And what always irritates me whenever these cries for "fairness" come up is how everyone is totally conditioned to accept the premise that the most onerous and restrictive must necessarily form the baseline for the proposed "fair" arrangement. So big box retailers have to collect sales tax, and this allegedly puts them at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis the online out of state retailers? Well why is the answer to slap a punitive tax on the other guy? Why is the question never "Why are we being taxed so much to do face to face business in this jurisdiction?" It's always "Why aren't the online retailers paying as much as we are?" It's total conditioning, and it goes almost totally unquestioned.
What's next? If you go to another state are they going to start having to check IDs for every purchase, because how is buying something in a lower tax state any different? I live close enough to South Carolina that I try to buy gas there whenever possible, because it's cheaper. Should SC gas stations now be required to check the state of residence of everyone who pulls up to the pump and make sure they're assessing the gasoline tax from that state? Madness! People have to remember it is not the consumer who is technically the taxed party, it's the business selling the goods. It is customary to add this directly to the price, but it's still the business who is technically the one paying the tax. So what we have is a proposal where a business in one state is now subject to the taxing powers of a jurisdiction in an entirely different state, a jurisdiction where that business owner has no political representation whatsoever.
Here's an alternate proposal that would immediately put the lie to their "fairness" argument. Just say that online retailers have to start collecting sales tax for whatever jurisdiction the retailer is based in, rather than where the customer is. That would make it just like a tourist buying from a store in another state. I think that would go over like a lead balloon, because it would only end up benefiting a handful of relatively pro-business states where so many of the big retailers are based.
