The End Of Tax-Free Online Shopping

“You’ll soon be paying more in taxes for online purchases,” said Ben Fox Rubin at CNET. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that states can force retailers beyond their borders to collect sales tax revenue from consumers, overturning a decades-old decision that only required companies to collect sales tax in states where they had a physical footprint. All this time, if retailers didn’t collect sales tax, consumers in, for instance, New York were ostensibly responsible for sending in the necessary taxes if they bought a product from a company in, say, Utah — “something that most people never do.” Brick-and-mortar retailers rejoiced at the South Dakota v. Wayfair ruling, saying the court had finally “leveled the playing field,” said Joyce Rosenberg at the Associated Press. But the change also angered many small online businesses, which say their expenses and compliance costs could now skyrocket, because they will be responsible for sales tax in some 10,000 state and local jurisdictions nationwide.