According to the article: "Each state that wants “remote sellers” to collect sales tax must establish a single entity to manage tax collection and audits for the entire state. Sellers won’t have to deal with all 5,900+ separate taxing municipalities in the country, just 50."

So the bill does address this concern.

The bill appears to address the collection/audit concerns, but not the burden of correctly calculating the tax due on any particular sale.

> The bill appears to address the collection/audit concerns, but not the burden of correctly calculating the tax due on any particular sale.

The bill addresses that by requiring each state to provide software free of charge to retailers that does that for the entire state, and by providing explicit uniform rules for sourcing (well, technically, there are two sets of sourcing rules -- one in the bill for states that are not part of the "Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement", and one in that agreement that the bill adopts by reference for states that are a member of the agreement.)

You provide the sourcing information (applying the rules in the bill for sourcing), the state software provides the tax rate. The state software is the only part that has to care about identifying substate jurisdictions and applying their rules.

It addresses that too. The states have to provide an API where you give them the address of the customer, the type of transaction, etc. and they tell you what the tax rate would be for it.

You make a very excellent point concerning virtual goods above all else. That one point specifically concerns me. I should read the bill to see if virtual goods are explicitly exempted, or classified as a taxable item. Of course, one could argue about whether or not such 'virtual' goods exist--if they didn't, we wouldn't be able to talk about them.

Regarding your other points, the bill requires all tax collections to go through a single entity for each taxing state/territory. You don't file taxes with every jurisdiction.

> That one point specifically concerns me. I should read the bill to see if virtual goods are explicitly exempted, or classified as a taxable item.

The bill doesn't address what goods are taxable; those are set by states. The bill simply sets the conditions on which states can extend the sales and use taxes they collect on goods sold by vendors within the state to goods sold into the state by remote sellers.

Good to know. I figured it'd be that way. Still seems like wholly non-physical items could become a pain point.

There is no special provision in the bill for any kind of goods or services. What's taxable will continue to be determined by the individual states.

Which are all free to have different categorization schemes as to what counts as what, correct? (If I understand correctly, this categorization could vary by street level. Chainsaw selling to this house is home improvement, to the house next door it's construction)

That problem won't exist; you may still find differences between the states, but that's it. Only the states set the categorizations for sales tax on remote sellers. This harmonization of a state's sales and use taxes into a single set of rules managed by a single entity for remote sellers is one of the requirements of the bill.

I missed seeing this in your list. Link?

I'm the first one to rant about this -- not very happy.

But you have an excellent point. The software provider feature could be a life-saver.

Of course, many times these things look very different in bill form than when deployed. This sounds very similar to a "magic cloud" that exists in many architecture diagrams :)

ADD: And if you're looking at software providers, I'd be interested in running the numbers to see how their business model would work. They'd have to take payment. They'd have to be bonded. They'd have to collect from the states, provide a categorization system, keep files updated, file paperwork along with monies. Would they have to work internationally? Be categorized as a money Exchanger by treasury department? It doesn't sound cheap. But it certainly sounds like something Amazon would be happy to provide as an API.