The biggest player here is Amazon. Because there are tons of businesses in Cal that also sell stuff through Amazon. So, Amazon would be asked to collect a california sales tax on any products being sent to a Cal address.
Amazon's response was to dump all the businesses that had been selling stuff through their website.
Other states as well, have been trying to get some bit of revenue from on-line sales.
So, on one hand you have brick and mortar stores that have to pay sales tax, competing with online companies that don't. I can see how that could suck.
On the other hand, you have online businesses that do business with all fifty states and lots of other countries. They all have differing tax rates on different categories of items, different systems of collection, etc etc. So, can they be asked to shoulder the burden of tax collection?
Should online sales be taxed regardless of where the shop originates?
How should it be done?
What about Amazon? I think their response to California, and more directly, those businesses that were booted out of Amazon's virtual mega-store was pretty poopy.
Edit - A STORY
Edited, Jul 1st 2011 4:07pm by Elinda