I was pondering over the Amazon/California Sales Tax story and wondered why more eCommerce sites don't collect sales tax. If you don't collect sales tax from your customers, why not?
In the battle of Amazon vs. Walmart, I have to vote Bezos.<p>Also, healthy interstate commerce is rather important to the continued success of the Union. WTF, Walmart? If this goes ad absurdum and any jurisdiction can tax any transaction which has an endpoint on their turf, interstate commerce would potentially require tracking compliance with thousands of jurisdictions. "Insane" doesn't begin to cover it.<p>If I assume that Walmart's strategists are rational, the real intent is probably something like "make Amazon waste money" or "make Amazon get negative PR" or "make Amazon be distracted while we update our business strategies." Probably all of the above, but it's still insane.
Plus, if memory serve, there is a spot on the taxes form to enter out of state purchase so taxes can be paid if due.<p>It is not the responsibility of the out of state merchant because it is that of the person who makes the purchase.
Online store owner here. We do collect and pay sales tax for California residents, but not residents of other states. The reason we don't collect sales tax for other states is:<p>1. We aren't required to.<p>2. Doing so would be a disincentive to sales.<p>3. Management of, and compliance with, thousands of different state+county+municipality combinations that change constantly would be way way way beyond the scope of an organization as small as ours.