eCommerce Sales Tax

Most online purchases are not taxed and most people do not file to pay the tax as required. This creates a big disadvantage for local, brick-and-mortar companies and results in more individual shipping and packaging which isn't very green. My solution: have the ecommerce retailer tax the purchase at some nationally-agreed upon rate, remitting half to their home state and half to the purchaser's home state. The rate might be the retailer's home state rate, the average of all state rates, the highest state's rate, or some other method. Alternatively, the states could maintain a database of tax data that the retailer could access to tax appropriately. In the end, however, half the tax should be retailer-local and half should be purchaser-local to more fairly distribute the tax based on the impact to public services each party has.