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