Quote:
Originally Posted by Exhibitman
If the states enact a hodge-podge of new regulations over interstate sales tax and there is wide variance between them, that is precisely what the commerce clause of the Constitution was meant to allow Congress to regulate. The business lobby will go apeshit and in this pay-for-play government, if the money goes crazy, the officials they bribe, er, donate to, will respond.
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Exactly right. This is not an easy fix. The problem stems from the way the old laws requiring physical presence to be in place before someone could be responsible for having to file and pay any kind of taxes in any state or jurisdiction. Back then there was no internet or online sales. The did have catalogs sales but, not to the extent or volume of today's economy. And because of the vast increase in such internet and online sales, old brick and mortar businesses are shutting shut down left and right, or having a real hard time competing, states lose out on sales tax and other tax revenue they would have otherwise had, and on and on. They're now trying to figure out how best to update and change the tax laws to deal with the new way businesses are run and operate. The problem is that everyone is pretty much ingrained with the old, existing tax systems and rules, and to just wholesale change them all at once would create pure chaos in the business world and the economy. And in the meantime, since not every state has the exact same types of taxes, laws and rates, it is near impossible to hope for any concerted effort on the entire country's part to address this, unless as you suggested, Congress and the federal government take the lead. Of course, the states will never go along with this as it violates their states rights and they'll never all agree on exactly how it things should be handled, and who should be handling them, anyway.
As a supporting example, for years, there has been a group of states that have gotten together to back and support and promote ideas revolving around the generalization of state taxes and such, and it is all as a result of what is known as the Multi-state Tax Compact that was actually put into effect all the back in 1967. Been that long and they still can't get all the states to work together to agree on how to do things from back then even. Fat chance you'll get them to change their ways and start agreeing on all the new things happening every day now.