From Health Care News:

Andrew Moylan, outreach director and senior fellow at the R Street Institute in Washington, DC, disputes the notion that the bill establishes the same set of rules.

“Brick-and-mortar sales would be governed by a rule that allows the business to collect sales tax based on its physical location, not the destination of their buyer,” he said. “Meanwhile, online retailers would be denied that convenient standard and would be forced to interrogate their customers about their eventual destination, look up the appropriate rules and regulations in more than 9,600 taxing jurisdictions across the country, and then collect and remit sales tax for that distant authority.”

Boost for Amazon?

The bill has the backing of Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer, but critics say Amazon supports it because smaller competitors with fewer resources would be at a further disadvantage if they have to comply with the bill.

“Because they would now have to comply with the complex tax codes in more than 9,600 tax jurisdictions, remote retailers would be weighed down by substantial compliance burdens. In fact, the ‘small seller exception’ in the bill (which is an inadequate $1 million in remote sales when the Small Business Administration definition of a small business is $30 million in sales) is itself an explicit acknowledgment that it will impose significant collection costs and that some should be spared the pain,” said Moylan.

Featured Publications