> everything is owned by like one company right now anyway so they already have systems in place to deal with differing tax rules in different states.
Yeah I agree it would generally be a much higher burden for small businesses than for Amazon.
Then there’s an incentive to produce higher inequality: high sales tax affects mostly poor, while low property tax usually benefits rich. Poor people are usually underrepresented in democratic institutions, so it would not be surprising if inverse redistribution would be a frequent problem.
Finally, local tax as a way to fund communities is not the only alternative and relying on it would mean that some communities will never get out of financial trouble. Tourist towns are minority, after all. Other countries just keep some of the collected VAT locally and redistribute excesses from richer to poorer communities through federal transfers (German solidarity tax did exactly that, for example).
It can be very convenient for retailers since sales can vary in different counties let alone states:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_Stat...
just try to imagine what a mess it would be if any advertisement, price sticker etc. would have to show the full price.