter.

For example, in my state (Washington), there are ~1 million 9 digit zip codes listed in the rate data the state makes available. Here is how many of those areas had rate changes compared to the previous quarter starting from 2020:

  2020q1   14930 changed
  2020q2  121464 changed
  2020q3    9084 changed
  2020q4    1779 changed
  2021q1  185365 changed
  2021q2  115306 changed

(This is only counting cases where the zip exists in the rate tables for two consecutive quarters. There are also zips being added and removed which I'm ignoring).

In those 6 quarters many places actually changed more than once, the most extreme being 98520-6503 which changed every quarter.

  2019q4  8.98%
  2020q1  8.80%
  2020q2  8.90%
  2020q3  9.08%
  2020q4  8.90%
  2021q1  9.08%
  2021q2  8.90%

Among all the places whose rate changed sometime in 2020 or 2021 (so far):

  436523 changed 1 time
    4533 changed 2 times
     654 changed 3 times
      84 changed 4 times
       7 changed 5 times
       1 changed 6 times

4. SST would be great if every state did it, but as you note it is voluntary, and as you noted in other comments I believe several states apparently have no interest in joining. If the Feds did it, they could make it mandatory, and they could make it simpler (such as making it purely zip code base5 (hopefully 5 digit only) instead of address based).

With it zip based and updated at most once per quarter, almost all the complexity of dealing with finding rates go away. Heck, I would probably remove the address entry fields from our shopping cart because we sell downloadable goods and tech support for those goods. The only reason we have to ask for address is for sales tax lookup.

What I'm basically suggesting is something similar to the EU's VAT MOSS system. Here's how we deal with VAT for our EU sales. (1) It is one rate per country. I had a local DB with the rates. (2) Once a quarter I make a CSV file that lists country, our sales in that country, the VAT rate of that country, and how much tax we collected. (3) Once a quarter someone in ops uploads that CSV to the Irish tax authorities and we pay them the total of all EU VAT we owe for that quarter. (4) The Irish tax authorities forward the data to the other EU countries along with the tax owed (logically...I'd assume that physically they do something like net out things first. Just as we pay our Italian and German VAT through Ireland, there are others paying their Irish VAT through Germany or Italy, and there is no need to have say Ireland pay Germany at the same time Germany pays Ireland).

I don't see why the states could not do something similar, so that I just send a CSV of state, zip, sales, rate, amount collected to one state along with the total tax collected and let them distribute it. Maybe have the Feds set up a clearinghouse for the states to use that actually deals with netting things out and settling between the states. Might as well then go one step further hand have the sellers just upload directly to the clearinghouse.

Addendum: I got curious about that place that changed every quarter, zip code 98520-6503.

That zip covers the odd addresses in the 101-199 address range of E Wishkah ST in Aberdeen WA. The even side of that block is zip code 98520-6508 and only suffered one rate changed in that time.

The 200 block odd side changed twice, the 200 block even side changed once. Going the other way from the 100 block of E Wishkah, the odd side of 100 W changed once, and the even side twice.

3. WA DOR publishes all sales tax rate change notices on their website. https://dor.wa.gov/taxes-rates/sales-and-use-tax-rates/local...

In 2020, there were fewer than a 2 dozen rate changes throughout the entire year at the local level, none at the state level, and certainly not any rate changes in a single tax locale occurring multiple times during the year at any level. And this was verified by running tax rate reports for the state of WA in Avalara for each quarter in 2020.

I understand the point you're trying to make, but you're not going to win this argument by making up such blatant falsehoods. (Note that I actually handle the sales tax compliance for my company, including the state of WA, and I am definitely more familiar with sales tax rate changes than you are.)

4. The Feds do not have the power to require states to join the SST as it would violate the states' right to control intrastate commerce.

4a. Zip-coded based taxation is not sufficiently granular. For example, a single zip code in LA can contain multiple municipalities. A number of zip codes cross county and state lines. (9-digit zip codes are more granular, but only areas with sufficient mail volume are assigned the extra 4 digits.)

4b. I don't know what is behind your fascination with updating sales tax rates every quarter. Sales tax rates are generally updated every few years for any given tax location. It only seems like they update more frequently than that because you are conflating local tax jurisdictions with state-level jurisdictions.

4c. I know how VATMOSS works; as I have stated elsewhere I am a tax professional and handle indirect compliance functions for my company.

There is not a single VAT rate per country; there are 3 or more rates, corresponding to the different VAT classifications of goods. Most EU countries have 3 rates; during COVID several of them had as many as 7 rates (as a result of short-term discounted rates on certain types of goods and services).

Furthermore, only a limited number of VAT-subject digital goods and services are handled by the VAT MOSS system; physical goods are not VAT MOSS eligible, and classification/taxation of physical goods is 99% of the complexity of indirect tax regimes.

Additionally, the EU is legally and structurally fundamentally different from the U.S. VAT MOSS is possible in the EU because the member nations are bound to participate in EU economic initiatives as a condition of being a member of the EU (see, for example, the issues leading to Brexit). No similar legal arrangement exists between the American states; moreover, the U.S. Constitution does not grant the central/federal government the power to control commerce within a state.

It is simply not possible to have something like the VATMOSS in the U.S. It would require significant changes to the basic structure of American government. The best we'll get is the SST, and it's very unlikely that states like CA and NY will ever agree to give up control of their own tax systems to a system run by the Midwestern and Southeastern states.

Indeed, the SST exists primarily because most out-of-state sellers to these states would not sell enough to reach the nexus thresholds and so those sales would not be subject to sales tax; the SST is the carrot to get sellers to agree to handle sales tax compliance, and that is why it is mandatory to agree to sales tax for all SST member states as a condition of using the SST. (For example, without getting into specifics, my company's sales to all SST member states combined is less than the sales to CA, or NY, or FL, or CO, or TX, or IL.)

Washington publishes downloadable CSV files with rates here: https://dor.wa.gov/taxes-rates/sales-and-use-tax-rates/downl...

Here are commands to download the rates for the 7 most recent quarters and lookup the entries for 98520-6503:

  curl https://dor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/downloads/Add_Data/Zip4Q221E.zip > 21q2.zip
  curl https://dor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/downloads/Add_Data/Zip4Q121E.zip > 21q1.zip
  curl https://dor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/downloads/Add_Data/Zip4Q420E.zip > 20q4.zip
  curl https://dor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/downloads/Add_Data/Zip4Q320E.zip > 20q3.zip
  curl https://dor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/downloads/Add_Data/ZIP4Q220E.zip > 20q2.zip
  curl https://dor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/downloads/Add_Data/ZIP4Q120E.zip > 20q1.zip
  curl https://dor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/downloads/Add_Data/ZIP4Q419E.zip > 19q4.zip
  for i in *zip; do unzip $i; done
  grep 98520,6503 Zip4RatesQ42019-Long.txt
  grep 98520,6503 Zip4RatesQ12020-Long.txt
  grep 98520,6503 Zip4RatesQ22020-Long.txt
  grep 98520,6503 Zip4RatesQ32020-Long.txt
  grep 98520,6503 Zip4RatesQ42020-Long.txt
  grep 98520,6503 Zip4RatesQ12021-Long.txt
  grep 98520,6503 Zip4RatesQ22021-Long.txt

Here is the output:

  98520,6503,1401,0.06500,0.02480,0.08980,20191001,20191231
  98520,6503,1400,0.06500,0.02300,0.08800,20200101,20200331
  98520,6503,1400,0.06500,0.02400,0.08900,20200401,20200630
  98520,6503,1401,0.06500,0.02580,0.09080,20200701,20200930
  98520,6503,1400,0.06500,0.02400,0.08900,20201001,20201231
  98520,6503,1401,0.06500,0.02580,0.09080,20210101,20210331
  98520,6503,1400,0.06500,0.02400,0.08900,20210401,20210630

Washington also has a lookup page here: https://webgis.dor.wa.gov/taxratelookup/salestax.aspx

That also shows it changing, but not as frequently (and always has it in location code 1401, whereas the ZipRates files have that zip sometimes in 1400 and sometimes 1401).

There is also the short format files (just change the "E" in the name to "C" to get them), which give yet another story. They put 98520-6503 in location 1400 or omit it completely. When they include it, they match the rate from the long files.

Addendum: I took a look at the boundary file that Washington provides to SST (WAB2021Q3MAY27.zip available here [1]). Here's what that file says about O addresses in the 101-199 range of E. Wishkah ST.

  A,20160701,20170331,101,199,O,E,WISHKAH,ST,,,,,,GRAYS HARBOR COUNTY,98520,6503,,,,,01400,53,53,027
  A,20170401,20170630,101,199,O,E,WISHKAH,ST,,,,,,ABERDEEN,98520,6503,,,,,01401,53,53,,00100
  A,20180401,20180930,101,199,O,E,WISHKAH,ST,,,,,,GRAYS HARBOR COUNTY,98520,6503,,,,,01400,53,53,027
  A,20181001,20191231,101,199,O,E,WISHKAH,ST,,,,,,ABERDEEN,98520,6503,,,,,01401,53,53,,00100
  A,20200101,20200331,101,199,O,E,WISHKAH,ST,,,,,,GRAYS HARBOR COUNTY,98520,6503,,,,,01400,53,53,027
  A,20200401,20200630,101,199,O,E,WISHKAH,ST,,,,,,GRAYS HARBOR COUNTY,98520,6503,,,,,01400,53,53,027
  A,20200701,20200930,101,199,O,E,WISHKAH,ST,,,,,,ABERDEEN,98520,6503,,,,,01401,53,53,,00100
  A,20201001,20201231,101,199,O,E,WISHKAH,ST,,,,,,GRAYS HARBOR COUNTY,98520,6503,,,,,01400,53,53,027
  A,20210101,20210331,101,199,O,E,WISHKAH,ST,,,,,,ABERDEEN,98520,6503,,,,,01401,53,53,,00100
  A,20210401,20210630,101,199,O,E,WISHKAH,ST,,,,,,ABERDEEN,98520,6503,,,,,01400,53,53,027
  A,20210701,99991231,101,199,O,E,WISHKAH,ST,,,,,,ABERDEEN,98520,6503,,,,,01401,53,53,,00100

It has the same bouncing around between SER codes 1400 and 1401 that it does in the earlier files. At first it looks like that depends on whether or not it is listed as being in the county or the city, but notice the last 3 entries all have it in the city but it still bounces around.

When it is listed as in 1400 it has state 53 tax and county 027 tax. When it is listed as being in 1401, it has state 53 tax, no county tax, and place 00100 tax.

The statewide component of sales tax in Washington is 6.5%.

Here are the county 027 tax rates, according to the rates file WAR2021Q3MAY27.zip that Washington provides to SST, found here [2].

  53,00,027,0.02000,0.02000,0.02000,0.02000,20140401,20161231
  53,00,027,0.02300,0.02300,0.02300,0.02300,20170101,20200331
  53,00,027,0.02400,0.02400,0.02400,0.02400,20200401,99991231

Here are the place 00100 tax rates:

  53,01,00100,0.02130,0.02130,0.02130,0.02130,20140401,20161231
  53,01,00100,0.02430,0.02430,0.02430,0.02430,20170101,20190630
  53,01,00100,0.02480,0.02480,0.02480,0.02480,20190701,20200331
  53,01,00100,0.02580,0.02580,0.02580,0.02580,20200401,20290630

Matching the rates and the boundaries files by validity ranges, I get for 101-199 E. Wishkah ST odd addresses for 2019q4 through 2021q2 8.98, 8.8, 8.9, 9.08, 8.9, 9.08, and 8.9, which are exactly the same as what I got earlier from the zip+4 long files.

I have no idea why these are not the same as the results using the Washington interactive lookup gives for those address, nor why Avalara apparently gives different results, now why the results using the zip+4 short files differ from the long files.

You might suggest that it was because I was going by zip+4 rather than address, and tax boundaries do not necessarily follow zip boundaries (even when you use zip+4). But with the files Washington gives SST, I'm going strictly by street address so that cannot be it.

Washington also has street address based files in its own format available to download. I've not looked at those. I probably should, to see if perhaps that is where their own interactive page and Avalara are getting data.

I have previously found inconsistencies in Washington's various tax files and interfaces (and reported them). Perhaps this is another case of that. Perhaps I'll report this one, after doing a little more checking around.

[1] https://www.streamlinedsalestax.org/ratesandboundry/Boundary...

[2] https://www.streamlinedsalestax.org/ratesandboundry/Rates/

Edit: I grabbed the street-based rates from Washington's site. Same result as I got from the zip+4 long and from the boundaries and rates files that Washington provides to SST.

Honestly, I wonder if the level of autonomy we provide to states and lower subdivisions makes sense anymore in an era of one-day delivery and non-in-person sales.

They're buying the same goods, with the same currency, backed with the same warranties, and shipped with the same couriers, but because some of your customers are on the other side of an arbitrary line drawn for a political gambit in the mid-1800s, here's an entire second set of rules and documentation to deal with.

Even if you can somehow convince all the states to play ball, and not tie any sort of standardization process in the courts until six months after the heat death of the Universe, you've got the same problems on different scales with patchworks of local authorities.

If anything, though, what we should be looking for is a uniform national VAT or sales tax, distributed proportionally back to the states/local authorities. It would discourage the "race to the bottom" gaming of special tax regions and exemptions to attract business, and take funding for essential aervices out of the hands of state legislatures. In at least some states, we have real problems because such legislatures will do things like "taxes can only be raised as a ballot initiative with supermajority" as political posturing, then hatch up harebrained schemes like "the courts said we actually have to fund public schools, let's sell off state-owned land as a one-time earner" to kick the can down the road.

Added plus: we could reasonably price goods as tax-inclusive, like in the UK, because the marketing copy can be consistent and accurate everywhere.

As someone opposed to sales taxes, I'd rather the federal government stay out of it.

Interesting. People bemoan that the market in Europe is too splintered and that the whole of the us can be seen as one market. But all these state differences seem to at least indicate that it isn’t that simple.

Interestingly, VAT law is mostly harmonized in the EU and remittance will get even easier starting July where you can declare and pay VAT on cross-border sales to just one entity ("One-Stop-Shop").

The $500,000 threshold is, IIRC, for companies that don't have a 'nexus' in California. As of a few years ago, having a single remote employee in California was enough to create a nexus, causing you to be treated as a California-local company.

This is spot on. It's an interesting program perhaps, but unfortunately a lot of states are missing including California, Texas, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, South Carolina, and we're not seen any uptake from other states toward adoption either.