This ruling is going to cause a lot of changes:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/supreme-c...8--finance.html

I'm sure glad I'm no longer in the retail business. I don't want to collect and/or submit 46 separate sales tax accounts. They were going to try something similar to that in Ohio a few years ago by which I was supposed to charge the Ohio customer the sales tax rate applicable to their county -- 88 counties. They abandoned that before it got started.

Good luck to you trapping supply retailers, you'll need it.

And what you describe Hal, will lead to a push for a uniform federal sales tax.

This is a win for Amazon

That's the only viable alternative, especially for small businesses.

I'm afraid so. But that is exactly what Amazon has been lobbying for for several years now in an attempt to eliminate competition from small businesses.

How would a universal Federal tax disfavor small businesses?

Bigger companies usually have deeper pockets. A small business is less likely to be able to compete when it's profits are being plundered by legal thieves.

None of that is an answer to the question: How would a universal Federal tax disfavor small businesses?

Well some small businesses it wouldn't. But at some level a small business won't be able to afford just the record keeping, software, payments, and maybe personnel required to keep up. I'm thinking of mom & pop operations .

If it is Fed tax then how is the states going to get there money that the write up is about.

I submit that most mom and pop operations are already doing that (at least in 46 states). I did that for years collecting and remitting Ohio sales tax. I don't see that as being much different from a universal federal tax.

There's the rub.

The feds would send it back to the respective states, after a reasonable administrative fee of course.

Right....but is the state going to continue to tax at the same time the feds are taxing the same product ? Eventually the small business will lose volume just because the cost to their customers will be higher. Someone like Amazon may be able to absorb some of that cost giving them a pricing advantage.

I just don't see this as a win for consumers. Only a win for government.

The simple solution is to exempt in-state sales (like me in Ohio) from the Fed Tax. No double taxation there. My out-of-state sales would fall under the Fed. Tax.

But a point in fact -- as it stands now my Ohio customers would be money ahead (disregarding shipping) to order from out of state suppliers and avoid me charging them Ohio sales tax. A Fed tax might bring them home.

That might work.

How long before local sales taxes have to be included?

They don't, that's the idea behind a universal Federal sales tax -- streamlining.

This has been talked about since the Mid 90's and nothing ever happened. Folks panicked with YK2 concerns in 1999. The sun will rise and private programmers and good accountants will assist any small business I believe quite reasonably. It would be nice if the ultimate tax approved by all state governments had an exemption amount of say $100,000 in sales before a small business had to collect sales tax on out of state tax on the web. Hopefully it will be as you guys discuss a federal tax that the feds distribute to the states, it would really not be nice to have to prepare Sales Tax Returns with different sales tax rules submitting to 50 states periodically.