Shopping News: Internet Sales Tax Collection Case Heads to the Supreme Court

If you make online purchases from out of state retailers that don’t collect sales tax, this may change depending on what happens after the Supreme Court hears a counter-case. The vast majority of States (when you consider that some don’t collect sales tax) are behind this push that will allow them to force online retailers (without a physical presence in the state) to collect sales tax anyway.

In other words, if the Supreme Court agrees with the states, your purchases from NewEgg or B&H Photo or Monoprice or Adorama will have sales tax included regardless of which state you live in (if that states collects sales tax).

This will also affect some purchases at Amazon. The article above from the Associated Press (hosted at ABC) incorrectly states that Amazon is not affected. Right now, purchases from Amazon itself have sales tax charged, however, purchases from 3rd-party sellers are left to the 3rd-party sellers, and as far as I can tell, the majority of 3rd-party sellers that do not have to collect sales tax, do not collect sales tax. So if the Supreme Court agrees with the states, Amazon purchases from 3rd-party sellers will also be collecting sales tax.

The article above estimates that arguments on the case will be made in April, so this is not an imminent change, nor a guarantee that something will change. After all, the whole MAP/price-fixing thing survived the Supreme Court. More on this from various websites and blogs as it develops are collected at the always useful Techmeme